New tools for old traumas

The Center for American Progress has just published a very interesting paper – New Tools for Old Traumas - on how to use 21st century technologies to combat human rights atrocities. Satellite imagery, DNA testing, databases management, cryptography or social networking technologies have enhanced human rights investigators capacities to document and disseminate.
The authors, Sarah Dreier and William Schulz, appeal to the U.S. government to take human rights into account in their development of new technologies and to support initiatives that reinforce the use of these new tools.
Some donors have already integrated these tools into their programmes. The European Commission, for instance, is funding projects to help human rights defenders to protect their Internet communications.
The success of these efforts does not depend only on technological capacities although the “digital divide” between NICs haves and have-nots affects many poor countries. It is also determined by the level of freedom in the countries where human rights violations are taking place. Internet control, censorship laws, are serious matters in many countries.
Technology cannot completely replace direct access. As Reporters without borders (RSF) has just reported, the military government in Guinea, recently guilty of a brutal massacre of demonstrators, has been refusing visas to international journalists.
However the generalization of these technological tools can greatly contribute to reduce the space of impunity that abusive regimes try to preserve around them.

Read: New Tools for Old Traumas, www.americanprogress.org