Using satellites to report on human rights crises from Darfur to Syria

Journalists and human rights activists are not always welcome in repressive states. They are denied visas, escorted  by stern-faced minders or even beaten and shot at. How to get around these limitations to free reporting? Some have found part of the answer: using satellite technology to monitor and document crises and human rights abuses.
The idea is not completely new and has been already used by human rights organizations like Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch. In 2007 the American Association for the Advancement of Science has worked with these geospatial technologies to track abuses in Burma, Sudan, Chad, Lebanon and Zimbabwe.http://irevolution.net/2008/04/06/human-rights-20/
The Genocide Studies Program at Yale University has also used these techniques to track the genocide in Darfur and has worked on Rwanda and Timor-Leste.
The conflict in Syria is a new focal point for satellite imagery analysis to identify mass human rights violations. Amnesty International USA's Science for Human Rights Program has activated the experience it had acquired through its "Eyes on Darfur" project.
For more on this groundbreaking technique go to the Standby Task Force web page. It has a particularly interesting look at satellite crisis reporting in Syria.