Human Rights 2.0
By Peter A Buxbaum for ISN
Is it possible to shame human rights abusers into refraining from their perfidious activities?
That is the premise behind " external pageNew Tools for Old Traumas: Using 21st Century Technologies for Combat Human Rights Atrocities," a report issued last week by the Center for American Progress (CAP), a left-leaning Washington think tank.
"There now exist unparalleled opportunities to expose human rights abuses," said the report. "And with the knowledge generated by these new capacities for exposure, human rights champions have new opportunities to intervene to stop ongoing abuses."
There is historical evidence to support the report's supposition. Authoritarian regimes don't publicize their human rights abuses, even when they take pains to justify their policies internally. Even the Nazis conducted their genocidal activities sub rosa and did their utmost to cover up their crimes as the tide of World War II turned against them.
As Jean-Paul Sartre suggests in Being and Nothingness, people don't experience shame when they are alone. Shame comes when their actions have been witnessed by an 'Other.'
The proliferation of information and communications technologies in recent years leads CAP to conclude that they can be used to advance the cause of human rights. "Steady increases in technological sophistication over the past 10 to 20 years have helped millions of people come a bit closer to realizing social and economic rights," William Schultz, a CAP senior fellow and the report's co-author, told ISN Security Watch. "These technological advances are also having a major impact on the struggle for civil and political rights."
CAP sees the time as ripe for the US to develop a human rights and technology program thanks to President Barack Obama’s commitments to international human rights standards and to scientific advancement. The program that CAP envisions would exploits new technologies to document crimes and bring abusers to justice.
"By sending the message that the world is watching," said the report, these technologies can "even prevent abuses from taking place in the first place."
Report: The US should take the lead
The expansion of computing and internet capacities have allowed the gathering and instant dissemination of human rights violations, Schultz noted. Camera cell phones immediately convey images of human rights violations. Internet social networking sites enable activists to connect with one another and with sympathetic audiences to build worldwide networks. Electronic data analysis tools allow for large volumes of information about human rights crimes to be collected and analyzed, helping legal teams verify and synthesize evidence.
Significant barriers still exist for using many of these technologies to promote a human rights agenda, providing an additional rationale for US government involvement. One is the continuing digital divide still exists which prevent many people around the world from access existing tools. Authoritarian regimes, such as the ruling junta in Burma, for example, restrict widespread internet access and block cell phone service.
The report outlines several key measures the US government can take to encourage the application of new technologies to stop human rights abuses. These include White House sponsorship of an initiative on technology and human rights; incorporating human rights commitments into the agenda of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology; facilitating public-private partnerships between federal agencies and corporations to advance human rights; and increasing funding for scientific research and technology development that link to human rights.
The report also advocates that the US government bolster and expand existing applications of science and technology in the human rights arena.
"High-resolution satellite images provide evidence of destroyed villages, mass graves, and secret prison camps," the report noted. "Advocates and international legal institutions can use these images to place political and legal pressure on regimes responsible for such crimes."
The report suggests that the US government update publicly available mapping databases and increase NGO access to commercial satellite imagery. The use of satellite imagery especially, the report noted, can bypass wireless and internet restrictions put in place by oppressive regimes.
"Advanced database software systems allow victims, activists, and local NGOs around the world to upload copious amounts of data that document human rights abuses securely," according to the report, "and then sort and analyze it to quantify broad trends that are meaningful in a court of law. The United States can help make these tools more readily available to local actors by placing international pressure on authoritarian regimes to lift restrictions on cryptography."
The US government can also dedicate resources to increasing wireless communication coverage and access to electronics, hardware and software around the world and to resisting censorship practices in authoritarian regimes, the report said. These measures would enhance the utility of cell phones, laptop computers and internet social networking tools as "vehicles for advancing free speech, reporting human rights abuses, and distributing health care and other life-sustaining information."
"As new technologies are discovered," the report concluded, "new human rights applications will emerge. If the US government is to be the global human rights leader its citizens want it to be, it will need to insure that human rights are a principal beneficiary of the development of cutting-edge innovations."
Possible barriers
Such high-minded policies, of course, are not without their challenges. One of the challenges identified in the CAP report is the "notable tensions between the cultures of the science and human rights communities."
"Human rights work is inherently political," the report noted. "Scientists, in contrast, guard the objectivity of their work closely and are often upset when political interpretations appear to distort their findings."
But it is possible, the report concluded, "for human rights workers focused on political objectives to collaborate with researchers who continue to produce work that adheres to the highest levels of professional objectivity."
Nor does technology provide a panacea in the struggle for human rights, the report acknowledged. "There are certainly limits to technology’s capacity to promote democracy or combat human rights abuses, and such tools in no way supplant the ongoing need for direct action. Indeed, some abuses are not susceptible to repair by technology," the report said. "But many deviations from human rights standards - standards that are articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and scores of subsequent treaties, conventions, protocols, and court rulings - certainly may be.
That is the premise behind " external pageNew Tools for Old Traumas: Using 21st Century Technologies for Combat Human Rights Atrocities," a report issued last week by the Center for American Progress (CAP), a left-leaning Washington think tank.
"There now exist unparalleled opportunities to expose human rights abuses," said the report. "And with the knowledge generated by these new capacities for exposure, human rights champions have new opportunities to intervene to stop ongoing abuses."
There is historical evidence to support the report's supposition. Authoritarian regimes don't publicize their human rights abuses, even when they take pains to justify their policies internally. Even the Nazis conducted their genocidal activities sub rosa and did their utmost to cover up their crimes as the tide of World War II turned against them.
As Jean-Paul Sartre suggests in Being and Nothingness, people don't experience shame when they are alone. Shame comes when their actions have been witnessed by an 'Other.'
The proliferation of information and communications technologies in recent years leads CAP to conclude that they can be used to advance the cause of human rights. "Steady increases in technological sophistication over the past 10 to 20 years have helped millions of people come a bit closer to realizing social and economic rights," William Schultz, a CAP senior fellow and the report's co-author, told ISN Security Watch. "These technological advances are also having a major impact on the struggle for civil and political rights."
CAP sees the time as ripe for the US to develop a human rights and technology program thanks to President Barack Obama’s commitments to international human rights standards and to scientific advancement. The program that CAP envisions would exploits new technologies to document crimes and bring abusers to justice.
"By sending the message that the world is watching," said the report, these technologies can "even prevent abuses from taking place in the first place."
Report: The US should take the lead
The expansion of computing and internet capacities have allowed the gathering and instant dissemination of human rights violations, Schultz noted. Camera cell phones immediately convey images of human rights violations. Internet social networking sites enable activists to connect with one another and with sympathetic audiences to build worldwide networks. Electronic data analysis tools allow for large volumes of information about human rights crimes to be collected and analyzed, helping legal teams verify and synthesize evidence.
Significant barriers still exist for using many of these technologies to promote a human rights agenda, providing an additional rationale for US government involvement. One is the continuing digital divide still exists which prevent many people around the world from access existing tools. Authoritarian regimes, such as the ruling junta in Burma, for example, restrict widespread internet access and block cell phone service.
The report outlines several key measures the US government can take to encourage the application of new technologies to stop human rights abuses. These include White House sponsorship of an initiative on technology and human rights; incorporating human rights commitments into the agenda of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology; facilitating public-private partnerships between federal agencies and corporations to advance human rights; and increasing funding for scientific research and technology development that link to human rights.
The report also advocates that the US government bolster and expand existing applications of science and technology in the human rights arena.
"High-resolution satellite images provide evidence of destroyed villages, mass graves, and secret prison camps," the report noted. "Advocates and international legal institutions can use these images to place political and legal pressure on regimes responsible for such crimes."
The report suggests that the US government update publicly available mapping databases and increase NGO access to commercial satellite imagery. The use of satellite imagery especially, the report noted, can bypass wireless and internet restrictions put in place by oppressive regimes.
"Advanced database software systems allow victims, activists, and local NGOs around the world to upload copious amounts of data that document human rights abuses securely," according to the report, "and then sort and analyze it to quantify broad trends that are meaningful in a court of law. The United States can help make these tools more readily available to local actors by placing international pressure on authoritarian regimes to lift restrictions on cryptography."
The US government can also dedicate resources to increasing wireless communication coverage and access to electronics, hardware and software around the world and to resisting censorship practices in authoritarian regimes, the report said. These measures would enhance the utility of cell phones, laptop computers and internet social networking tools as "vehicles for advancing free speech, reporting human rights abuses, and distributing health care and other life-sustaining information."
"As new technologies are discovered," the report concluded, "new human rights applications will emerge. If the US government is to be the global human rights leader its citizens want it to be, it will need to insure that human rights are a principal beneficiary of the development of cutting-edge innovations."
Possible barriers
Such high-minded policies, of course, are not without their challenges. One of the challenges identified in the CAP report is the "notable tensions between the cultures of the science and human rights communities."
"Human rights work is inherently political," the report noted. "Scientists, in contrast, guard the objectivity of their work closely and are often upset when political interpretations appear to distort their findings."
But it is possible, the report concluded, "for human rights workers focused on political objectives to collaborate with researchers who continue to produce work that adheres to the highest levels of professional objectivity."
Nor does technology provide a panacea in the struggle for human rights, the report acknowledged. "There are certainly limits to technology’s capacity to promote democracy or combat human rights abuses, and such tools in no way supplant the ongoing need for direct action. Indeed, some abuses are not susceptible to repair by technology," the report said. "But many deviations from human rights standards - standards that are articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and scores of subsequent treaties, conventions, protocols, and court rulings - certainly may be.