|ndex

#ICT4HR
Information and Communication Technologies
for Human Rights

by Molly Land, Patrick Meier, Mark Belinsky, and Emily Jacobi

Disclaimer: The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this report are entirely those of the authors.
They do not necessarily represent the views of the World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the
Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.
FOREWORD

This study aims to provide new knowledge and experience of the nexus between protection
and promotion of human rights and the use of Information and Communication Technologies,
a subject that has not received a lot of attention until recently. This particular ICT4Gov-ODTA
project at the World Bank Institute (WBI) has now run for nearly three years, supported by
the Nordic Trust Fund and directed by WBI’s Senior Governance Specialist Boris Weber. While
most of the work of the project highlighted in this report focuses on country activities in the
intersection of governance and human rights, the report opens the space for learning at a general
and cross-cutting level, including reports from a number of country case studies in Eastern Africa,
in Central America, and globally.

The study has been led by Professor Molly Land at New York Law School and her colleagues.
Within the World Bank, Tiago Peixoto from the WBI and Hans-Otto Sano of the Nordic Trust
Fund were involved in commissioning the work. A series of consultations were held between the
World Bank staff and Professor Land and her colleagues, including other members of the writing
team — Patrick Meier, Mark Belinsky and Emily Jacobi. After a review of the draft in May 2012
by Mr. Weber, Mr. Peixoto and Mr. Sano, the final report was presented by Professor Land at a
broader World Bank team on July 17th, 2012*.

In addition to the report, I invite you to watch the lead author discuss ICT and human rights in a
video interview (bit.ly/ICT4HRintro). Also, feel free to join the conversation via Twitter at #ICT4HR.

I hope you enjoy this study.

Robert R. Hunja

Manager, Open Governance Practice

World Bank Institute

* Read a blog post about the presentation on the World Bank’s website: http://bit.ly/ICT4HRblog
This paper was authored by Molly Land, Patrick Meier, Mark Belinsky, and Emily Jacobi. Patrick Boyle, Christoph
Doellefeld, Adam Gartenberg, Meredith Hutchison, John Kelly, Joe Raffanello and Carl Zander provided excellent
research and drafting assistance. At the World Bank, this study was coordinated by Hans-Otto Sano, Tiago Peixoto
and Boris Weber, and was sponsored by:

r
OPCS Nordic Trust Fund (http://worldbank.org/nordictrustfund)

r
Open Development Technology Alliance (http://opendta.org)
r
ICT4Gov (http://ict4gov.net)
r
World Bank Institute (http://wbi.worldbank.org)

This paper is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Unported 3.0 License.
Join the conversation at #ICT4HR.

Photos: Emily Jacobi

Graphic design: Hernan Gigena

November 2012
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Executive Summary ...............................................................................................1
I.Background ........................................................................................................3
A.Social Media ................................................................................... 3
B.Mobile Phones ................................................................................ 4
II.Case Studies......................................................................................................7
Uchaguzi (Kenya)............................................................................... 7
Uwiano (Kenya) ................................................................................. 7
Map Kibera (Kenya) ............................................................................ 8
Sisi Ni Amani (“We Are Peace”) (Kenya) ................................................ 8
Voix des Kivus (DRC) .......................................................................... 8
Piga Simu (DRC) ................................................................................ 9
Amnesty International Science for Human Rights Program (Int’l) ............... 9
AAAS Remote Sensing (DRC) ............................................................... 9
ICT4GOV – South Kivu (DRC) ............................................................... 9
Educación Digna (Dominican Republic) ................................................ 10
Dominicana Contaminada (Dominican Republic).................................... 10
Medic Mobile (Int’l) ........................................................................... 10
III.ICTs and Human Rights .....................................................................................13
A.Supporting the Implementation of Rights............................................ 13
Freedom of Expression ............................................................. 13
Freedom of Association and Assembly ........................................ 14
Right to Participate in Public Affairs ............................................ 14
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights .......................................... 14
Rights of Vulnerable Populations ................................................ 15
B.Enforcing Rights ............................................................................ 16
Naming and Shaming ............................................................... 16
Organizing and Advocacy .......................................................... 16
C.Social Accountability ....................................................................... 18
IV.Human Rights Challenges..................................................................................21
A.Accuracy ...................................................................................... 21
B.Security ........................................................................................ 26
C.Inequality ...................................................................................... 29
D.Response ..................................................................................... 32
V.Recommendations .............................................................................................33
#ICT4HR NOV EMBER 2012

|ndex

Promoting and Protecting

the Right to Freedom of
Opinion and Expression

8 WWW.OPEN DTA. ORG

 I NFORM ATI O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S F O R H U M A N R I G H T S
Executive Summary
N
ew technologies have been heralded as
revolutionizing activism and government,
providing a means for citizens to engage
with others and with their government faster
and more simply than ever before. As the Special
Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of
the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression,
Frank LaRue, has explained, “the Internet is one
of the most powerful instruments of the 21st
century for increasing transparency in the conduct
of the powerful, access to information, and for
facilitating active citizen participation in building
democratic societies.”1
Considerable attention has been focused on
the opportunities presented by new information
and communication technologies for development
(“ICT4D”2) and for government (“ICT4GOV”3).
The purpose of this report is to analyze their impact
on human rights (“ICT4HR”). As Philip Alston,
the former Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial,
Summary or Arbitrary Executions, explained in a
report to the General Assembly: “New technologies
offer a great many potential solutions to some of
[the] problems [in human rights fact-finding], and
offer significant improvements in existing fact-
finding methodologies.”4 He notes, however, that
there has been “[l]ittle sustained work . . . by the
human rights community as a whole to apply
existing technologies or to study their potential uses
and problems.”5 This report aims to remedy that
gap. Using case studies largely from three countries,
Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and
the Dominican Republic, the report considers
both the opportunities and risks presented by new
technologies for human rights.
The report concludes there are benefits that
can be realized through the deployment of new
technologies in human rights projects. New
technologies offer the potential to reduce the cost
of collecting information about human rights
issues and to increase participation in human rights
advocacy efforts. Each of these possible benefits,
however, gives rise to new risks and challenges.
#ICT4HR
Although new technologies can reduce the cost of
information gathering, it can be difficult to ensure
the accuracy of the information generated, and
the associated volume can make it challenging
and expensive to identify relevant data. There is
also no guarantee that increased participation
or information will be translated into action or
concrete outcomes for the community.
The use of new technologies can also
exacerbate human rights risks. Reliance on new
technologies can replicate and even increase
existing inequalities and barriers to participation.
Given the ease of information sharing in the digital
context and the availability of tools to track and
identify users, it can be especially difficult to
|ndex
ensure participant anonymity. The involvement
of ordinary individuals in collecting information
also presents particular challenges for security,
because these individuals may lack the necessary
training or professional protocols for assessing
and taking measures to ensure security. Managing
these risks is complicated by a tension between
the approaches of human rights and technology
experts. For example, the values and modus
operandi of the technology field—a willingness
to experiment and “to fail, adopt, and iterate”6—
can be in some tension with the need to develop
considered and reasoned security protocols ahead
of time. In other worEs, while hacking is
an iterative process, security is not.
The report concludes by presenting several
recommendations designed to respond at least
in part to the human rights risks identified in the
report. The report does not purport to provide a
blueprint for all projects seeking to employ new
technologies in furtherance of human rights or
development goals. The challenges that arise in
any particular project will be context specific and
beyond the scope of this report. Rather, the report
seeks to identify, in a preliminary manner, some
of the questions that might be asked at the outset
in order to respond to concerns about accuracy,
security, and participation.
T H E W O R L D B A N K G R OU P 1
#ICT4HR NOV EMBER 2012

|ndex

Managing, Processing and

Disseminating Information
in Social Media and
by Mobile Phone

2 WWW.OPENDTA. ORG
 I NFORM ATI O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S F O R H U M A N R I GH T S
I. Background
B
roadly understood, information and
communication technologies (ICTs) are
“technologies used in the conveying,
manipulation and storage of data by electronic
means.”7 ICTs include a variety of tools, platforms,
and technologies that can be used to manage,
disseminate, and process information, and include,
among other things, the telephone, cell phones,
radio, television, email, and the Internet. ICTs
have long played a central role in the protection
of human rights. Human rights NGOs use email
to network, build coalitions, and communicate
with relevant constituencies. They use radio to
disseminate messages to far-flung constituencies.
More recent ICTs such as mobile phones and
the Internet have played a particularly important
role because they provide advantages in “speed,
cost, scope, and interactivity”8 over prior forms
of technology. The World Bank has asked us to
focus in this report on the human rights impact of
two particular developments in the area of ICTs—
social media and mobile phones.
A. Social Media
“Social media” refers to online platforms
that allow interaction between individuals and
groups.9 Much of the literature in the area of
new ICTs has focused on the emergence of social
media as an important “space” for political
organizing.10 Social media platforms facilitate the
ability to find and communicate with like-minded
individuals in several ways. First, many of these
platforms employ “content tagging,” by which
content creators or recipients add tags (essentially
digital “labels”) to content they view online. Tags
allow others to quickly find relevant information
and others with common interests. Second, social
media platforms foster the broad dissemination
of information because they encourage both
strong and weak ties—connections both within
and between groups.11 Weak ties, or connections
between groups, allow messages to be quickly
diffused outward.12 For example, even though
#ICT4HR
individuals participating in protests in Spain
following the 2004 bombing in Madrid were only
sending text messages about the protest to people
they knew, the social media connections between
these smaller groups allowed the messages to be
diffused outwards to an exponentially growing
community of interest.13 Third, individuals may
turn to social media platforms for organizing
because they are familiar with them through social
uses and because they provide networks that are
“already embedded in trusted networks of family
and friends.”14
The rise of social media networks has also
been accompanied by two important changes in
methods of production. First, ordinary individuals
are increasingly engaging in activities that used |ndex
to be the domain of professionals—journalists,
photographers, critics, and writers. Now, ordinary
citizens are posting their pictures to Flickr and
video to YouTube, blogging about their lives on
the many low-cost or free blog hosting services,
and writing encyclopedia entries on Wikipedia.
The development of open platforms that allow
individuals to post their own content, coupled
with greater access to the Internet and increasing
bandwidth, has led individuals to become (and
view themselves as) creators of, rather than
simply the recipients of, creative content.15 The
emergence of such “user-generated content” has
been facilitated by the increasing digitization of
cultural material and greater availability of tools
individuals can use to manipulate or remix that
content and post the results online.16
Second, individuals—both citizens and
professionals—are increasingly coming together to
produce cultural works and social goods without
the need for organizations. Yochai Benkler calls this
a “new modality of organizing production: radically
decentralized, collaborative, and nonproprietary;
based on sharing resources and outputs among
widely distributed, loosely connected individuals
who cooperate with each other without relying on
T H E W O R L D B A N K G R OU P 3
#ICT4HR NOV EMBER 2012
either market signals or managerial commands.”17
This new mode of production, often called “peer
production,” is a form of production undertaken by
a group of self-organized professional or amateur
volunteers.18 In other words, the revolutionary
potential of these new technological tools is not
the tools themselves but rather how people are
using them—the development of social practices
in which ordinary citizens are becoming human
rights researchers and activists, engaging with each
other and with governments, corporations and
international institutions.
B. Mobile Phones
The proliferation of mobile phones has extended
the benefits of information and communication
technologies and new modes of production far
more broadly than ever before. Historically, the
ability to use ICTs for development or human
rights has been limited by the “digital divide”
—the fact that much of the developing world
|ndex is not wired for telephone or Internet access. In
many countries, however, mobile phones are
quickly overtaking landlines as a primary mode
of connection.19 This “leapfrogging” directly to
mobile phone technology has connected remote
locations at relatively low cost. Mobile phones
operate on cellular networks, thus reaching
areas that have not yet been connected by cable
to telephone or broadband networks. (Some
mobile phones also offer access to the Internet,
either through these same cellular networks
or through a wireless connection to a server;
the second of these, however, requires a wired
infrastructure.)
4 WWW.OPENDTA. ORG
Mobile phones also differ from land lines
in three other important respects: First, they
accompany individuals wherever they go, which
means that they can be used to collect real-time,
on the ground information. Second, they can be
linked to a specific geographic location via GPS
technology, which can facilitate the automatic
classification and management of incoming
content. Third, many mobile phones today have
still and video cameras built into them, which
allows the holders of these phones to capture still
photos and video. Fourth, even the most basic
mobile phones can send text or SMS messages
in addition to voice transmission, allowing
individuals to send brief snippets of information
without the need for a phone call. Five, they
lack basic security precautions unless specifically
added. Unauthorized programs and people can
often freely access personal information, including
contacts, that can be sensitive in a human rights
context.
The broad dissemination of mobile phones
has been accompanied by the emergence of
new methods for collecting information such
as crowdsourcing. Jeff Howe coined the term
“crowdsourcing” in 2006, defining it as “the act of
taking a job traditionally performed by a designated
agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to
an undefined, generally large group of people in
the form of an open call.”20 Crowdsourcing can
be used to collect and aggregate information,
which services a variety of functions; among
other things, the responses of a group can take
advantage of latent or unrecognized knowledge
and can eliminate the idiosyncratic aspects of an
individual’s particular decision-making process.21
I NFORM ATI O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S F O R H U M A N R I GH T S #ICT4HR

|ndex

T H E W O R L D B A N K G R OU P 5
#ICT4HR NOV EMBER 2012

|ndex

Democratic Republic of Congo,

Dominican Republic, and Kenya

6 WWW.OPENDTA. ORG
 I NFORM ATI O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S F O R H U M A N R I GH T S
II. Case Studies
T
his report draws its conclusions and
recommendations from case studies
primarily drawn from three country
contexts: the Democratic Republic of Congo, the
Dominican Republic, and Kenya. In consultation
with the World Bank, the research team chose to
focus on these three countries in order to ensure a
manageable scope for the report and facilitate more
in-depth analysis while still providing some diversity
in terms of geography, levels of technological and
economic development, and types of human rights
issues. Each of the projects reviewed is summarized
briefly below. Additional discussion of each project
is provided throughout the report to illustrate
and provide support for specific conclusions and
recommendations.
The team and the World Bank chose the
particular projects profiled in this report as projects
that were relatively well documented and which
illustrated a range of challenges and innovations.
The research methodology was qualitative. In the
fall of 2011, the team engaged in background and
secondary source research, conducted interviews
with key informants via phone and email, and wrote
case studies of each of the projects. In the spring and
early summer of 2012, the team conducted follow
up key informant phone and email interviews and
drafted the report.
The limitations of this report follow from the
above choices. The cases are illustrative but not
representative. Interviews were conducted with one
key informant for each project; no interviews were
conducted with participants. The cases were also not
initially selected using a human rights framework.
As a result, some rights were not featured in the
initial set of case studies, including economic, social
and cultural rights and voting rights. The team
used secondary literature to add profiles of selected
projects in the area of economic, social and cultural
rights, but this research was very limited and did
not include interviews. Due to time constraints, the
research team also decided to exclude the issues of
e-voting, e-government, mobile banking, and open
data, which have been well documented by others.
#ICT4HR
The report also excluded consideration of the use
of information collected via new technologies
and methodologies in legal proceedings. With the
exception of participatory budgeting, the report
also does not focus on e-governance initiatives.
Uchaguzi (Kenya)
Uchaguzi was designed to allow “citizens and
civil society to report on electoral offenses such
as intimidation, hate speech, vote buying, electoral
offenses, misinformation, as well as alert authorities
to raising tensions and acts of violence” during
Kenya’s 2010 Constitutional Referendum.22
Uchaguzi was built on the Ushahidi platform23 and
relied on crowdsourcing via SMS to map incidents
|ndex
of electoral disruption. The project established
an SMS short code that individuals could use to
send reports via mobile phones and also fielded
reports through the Internet and Twitter.24 It also
sent monitors into the field to observe and send
back messages via SMS. Uchaguzi mapped these
data points and made the information and maps
available online. They also fed reports to local
authorities who were able to respond to specific
incidents of electoral irregularities.25
Uwiano (Kenya)
Uwiano used SMS messaging to collect citizen
reports about problems during Kenya’s 2010
Constitutional Referendum.26 Uwiano received
over 20,000 SMS messages in the weeks and days
leading up to the referendum, and it tracked and
responded to 122 incidents.27 Uwiano collected
messages using both volunteers and trusted
monitors.28 The project focused on reports of
violence, rather than election irregularities as a
whole.29 Although information about incidents
was shared with authorities, “[u]nless granted
permission from those submitting the information,
identities were not provided to the responders,
not even law enforcement.”30 The project was run
by a partnership between the government, NGOs,
and international development agencies.31
T H E W O R L D B A N K G R OU P 7
#ICT4HR NOV EMBER 2012
Map Kibera (Kenya)
Map Kibera is a participatory community
mapping project in Kibera, one of the world’s largest
slums, in Nairobi, Kenya. The project began as an
effort to empower residents of Kibera to map their
own community and to see themselves as valuable
contributors and holders of important information
about their community.32 In its initial phase, Map
Kibera recruited a group of thirteen volunteers,
provided them with training on GPS devices, and
sent them into the field to collect information
about “points of interest.” The volunteers then
contributed this data to Open Street Map (OSM),
a free and open-source mapping project that relies
on mapping contributions from volunteers,33 by
uploading GPS coordinates and descriptions to the
online OSM map.34 Realizing it was difficult for
Kibera residents to access the map online, the team
also made printouts of the map and distributed
them throughout the community.35 In later phases,
the mapping team began issue-specific mapping—
|ndex mapping points of interest related to issues such
as health, security, education, and water and
sanitation.36 Map Kibera also expanded to include
a geo-located citizen journalism project, Voice
of Kibera, as well as a collaborative community
video news channel, Kibera News Network.37
Map Kibera has now started work in Mathare and
Mukuru slums.38
Sisi Ni Amani (“We Are Peace”) (Kenya)
SNA-K seeks to strengthen networks between
local peace leaders as a way to prevent and de-
escalate violence.39 SNA-K employs SMS messaging
to provide outlets for positive civic engagement in
marginalized communities and to monitor and
respond to signs of conflict. SNA-K works with
local chapters, comprised of local peace leaders,
to conduct a local conflict analysis and to plan
activities to prevent and de-escalate conflict in their
communities. Each chapter gets a phone number
to which community members can subscribe and
then builds a database of subscribers in their
community with whom they can communicate
through an SMS platform.40 SNA-K is also
partnering with PopTech and partners on a project
called PeaceTXT. The purpose of PeaceTXT is
to leverage mobile messaging (SMS) to catalyze
8 WWW.OPENDTA. ORG
behavior change for the prevention of violent
conflict. Mobile messaging has proven particularly
effective in catalyzing behavior change vis-a-vis
public health issues. PeaceTXT seeks to replicate
this success within the context of peace and
conflict issues. Violence is often grounded in the
stories and narratives that people tell themselves
and the emotions that these stories generate.
Narratives shape identity and the social construct
of reality—we interpret our lives through stories.
These have the power to transform relationships
and communities. PeaceTXT seeks to catalyze
behavior change vis-a-vis issues of violence at the
community level by amplifying new narratives
via SMS. To this end, customized SMS broadcast
messages are developed in partnership with local
partners in Kenya to change the way people
think and react to highly contentious issues in the
respective regions.41
Voix des Kivus (DRC)
Voix des Kivus was a monitoring and evaluation
(M&E) project funded by USAID and run by a
group of researchers from the Center for the Study
of Development Strategies at Columbia University
to evaluate the feasibility of using a decentralized
data collection system to generate representative
information about events in areas of the DRC that
were inaccessible because of the ongoing conflict.42
The project leaders developed the concept of
“crowdseeding” and applied this methodology
to collect conflict event-data in the Kivus.43 The
project used random sampling to select eighteen
villages in South Kivu and provided people in
those villages with the ability to post accounts
of events that affected their daily lives, such as
disease outbreaks or attacks from rebel groups.44
Three individuals in each village were provided
with a cell phone they could use to send text
messages about these events. Phoneholders were
asked to act as the representatives of their villages
and to send information about anything they felt
comfortable reporting.45 The project used the
FrontlineSMS platform to collate this information.
In January 2010, Voix des Kivus introduced
additional functionality that sent prices of local
goods to phone holders and allowed those sending
SMS messages to code the messages according to
sensitivity.46 Although the project was initially
 I NFORM ATI O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S F O R H U M A N R I GH T S
designed only to collect information for research
purposes, the research team felt an obligation to
try to share information with those who could
use it.47 The team developed a system by which
data without village identifiers was made available
online as PDF bulletins and more detailed data was
made available (with village consent) on a weekly
basis to organizations in a position to respond to
appeals.48 The system allowed internal validation
and had a very high usage rate.49
Piga Simu (DRC)
Piga Simu, which means “call” or “talk on
the phone” in Kiswahaili, is a project run by the
DRC advocacy group Si Jeunesse Savait (SJS). SJS
uses the voice-based communications platform
Freedom Fone50 to provide an interactive menu
system with pre-recorded information about
sexual assault and resources. Interested parties
can call to learn more about their rights, how to
file court claims, and health information.51 SJS
developed the project to provide women with a
means for accessing information anonymously,
without risking stigma. SJS also provides a “call
back” function that allows women to leave their
information and receive a call back from a trained
specialist and in a language they prefer.52 Because of
the risks faced by women’s human rights defenders,
SJS has also created functionality to link women’s
human rights defenders with organizations who
might provide them with support.53
Amnesty International Science for Human
Rights Program (International)
The Science for Human Rights (SHR) project at
Amnesty International (AI) leverages technological
and scientific progress for human rights advocacy and
campaigning.54 More specifically, SHR uses geospatial
technologies like satellite imagery for human rights
monitoring and conflict prevention. Satellite imagery
enables “access to previously inaccessible conflict
zones, provide compelling visual evidence and
present information in a new and engaging way, all
of which assists our activists in their campaigning
efforts.”55 The team at SHR has used satellite imagery
to document human rights violations in dozens of
conflicts around the world including Chad, Darfur,
Kyrgyzstan, North Korea and Sri Lanka. In 2011,
SHR partnered with the Standby Volunteer Task
#ICT4HR
Force (SBTF) to crowdsource the analysis of satellite
imagery for three key cities in Syria to identify
and corroborate further evidence of human rights
violations in the country.56
AAAS Remote Sensing (DRC)
The American Association for the Advancement
of Science’s (AAAS) Geospatial Technologies and
Human Rights Program uses tools such as satellite
images, geographic information systems (GIS), and
global positioning systems (GPS) to map and analyze
areas where human rights abuses are alleged to have
occurred.57 Geospatial tools can provide information
about human rights violations in remote, isolated
areas for which information is otherwise unavailable.
Remote sensing using geospatial technologies can
also be used to corroborate on-the-ground reporting
of conflicts and natural disasters affecting human
rights. In May 2009, Human Rights Watch asked
AAAS to use satellite images to document and
corroborate violence targeting civilians in the area of
Busurungi in the DRC. AAAS acquired and analyzed |ndex
satellite imagery of 100 square kilometers in the
area and was able to conclude that 1,494 structures
had been destroyed. Satellite imagery showing the
destruction of a village some time between August
31 and September 22 also indicated recent violence.58
ICT4GOV – South Kivu (DRC)
The ICT4GOV project in South Kivu in the
DRC employs SMS messaging as part of its
participatory budgeting work. The project is aimed
at “facilitate[ing] decentralization by empowering
stakeholders to participate in the process of
participatory budgeting through the use of ICT.”59
The project uses SMS messages in four ways: to
communicate information to participants, collect
votes from those who are not present about their
preferences and priorities for public projects, report
back on projects that were undertaken, and engage
in monitoring and evaluation of ongoing projects.60
Monitoring is accomplished through the use of
observers: Civil society organizations monitor and
report on the projects, and this information is then
disseminated to the community via SMS.61 The
project is also in the process of building an automated
system that will collect predefined information via
SMS about the status of public works projects and
make this information available on a website.62
T H E W O R L D B A N K G R OU P 9
#ICT4HR NOV EMBER 2012
Educación Digna (Dominican Republic)
Educación Digna is a coalition comprised of 199
different organizations seeking to pressure the
government to enforce the General Education
Law 66-97, which requires that 4% of GDP in
the national budget be allocated to education. The
coalition encourages citizen involvement through
its website and via social media (e.g., Facebook,
Twitter, YouTube) and also maintains a database of
members and legislators.63 The coalition’s website,
hosted by Wordpress, provides information about
events and links to social media websites.64 The
website also contains several forums where users
can post comments about experiences, show
support, share poetry, and make suggestions.65
Dominicana Contaminada (Dominican Republic)
Dominicana Contaminada is a campaign focused
on opposition to illegal gold mining in the Dominican
Republic and its harmful environmental effects.
|ndex The Dominicana Contaminada blog provides
information about upcoming court processes
related to the mining as well as reports about past
and upcoming marches and the activities of the
mining company, Barrick Gold.66 The campaign
has used viral dissemination of video to document
and communicate the human rights impact of the
illegal mining.67 “Mirrors for Gold,” for example,
10 WWW.OPENDTA. ORG
is a documentary by Jose Maria Cabral that was
disseminated through the Dominicana Contaminada
blog as well as sites such as YouTube68 and Vimeo.69
The campaign also leveraged Dropbox and BBM to
disseminate media content in a cost-effective manner.
Medic Mobile (International)
Medic Mobile provides a set of open-source
software tools that facilitate the collection
and delivery of health care information via
mobile phone. In low-resource settings, a lack
of infrastructure and low doctor-patient ratios
can impede the delivery of health services.70
Community health care workers help address that
gap, but workers must often travel great distances
to reach isolated patients.71 Medic Mobile develops
and extends existing mobile phone platforms to
support community health workers in a variety
of ways, including “community health worker
coordination and management, community
mobilization for vaccination and satellite clinics,
logistics and supply chain management, referrals,
routine data collection, and mapping of health
services.”72 In addition, the team is developing
apps for SIM-cards rather than just for smart
phones. Medic Mobile now works with over thirty
partners in fifteen different countries.73
I NFORM ATI O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S F O R H U M A N R I GH T S #ICT4HR

|ndex

T H E W O R L D B A N K G R OU P 11
#ICT4HR NOV EMBER 2012

|ndex

An Important Vehicle
for Freedom of Expression

12 WWW.OPENDTA. ORG
 I NFORM ATI O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S F O R H U M A N R I GH T S
III. ICTs and Human Rights
I
nternational human rights are protected by both
customary international law and human rights
treaties. The two primary human rights treaties
are the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International
Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights
(ICESCR).74 These treaties are complemented by
seven additional issue-specific treaties.75 Although
contained in two different treaties, the rights
protected under the ICCPR and the ICESCR are
interrelated, interdependent, and indivisible.76
Social media and mobile phones can play an
important role in the protection of individual
human rights. First, these ICTs can support the
implementation of rights. For example, individuals
can express themselves or engage in the political
life of the community via social media or mobile
phones. Social media and mobile phones can
also be used to provide information, such as
information about health care, that is necessary
for the fulfillment of rights, such as the right to
health.77 Second, ICTs can help enforce rights. The
can be used, for example, to collect information
needed to put pressure on duty-bearers to change
their behavior, assess local needs, evaluate
compliance. They can also provide platforms for
organizing and advocacy. Third, new technologies
can also be used to promote social accountability.
Social accountability is an over-arching concept
that “refers to the broad range of actions and
mechanisms beyond voting that citizens can use
to hold the state to account, as well as actions on
the part of government, civil society, media and
other societal actors that promote or facilitate
these efforts.”78
A. Supporting the Implementation
of Rights
Freedom of Expression
The broad dissemination of the means for
communication, such as mobile phones, coupled
with systems designed to capture, preserve, and
#ICT4HR
organize information submitted through those
means, provides an important vehicle for freedom
of expression. Freedom of expression is protected
under Article 19 of the ICCPR. Article 19(2) of
the ICCPR provides that “Everyone shall have
the right to freedom of expression; this right
shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of
frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in
the form of art, or through any other media of his
choice.”79 Extending the reach of new technologies
via mobile phones and providing ways to organize
that information enables individuals to impart
information and ideas of all kinds—and to do so
across vast frontiers.
|ndex
Voix des Kivus illustrates the role new
technologies can play in the fulfillment of the right
to impart ideas and information across frontiers.
Although created to gather information about
atrocities in remote areas of the DRC, the project
has also proven itself to be an important vehicle
for expression: “For participating communities, it
provides a system for creating histories, archiving
testimonies, and communicating with the rest of
the world.”80 Indeed, the Voix des Kivus project
indicates that the expressive capacity of new
technologies appears to be a strong motivation for
participation, even apart from project outcomes.
Although the research team shared information
with partner organizations, this information was
not acted upon. The team asked participants why
they continued to share information, despite this
lack of response. Participants responded that they
wanted to keep open the possibility of a response
and because, in the words of one, “for the first
time, we’re being put on the map.”81
Citizen journalism can also give effect to
Article 19’s requirement that “everyone” have
the right to express ideas and information—not
just professional journalists. Voice of Kibera gives
residents of Kibera the opportunity to publish news
and information about their community.82 Kibera
News Network is a collaborative community video
T H E W O R L D B A N K G R OU P 13
#ICT4HR NOV EMBER 2012
news channel. A dedicated group of participants
take video of events within Kibera and upload
the videos to YouTube.83 Both of these projects
enable ordinary community members to express
themselves about happenings in their community.
New technologies also help fulfill individuals’
ability to seek and receive information, both
of which are protected under Article 19 of the
ICCPR.84 For example, mobile phones allow
individuals to access information they would
otherwise not have been able to access because of
their remote location or the lack of infrastructure
in low-resource contexts. Piga Simu and Voix des
Kivus, for example, push relevant information to
recipients—about sexual violence and the prices
of local goods, respectively. Because of the lack of
infrastructure in the DRC, it would be otherwise
difficult for individuals to obtain this information.
Freedom of Association and Assembly
|ndex
Social media and other new technologies also
provide a vehicle for the right to freedom of association.
Article 22(1) of the ICCPR provides, “Everyone shall
have the right to freedom of association with others
. . . .”85 Social media platforms provide a space for
individuals to find and connect—to associate—with
others. Indeed, in early 2011, responding to Egypt’s
decision in late January of that year to shut down the
Internet, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered
a speech in which she called the Internet “the public
space of the 21st century – the world’s town square,
classroom, marketplace, coffeehouse, and nightclub.”86
The case studies also reflect the importance of social
media for freedom of association. For example, the
movement to oppose illegal mining in the Dominican
Republic used the Contaminada Dominicana blog
and social media platforms to connect with others
interested in this issue.
Social media platforms also facilitate the right to
freedom of assembly in the offline world. Article 21
provides that “[t]he right of peaceful assembly shall
be recognized.”87 Educación Digna, for example,
uses its website and social media platforms to
build and communicate with its constituency and
organize protests, including “Yellow Monday,” a
day of country-wide flash mobs wearing yellow and
carrying yellow umbrellas.88
14 WWW.OPENDTA. ORG
Right to Participate in Public Affairs
New technologies also provide the means for
realizing the right to “take part in the conduct of
public affairs,” a right protected under Article 25
of the ICCPR. Article 25(a) of the ICCPR provides
that “[e]very citizen shall have the right and the
opportunity . . . [t]o take part in the conduct of
public affairs, directly or through freely chosen
representatives.”89 Mobile phones and social media
can provide vehicles through which individuals can
participate directly in government and the conduct
of public affairs. The ICT4GOV project in South
Kivu, for example, uses SMS messaging to empower
stakeholders to take part in the participatory
budgeting process. Through SMS messages,
individuals receive messages about the process, vote
on priorities for public funding, and learn about the
progress of public works projects.
New technologies can also foster the ability to
participate in public affairs by generating valuable
information that can provide political leverage. Map
Kibera, for example, facilitated the involvement of
Kibera residents in local political processes by giving
them a means for generating information that was
valuable to other groups.90 New technologies can
help disseminate information about the political
process, educate voters, and provide a vehicle for
political conversation. For example, Sisi Ni Amani
conducted civic education and voter education in a
Nairobi constituency in connection with the election
of a new Member of Parliament and was able to
respond with SMS messages to moderate tensions
that arose with the postponement of the election.91
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Access to information is critical for the protection
of many rights, such as rights to health, education,
and an adequate standard of living. ICTs that enable
easier and faster exchange of information play an
important role in securing these rights. Mobile
phones, for example, help improve the delivery of
health information, a critical determinant of the
right to health. Article 12 of the ICESCR protects
“the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the
highest attainable standard of physical and mental
health” and requires that states create “conditions
which would assure to all medical service and
medical attention in the event of sickness.”92
 I NFORM ATI O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S F O R H U M A N R I GH T S
Health information is an essential determinant
of the human right to health. The Committee on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR
Committee), the international body charged with
monitoring state compliance with the ICESCR,93
has made clear that the right to health extends “not
only to timely and appropriate health care but also
to the underlying determinants of health, such as . . .
access to health-related education and information,
including on sexual and reproductive health.”94
Mobile technology is helping to deliver health
information in a variety of ways. Medic Mobile
is using text messaging to help community health
workers communicate with clinics and doctors. For
example, Medic Mobile technology has been used
in Malawi to track tuberculosis symptoms, report
about patient adherence with drug regimes, send
appointment reminders, send alerts about medical
emergencies, and consult with physicians.95 Medic
Mobile and other companies are also developing
technology that can be used to send pictures of
blood samples over cell phones by MMS messaging
(Multimedia Messaging Service) for diagnosis.96
New technologies are also being used to collect and
organize medical records in low-resource settings.97
Mobile health or “mHealth” technologies have
been developed for almost every type of traditional
health care including prevention, diagnosis,
treatment, prenatal care, outbreak mapping, and a
number of administrative needs.98
Mobile technologies are also being used to deliver
education. Article 13(1) of the ICESCR provides that
“States Parties to the present Covenant recognize
the right of everyone to education.”99 Both mobile
phones and social media can be deployed to facilitate
the right to education. Nokia Mobile Learning for
Mathematics (Nokia Momaths), for example, is an
“educational intervention using mobile telephones”
first deployed in South Africa.100 A partnership
between Nokia, several private interests, and a
number of South African governmental agencies,
Momaths initially ran as a pilot to explore the
efficacy of using mobile technology to “support
learning of Grade 10 mathematics.”101 The pilot
had two components, “interactive mathematics
learning materials using a mobile delivery platform
combined with a social media application for peer-
to-peer support.”102 Through the mobile platform,
teachers can provide additional exercises and
#ICT4HR
“keep track of learners who are using the service
and how they are doing with the exercises.”103
Learners can use the service to obtain additional
practice and “compare their progress with other
learners in their class, province or country.”104
The program has since been expanded to more
schools and learners in South Africa and has been
deployed in Finland.
The acquisition of technical or vocational skills
can also be a secondary effect of projects aimed
at fulfilling other rights. Under Article 13(2),
states are obligated to make secondary education,
“including technical and vocational secondary
education,” both available and accessible to all
“by every appropriate means.”105 States are also
obligated to encourage or intensify fundamental
education “as far as possible for those persons
who have not received or completed the whole
period of their primary education.”106 One of the
goals of MapKibera, for example, was to provide
participants with computer literacy skills that they
could use to obtain further opportunities.107 |ndex
New technologies can also play a role in
fulfilling the right to an adequate standard of
living. Article 11 of the ICESCR recognizes the
“right of everyone to an adequate standard of
living for himself and his family.”108 Dissemination
of knowledge related to food prices and markets,
for example, can help farmers obtain better prices
for their crops and thus augment their ability
to maintain an adequate standard of living for
themselves and their families. Mobile technologies
are currently being employed in a variety of
places to help farmers with crop prices. Voix des
Kivus, for example, phone holders can be sent
prices of local goods upon request.109 DAI has a
project in Afghanistan in which farmers can send
in questions about commodities and markets and
receive phone calls and texts in return with market
prices and other information.110
Rights of Vulnerable Populations
New technologies can help enable the effective
exercise of the rights of vulnerable populations
such as women and individuals in rural areas. Piga
Simu, for example, provides recorded messages
about sexual violence resources to individuals who
T H E W O R L D B A N K G R OU P 15
#ICT4HR NOV EMBER 2012
would otherwise have to walk days to obtain that
information from a hospital. The use of technology
to reach remote areas—such as mobile phones and
remote sensing in the DRC—generates information
about human rights abuses against rural and
isolated populations that can empower them to
protect their own rights and support efforts to hold
governments accountable.
Assuming security precautions are in place,
technology can also enable greater anonymity, which
can be important in protecting the rights of women
and other vulnerable groups. SJS chose Freedom
Fone to provide information about sexual violence
because it allowed callers to be anonymous. Women
didn’t want to talk about violence with people who
knew them, since it was associated with stigma.111
Providing a way for women to access information
without revealing their identities helped overcome
what is otherwise a significant barrier to access
information about sexual violence.
|ndex B. Enforcing Rights
Social media and mobile phones can also
play an important role in enforcing rights. States
have an obligation to respect and ensure the
rights protected by the ICCPR and to respect,
protect, and fulfill the rights protected under the
ICESCR.112 This means that states must not only
refrain from violating rights themselves but also
protect populations and groups from violation
of their rights by third parties,113 and “adopt
legislative, judicial, administrative, educative and
other appropriate measures in order to fulfil their
legal obligations.”114
Human rights obligations can also operate
indirectly on private actors such as corporations.
Although states are the primary actors under
international law, states are obligated to protect
individuals from violations of their rights by third
parties.115 In addition, the United Nations Secretary
General’s Special Representative for Business and
Human Rights, John Ruggie, recommends that
corporations engage in human rights due diligence
to evaluate and minimize the human rights impact
of their activities.116
16 WWW.OPENDTA. ORG
Naming and Shaming
One of the most well-established mechanisms for
enforcing human rights is “naming and shaming,”
the process of gathering information about a duty-
bearer’s human rights record and publicizing that
information in an effort to pressure or shame the
duty-bearer into changing its conduct.117 Given
the absence of enforcement structures on the
international level, applying pressure by publicizing
abuses is one of the most important tools available
to human rights organizations.
Historically, human rights organizations
employed researchers in the field to gather
information about human rights violations. New
technologies aid in that effort by providing a fast
and cost-effective means for gathering a significant
amount of information, including from places
that may be otherwise inaccessible.118 Voix des
Kivu and the AAAS’s remote sensing project in the
DRC both were able to collect information from
regions that were inaccessible because of ongoing
conflict. Information is also collected in real-time,
allowing faster response times. Uchaguzi’s system,
for example, enabled rapid communication and
response, vastly speeding up reporting that would
have otherwise required days or weeks to transmit
via traditional methods.119 Further, information can
be collected from a much wider geographic area
and more diverse sources than would be possible
employing traditional methods.120 In these ways,
mobile phones and techniques like crowdsourcing
can significantly reduce the cost of information
gathering.121 The information that is collected can
then be used to “name and shame” or otherwise put
pressure on governments to improve their human
rights records. Human Rights Watch, for example,
used the AAAS’s conclusions about the destruction
of structures near Busurungi of the DRC to engage
in advocacy to protect civilians in the region.122
Organizing and Advocacy
New technologies also augment enforcement
efforts by providing additional channels through
which individuals can organize and engage in
human rights advocacy. Although the record of
 I NFORM ATI O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S F O R H U M A N R I GH T S
social media tools in facilitating political change has
been mixed and empirical evidence lacking, what is
clear is that these tools are being used for political
organizing.123 Social media provide a channel for
communicating with partners and the public at large,
raising awareness about and generating support for
a movement.124 Social media platforms can provide
convenience, familiarity, and ease of dissemination.
The Education Digna campaign, for example, chose
to use social media for its work because those were
the communication channels used by its audience.125
The Contaminada Dominicana project, for example,
disseminated links to the “Mirrors for Gold” video
through social media sites because individuals could
access the video on their own time and spread the
link to others.126 Networks also facilitate connections
between local and international groups.127 Finally,
the availability of video and camera functionality on
many smart phones means that witnesses can capture
images of violations, which can spread on social
networks and become a rallying point for a cause.128
Networks and social media also enable wider
participation in human rights initiatives. The broad
dissemination of the means to capture and share
information about what is happening on the ground
makes everyone a potential human rights researcher.
As one human rights organization observes,
[N]ew technologies are challenging long-
held assumptions about how human rights
documentation and advocacy functions and who
does it. More and more people, including many who
might not see themselves as human rights activists,
are now using video and social media to create,
share and organize around issues they care about.129
Networks and social media also make possible
broad participation. It is easier than ever before
for ordinary individuals to support human rights
advocacy campaigns by clicking a button to sign
a petition or sending a text to donate. At the
same time, there are questions about what the
broad availability of such “low-cost” activism,
or “clicktivism,”130 contributes to human rights
advocacy or other social movement efforts. On
the one hand, low-cost activism enables those who
do not want to or cannot become deeply involved
#ICT4HR
to play a part and reduces the cognitive distance
between ordinary individuals and human rights
work.131 On the other, the broad participation
enabled by social media does not seem to foster
the kind of deep political activism needed to
achieve social change.132 Some combination of
strong and weak ties online, coupled with strong
ties in the offline context, may help provide both
broad mobilization and deep participation.133
Commentators have also disagreed about
the extent to which the lack of hierarchy that
characterizes social media networks fosters or
undermines efforts to achieve social change. Some
argue that social change requires centralization
and clear leadership structures.134 Others argue
that social media is valuable precisely because it
enables organization without hierarchy,135 and that
leaderless revolutions are stronger because they
are harder to target.136 On this issue, as well, the
truth likely lies somewhere between. As Professor
Sarah Joseph argues, “While loose networks may
play a key role in forcing dramatic and profound |ndex
political change, more organized hierarchies are
needed to anchor that change . . . .”137
New information technologies also help foster
individuals’ awareness of themselves as rights
holders, a critical precondition to the effective
exercise of rights. Participants in Voix des Kivus,
for example, felt that the ability to share their
stories with the world gave them a “voice.”138
Because new technologies provide ordinary
individuals with the ability to collect information
themselves, without relying on intermediaries, it
can serve to strengthen their sense of autonomy and
empowerment. Autonomy and empowerment are
critical for human rights enforcement because these
feelings make it more likely that individuals will
act to protect themselves and demand protection
of their rights vis-à-vis duty bearers such as their
governments. Participants may even be empowered
to get involved in their communities in other ways.
For the organizers of the Map Kibera project,
for example, one of the unexpected results of the
project was an inspired sense of commitment and
volunteerism from Kibera residents to continually
maintain and update the mapping project.139
T H E W O R L D B A N K G R OU P 17
#ICT4HR NOV EMBER 2012
It is difficult to reach conclusions about
whether social media is “effective” in fostering
activism and social change. In part, this is because
there is no single definition or measure of success.
Further, because each context in which activism
occurs is different, it can be difficult to developed
generalized theories. Finally, it may not be possible
to establish causation.140 As a result, a definitive
answer to the question about the relationship
between social media and social change is not
possible. What is possible, however, are more
empirical studies about the role of social media
in particular situations, such as Professor Joseph’s
study of the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, that
focus on the advantages and disadvantages of
using social media in that context.141 Because of
its structure as a survey of several projects over
three countries, this study was not able to delve
deeply enough into any one case study to reach
conclusions of this nature.
|ndex C. Social Accountability
New technologies are also important in
promoting social accountability. Although social
accountability can include any method by which
citizens are involved in holding governments
accountable,142 recent initiatives emphasize citizen
engagement, particularly through the “expanded
use of participatory data collection and analysis
tools.”143 Social accountability mechanisms can
promote the protection of individual rights,
particularly the right to participate in political life,
and play an important role in enforcing rights.
18 WWW.OPENDTA. ORG
Social accountability and rights-based approaches
are complementary and overlapping. The two intersect
precisely at those points at which governments,
recognizing their obligations to respect, protect, and
ensure the rights of their citizens, involve citizens in
the processes by which this is accomplished. While
some approaches to human rights enforcement seek
to pressure governments to comply with international
obligations, the new generation of social accountability
approaches envision a more collaborative role, one in
which citizens are directly involved in oversight of
the government’s efforts to respect, protect, and fulfill
rights. Among other things, social accountability
projects may help the government understand the
nature of ongoing human rights violations or provide
citizens with more opportunities to put pressure on
local officials.
New technologies can foster social accountability
and thus promote positive human rights outcomes
by reducing the time needed to gather, organize and
transmit to appropriate government responders
the information that they need to protect rights.
Uwiano, for example, was a collaboration between
government agencies, non-profits and international
development organizations that relied on volunteers
and trusted reporters to generate information about
violence that could be used by first responders,
including the police. The information that was
generated via SMS messages was filtered and
analyzed and provided to the authorities. In one
instance, for example, the police set up a buffer
zone at a rally after receiving information that a
group was going to try to disrupt the event.144
I NFORM ATI O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S F O R H U M A N R I GH T S #ICT4HR

|ndex

T H E W O R L D B A N K G R OU P 19
#ICT4HR NOV EMBER 2012

|ndex

Accuracy
Security
Inequality
Response

20 WWW.OPENDTA. ORG
 I NFORM ATI O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S F O R H U M A N R I GH T S
IV. Human Rights Challenges
A
lthough they offer considerable opportu-
nities for human rights advocacy, these
new technologies also present important
challenges. The very features of social media
and mobile phones, as well as new techniques of
collecting information such as crowdsourcing, that
make them so valuable, also engender significant
risks. For example, one of the strengths of
crowdsourcing via mobile phones is that anyone
can now be a human rights researcher, gathering
information in real time and sharing it with the
world. On the other hand, that is precisely one
of its greatest risks—anyone can try to be a
human rights researcher and attempt to engage
in documentation without the training, protocols
or support that researchers normally have. This
section evaluates some of the challenges that new
technologies pose for human rights advocacy.
A. Accuracy
Accurate information is critical in human rights
advocacy. Although accuracy is clearly important
in the development and humanitarian contexts,
as well, accuracy often plays a different role with
respect to human rights. Accurate information is
important because it provides the “currency” for
enforcement efforts. The efficacy of naming and
shaming as an enforcement technique depends
critically on the quality of the information
gathered. Unless human rights reports are accurate,
they will be vulnerable to attack by the states they
target and will be ineffective in pressuring states
to change their behavior.145 Accurate reporting is
also important in mobilizing the press and public
opinion, since the public is more likely to support
information it finds legitimate and credible.146
Information submitted by ordinary citizens
can be particularly vulnerable to errors. The
information may be mistaken, wrong, exaggerated,
or even intentionally misleading or distorted. Once
reported, inaccurate information can be picked up
by other sources, vaulting faulty information to the
headlines in an echo-chamber effect. Verification
#ICT4HR
is particularly difficult when the sources are
anonymous, since recipients cannot evaluate the
credentials of the reporter. (And even if provided,
such credentials may not be accurate.) In many
instances, the government itself may be the source
of misinformation online. During the recent Syrian
conflict, for example, the government spread false
information over Twitter.147
Moreover, just as social media makes it easier to
disseminate the good information, it also makes it
easier to disseminate the bad. As Joshua Goldstein
and Juliana Rotich observed in the context of the
2008 Kenyan elections, “mobile phones made
hateful and violent messages easier and cheaper to
transmit.”148 New technologies can be a “catalyst
|ndex
to both predatory behavior such as ethnic-based
mob violence and to civic behavior such as citizen
journalism and human rights campaigns.”149
Because of the risk of politicization, accuracy
may be particularly difficult to ensure in projects
that seek to evaluate the performance of duty-
bearers. Map Kibera, for example, had initially
wanted to crowdsource reports on the effectiveness
of local development projects in Kibera. Early on,
however, they realized that these reports would
be highly politicized and in fact could result in
liability for the organization.150 Such reporting
could also alienate local NGOs, who provide
important channels of communication to local
constituencies.151 When it implements the portion
of the project aimed at soliciting information
about the status of public works projects by SMS,
the ICT4GOV project in South Kivu plans to try
to minimize the risk of politicization by ensuring
that the questions are purely factual.152
Even if accurate, information might also be
taken out of context. Human rights investigators
and journalists are trained to understand the
importance of context—that information has
relevance and meaning in part because of the
context in which it occurs. Citizen reporters may
not necessarily report the full context that would
T H E W O R L D B A N K G R OU P 21
#ICT4HR NOV EMBER 2012
be necessary to evaluate the information provided.
Further, social media and digitization make it
extremely easy to take material out of context,
remix it with other images, and redistribute:
“Appropriating existing content (music/images/
videos) and mixing it with fresh content in new
ways is a cheap, effective, and popular form of
political expression. However, remixing often relies
on de-contextualizing footage that has a specific
human rights purpose.”153
Despite these limitations, the case studies illustrate
a variety of approaches for verifying and providing
context for crowdsourced information. Broadly,
these approaches seek to validate information by
authenticating the data itself or by establishing trust
in the reporter. Ideally, the best verification systems
would do both and a corpus of strategies to verify
crowdsourced information, called “information
forensics,” is becoming increasingly available.154
Bounded crowdsourcing or “community
|ndex sourcing,” relies on reporting not from the general
public but from a growing network of trusted
reporters.155 This methodology is similar to
“snowball” sampling in survey research. Another
approach is “crowdseeding” which extends the
concept of bounded crowdsourcing to produce a
statistically representative sample. Crowdseeding
provides three advantages: First, it presents the
possibility of collecting more information from
more participants. With crowdsourcing, only those
who are both informed and have the resources to
take part will participate. Crowdseeding addresses
this deficiency by equipping particular reporters
with the resources to take part and ensuring that
the entire community knows they can contribute
information through these reporters. Second,
crowdseeding provides the opportunity to select
information from a random sample (as opposed
to whoever participates, which is the case with
crowdsourcing). Third, crowdseeding can improve
the quality of the data since it increases the
reporter’s incentive to be honest and minimizes the
risk of random misinformation.156
Voix des Kivus employed this approach by using
random sampling techniques to select villages and
then asking three individuals in each village to
serve as reporters.157 Trust can be established either
by individual relationships with the reporters, as
22 WWW.OPENDTA. ORG
was the case in Voix des Kivus, or by gathering
information about the reporter through his or her
online identity.158 Uchaguzi and Uwiano also relied
on information from trusted reporters, in addition
to information from the crowd.159 Bounded
crowdsourcing and crowdseeding may result in
more accurate information because the reporters
are known and thus their credibility can be assessed.
As in Voix des Kivus, a long-term relationship
with the project may lead them to be more
reliable reporters.160 Because they are identified in
advance, they can also be trained and selected from
representative geographic locations.161 Identifying
reporters in advance may, however, make it easier to
identify the individuals providing information and
thus increase their security risk.162
Information can be corroborated by information
from other unknown sources, trained observers, or
mainstream media. Voix des Kivus, for example,
selected three individuals as trusted reporters in
part to be able to triangulate their reports against
one another.163 In addition to verification through
its trusted sources, Uchaguzi also compared
incoming reports to reports from the mainstream
media.164 Although this aspect of the project has
not yet been implemented, the ICT4GOV project
plans to verify information received through
SMS messages about the status of public works
projects by comparing reports and investigating
discrepancies. Information can also be internally
corroborated by evaluating whether it is internally
consistent. Internal and external corroboration
is especially useful for projects in which the
trustworthiness of the source cannot be established
because it is anonymous. Corroboration can also
help to expand your network of trusted sources by
verifying reports of previously unknown reporters
and, over time, contributing to their credibility.166
In projects involving significant quantities of
data, verification can also be accomplished by
aggregation. Aggregating reports from many
individuals about can provide a way to identify
those incidents that are more credible than others
because they are confirmed by other reports.167 As
a method of verification, aggregation has important
limitations, however. Among other things, it may
be difficult to obtain the volume of reports needed
for such an approach to work, particularly with
respect to human rights violations that are more
systematic or invisible.168
 I NFORM ATI O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S F O R H U M A N R I GH T S
Information can also be verified through
investigation. Uchaguzi, for example, used its
trained observers in the field to verify incoming
reports. When a report came in of voter fraud
or misinformation, it was relayed to one of the
observers for verification.169 The Voice of Kibera
citizen news outlet established an editorial board
of trusted individuals to verify incoming reports.170
Video and still images can also be verified by
weather reports, landmarks, and shadows.171
Uwiano verified information by calling back
the numbers associated with the messages and
conducting brief interviews.172 One disadvantage
of investigation is that it may eliminate the
anonymity that enabled the report in the first
place. Some of those who reported information
to Uwiano, for example, were reluctant to reveal
details when they were called back because they
did not know the person who was returning their
call. In those instances, the team would turn to an
NGO or official to verify reports.173
Projects might also manage problems of
verification through disclosure. Voice of Kibera,
for example, realizing that its internal investigators
would not be able to verify all reports, decided
to publish almost all of the reports on their site
but to label them with tags of either “verified”
or “unverified” and allow readers to judge
for themselves.174 Uchaguzi also opted to post
reports from both trusted an anonymous sources,
“visualizing messages received from the crowd
with black dots and reports from officially trained
election monitors through our partner CRECO
[Constitution and Reform Education Consortium]
with blue.”175 Providing additional information
about the data received allowed the public to “sort
through and decide how much weight to give to
each report.”176
Methods of verification can also be combined or
different methods applied at different stages. Voix
des Kivus, for example, sent a field coordinator to
investigate reports at the outset of the project,177
but ceased investigation once it established that
the messages were of high quality. After that,
the project relied on triangulating the reports of
the three village reporters, while backing this up
with phone contact between the reporter and the
field coordinator and occasional visits by the field
coordinator to the village.178
#ICT4HR
Finally, at least one project is planning to employ
human review to ensure that reports included the
context necessary for interpretation. Sisi Ni Amani
plans to rely on chapter leadership to interpret
reports: “As community leaders and through
their conflict prevention efforts, they will have a
strong qualitative understanding of local dynamics
that will position leadership to make informed
interpretations of shifting conflict dynamics
that reflect the unique nature and context of the
community.”179 Ensuring a diverse membership
may be key to helping provide adequate context
for community reports, particularly in times of
crisis: “The intergroup nature of the chapters will
also help balance analysis, ensuring that cognitive
bias or perceptions that may pique during high
periods of tension are mitigated.”180
B. Security
New technologies also pose substantial risks
both for those who collect information and those
about whom information is collected.181 Collecting |ndex
and disseminating information about human rights
violations can put both reporter and source at risk
of retaliation, whether from the state or other
community members. Depending on the context,
the reporter and the source may want to preserve
their anonymity. New technologies make it difficult
to ensure anonymity for several different reasons.
First, digital information is easily captured,
copied, and shared.182 This means that identifying
information (whether contained in the data itself
or hidden in its code) can be disseminated quickly
and widely before steps can be taken to prevent
the loss of anonymity. The Iranian and Burmese
governments, for example, have used photos and
video footage of protests to identify demonstrators
and onlookers.183 Indeed, the Iranian government
used crowdsourcing in the process, posting images
captured from YouTube and asking the public to
help identify those involved.184 In addition, because
information is so easily copied and shared, there is a
greater risk of re-victimization. Each publication of
a victim’s story—particularly when that account is
captured in the form of video—can be experienced
as another assault on the victim’s integrity and
dignity and can cause additional trauma. The
ability to quickly and easily share stories of abuse
thus poses risks for victim security.185
T H E W O R L D B A N K G R OU P 23
#ICT4HR NOV EMBER 2012
Second, digital information also contains
considerably more identifying information than
other means of communication, and individuals are
often not aware that this information is embedded
in the content they create. For example, digital
information may contain markers that could reveal
the identity or location of the person who collects
or transmits the information.186 Mobile phones, in
particular, can be used to track the phone holder’s
location.187 Individuals collecting and submitting
information via mobile phone may not be aware that
the content they create can be used to find them.188
Third, it can be difficult and expensive to
maintain the physical security of digital information
containing identities of sources or reporters.
Information could be vulnerable to interception
while being transmitted. Security solutions may
require a level of technological expertise and
capacity that human rights organizations may not
possess. Physical servers housing sensitive data
might be at risk of being accessed. Information
|ndex might also be held by third parties, who could
be compelled by court order or otherwise to
provide the information to the government. In low
resource environments, technology is more often
shared, which means that information stored on
the device may not be secure.189 Data may also
be at risk of physical loss due to virus, theft, fire,
neglect, or other reasons.190
Projects employed several techniques to protect
the security of the information they gathered. One
of the most common techniques was to carefully
control the collected data and remove identifying
information before circulation. The Voix des Kivus
research team, for example, would heavily edit
the translated texts it received, removing village
names and the names of people, and removing
entirely any texts that could have repercussions
within the village.191 Uwiano released data to
the public in aggregated form so that individuals
could not be identified.192 It never released
any identifying information, even to the law
enforcement authorities charged with responding
to the reported concerns.193
Projects also managed the security risk of
information containing sensitive information by
controlling access to the data. Sisi Ni Amani, for
example, is developing a system that will allow
24 WWW.OPENDTA. ORG
messages to be segmented and provide different
levels of viewing privileges.194 In the Voix des Kivus
project, reporters themselves classified information
according to security risk when they sent it to the
central team, indicating with whom they thought
the text should be shared.195 Edited data was
returned to the village; coarsened data, without
village identifiers, was made available online as
PDF bulletins; finer data, with the village but no
individual identifiers, was made available, after
consultation with the villages, to organizations in a
position to respond to village appeals.196
Projects also managed security risks by deciding
not to collect some kinds of information at all. The
ICT4GOV project, for example, does not collect
identifying information concerning who voted
for which public works project.197 This may be
particularly important if there are concerns about
the security of physical servers or involvement by
the government.
Projects also implemented precautions to protect
the physical security of the data collected. Because
local human rights defenders are at risk of retaliation
in the DRC, SJS decided to house any data received
via Piga Simu on the servers at its headquarters in
Kinshasa instead of on-site with partners, 2000
miles away from the project implementation site.198
Others took steps to ensure the physical security of
printouts of the information collected. In the initial
stages of the Voix des Kivus project, for example,
the field coordinator would take a printout of
information submitted from each village to the
village to verify the content with each reporter. The
list was printed in a way that only made sense to the
coordinator and not to anyone who might stop him
on the street.199
Reporters may be uniquely vulnerable in
several ways. In projects that employ bounded
crowdsourcing, their identities are known, which
may lead them to be targeted. In some cases
possessing the technology can present a risk in and
of itself. In Kibera News Network, for example,
participants were provided with Flip Cameras, which
put them at greater risk of theft and pickpockets.200
Given the risk to identified reporters, Voix des Kivus
initially considered keeping their identities secret.
The villages rejected this, however, as both futile and
potentially causing greater suspicion and distrust.201
 I NFORM ATI O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S F O R H U M A N R I GH T S
Although never used, to protect reporters, Voix des
Kivus implemented a “security alert” function by
which reporters could send a text and receive a call
back immediately asking if there was a need to send
peacekeepers.202
Projects were also concerned with the safety of
those generating information. Sisi Ni Amani, for
example, voiced concern that in localized projects,
those who access the information would be likely
to be able to identify those who were reporting
information.203 As a result, the project is considering
using network members as “proxy” reporters
to protect the identity of those who volunteer.
Individuals will be able to send reports to members
of the network they trust, who would then report
the information further without identification.204
C. Inequality
Although new technologies can help protect
the rights of vulnerable populations, they can
also reinforce existing inequalities by excluding
individuals who lack access.205 The digital divide—
the fact that many parts of the developing world are
not connected to phone lines and Internet cables—
remains a real problem.206 Mobile telephones have
gone a long way toward overcoming the digital
divide; indeed, mobile subscriptions appear to have
overtaken Internet penetration in many countries in
Africa.207 Several of the projects employed mobile
phones because of greater access. Uchaguzi, for
example, chose to use mobile phones rather than the
Internet to collect information because the number
of Kenyans with mobile phones far outweighed the
number with Internet access.208 Map Kibera chose
SMS because its research indicated that most of
the Kibera residents either owned or had access to
a mobile phone through friends or family.209 The
ICT4GOV project in South Kivu, for example,
chose to use SMS because mobile phones were
both widespread and suited to a context in which
electricity was scarce.210
Yet mobile still presents significant problems of
access.211 In the Momaths project, for example, “[t]
he biggest problem in the project – identified by
both teachers and learners – was lack of access for
some learners to a suitable mobile telephone.”212
Mobile phones can be prohibitively expensive
because of the cost of individuals calls and texts
#ICT4HR
as well as the costs of the handsets themselves. A
lack of competition in markets for mobile phone
services may allow a few providers to dominate
and keep prices high.213 Mobile providers might
not serve under-resourced areas.214 In low resource
environments, people may find it difficult to obtain
power to charge mobile phones. Finally, even where
mobile is available, coverage may be limited. For
example, due to time constraints, the Uwiano
project was only able to arrange a partnership with
one mobile service provider, Safaricom, for the SMS
messaging system. While Safaricom is the service
provider of a large majority of Kenyans there were
still some who were not able to participate.215 The
ICT4GOV project emphasized the importance of
sustainability with respect to technology, especially
in terms of cost, noting their efforts to address this
issue by using low cost handsets and negotiating
special rates with operators to reduce the cost of
text messages.
Thus, although mobile phones provide an
important starting point for overcoming the |ndex
digital divide, it is still a resource that is unevenly
distributed, and access to mobile devices may
be particularly limited in poor or underserved
communities. Relying on preexisting access to a
particular technology poses the risk of replicating
any inequalities that may exist with respect to
that technology. The projects surveyed attempted
to respond to these problems in several different
ways. Piga Simu, for example, sought to minimize
the burden of a phone call by offering a call back
service.217 Voix des Kivus provided the technology,
both the mobile phones themselves as well as a solar
panel to recharge the phones.218 The ICT4GOV
project in South Kivu emphasized the importance
of ensuring that SMS messaging provided a
complementary channel, not a substitute channel,
for other means of communication, such as working
with civil society organizations on the local level as
well as local leaders.219
Inequalities in access to a particular technology
may also exist within particular communities. In
other words, the digital divide is not only geographic
but can occur along the lines of race, gender, age,
and disability.220 In some places, for example,
the use of mobile phones may reinforce gender
inequalities. For example, a women-run community
based radio project in Southeast Kenya chose radio
T H E W O R L D B A N K G R OU P 25
#ICT4HR NOV EMBER 2012
over cell phones after conversations revealed that
women felt their husbands would take and sell a
cell phone; they were provided with solar powered
rechargers for their radio interfaces because they
did not have access to household finances necessary
to purchase batteries.221 Voix des Kivus sought to
avoid replicating existing inequalities by providing
one phone to the village chief, a second to the head
of the village women’s association, and a third to
someone elected by the village community.222 The
project chose these individuals because they were
typical sources of information in a village and
provided a balance of power.223
Lack of literacy can also create a barrier to the
use of particular technologies. For example, SMS
messaging requires a basic level of literacy. Piga
Simu decided to use a voice-based system because
it is easier to access by vulnerable populations who
may not be able to write.224 A mobile project in
Afghanistan changed its plans to use SMS to deliver
information about markets and commodities to
|ndex farmers to a call back function because of low levels
of literacy.225 At the same time, lack of literacy
does not mean that text is always not useful.
For example, a later survey of the farmers in the
Afghanistan project indicated that they wanted the
SMS in addition to voice messages because they
could show the SMS market quote to potential
buyers and gain leverage during negotiations.226
Language can also create barriers. Piga Simu offers
a call back function in part so that women can
request information in a language of their choice.227
Individuals may also be unable to access
particular technology because of a lack of technical
literacy. Many of the projects surveyed invested time
in educating participants on the use of the relevant
technologies. In Voix des Kivus, for example,
phone holders were given extensive training on the
system’s operations, provided with a ‘code sheet,’
and trained how to send and use SMS messages.228
In Map Kibera, one resident from each village in
Kibera was recruited and given training in different
ICTs.229 Participants in Kibera News Network
were given weekly classes on how to use Flip Video
cameras and editing software and they were given
practice assignments to improve their skills.230
26 WWW.OPENDTA. ORG
Finally, cultural perceptions of technology may
also create barriers to access. In Map Kibera, for
example, project organizers found that individuals
did not view technology as participatory but rather
saw online content as something to be passively
consumed.231 As a result, Map Kibera did outreach
specifically about the value of the technology:
“Many Kiberans who asked what the mappers were
doing did not see how a map available only online
could benefit them or their community—besides
which, they already knew how to get around.”232
SJS similarly said that it can be difficult to convince
people of the value added of technology to do
things they are already doing.233
The Uchaguzi project indicates that sequencing
might be one way to help foster technical literacy
and comfort with a particular technology. In that
case, the community mapping project provided a
foundation for later projects, such as community
news and issue specific mapping. Sequencing is
not a necessary prerequisite but may be a way to
introduce a technology and get people engaged.234
D. Response
Projects using new technologies may find it
particularly challenging to transform information
into action. Although it is impossible to evaluate
systematically, some of the projects provided at least
anecdotal evidence of actions that resulted from their
information. Uwiano relayed information to the
police about reports of a planned vigilante action,
and the police responded and were able to make
arrests.235 Uchaguzi sent reports about a polling place
that was displaying misleading information to the
local electoral commission, and the commission was
able to remedy the problem.236 Other projects were
not able to provide even examples, however. The Voix
des Kivus research team, for example, concluded that
“we know of no instances in which development
or humanitarian agencies responded to incidents or
issues raised by phone holders, and of no serious
attempts to integrate the data into operations.”237
There are three reasons it may be difficult to
generate a response in projects involving new
technologies. First, collecting information by mobile
 I NFORM ATI O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S F O R H U M A N R I GH T S
phone and via new techniques like crowdsourcing
can generate a significant volume of information.
Much of the information generated will simply be
irrelevant. Organizations need to have the ability
to manage and process the information, identifying
and isolating the relevant data, and that requires
both human and financial resources.238 The volume
of information generated may also inhibit the ability
to find a local partner, since each potential partner is
interested in only part of the data set.239
The cases studied employed several techniques
in managing incoming data. Uwiano, for example,
limited the information it collected in order to
handle the volume it was receiving leading up to the
election.240 It also engaged in “triage” of the incoming
reports, organizing reports into six categories—
informative, threat, positive message, hate speech,
coded message, or incitement to violence—in
order to identify those that required a response.241
Uwiano did a full analysis of only 300 of the 14,000
submitted reports.242 Crowdseeding also aids in
the management of incoming data by limiting the
number of reporters. In the Voix des Kivus project,
for example, the team only had to process reports
from three individuals in each village.243 Projects are
also using technology to filter. Medic Mobile, for
example, is developing technology that can be used
“to auto-categorise messages sent from healthcare
workers in the field. The idea is to catch symptoms
across a number of languages and spellings (or
misspellings) to detect outbreaks of diseases or
hotspots for HIV/Aids, for example.”244
#ICT4HR
Second, transforming information into action is
challenging if the information is not tailored to local
needs. The Voix des Kivus research team, for example,
concluded that the one thing they would change, had
they to do it over again, would be to “make Voix des
Kivus a central part of an NGO.”245 Although the
research team established relationships with local
organizations, these partners were not involved in
the conception, planning and implementation of
the project. The lack of involvement in the planning
and implementation of the project meant that the
information that was being generated was not
integrated into or tailored to the goals and priorities
of local organizations.246 Jessica Heinzelman also
noted that although Uchaguzi was able to get the
information it received to partners with the capacity
to act, she would have put even more time into
forming these relationships.247
Third, transforming information into action
requires that the local partner organization have
the capacity to make use of the information. Erica
Hagen, for example, said that for issue mapping to |ndex
be successful, the mapping project has to work with
grassroots organizations to invest in helping people
make use of the information.248 Rachel Brown
recommended planning the ICT project with local
leadership and community organizations because
they have the knowledge and capital to guide any
intervention.249 Local partners are more likely to be
trusted and thereby able to convince community
members to act on information than when that
information comes from a source they do not know.250
T H E W O R L D B A N K G R OU P 27
#ICT4HR NOV EMBER 2012

|ndex

Navigating the Opportunities

and Risks of New Technologies

28 WWW.OPENDTA. ORG
 I NFORM ATI O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S F O R H U M A N R I GH T S
V. Recommendations
N
ew technologies offer the potential
to reduce the opportunity costs of
reporting, advocacy, and data collection,
enable the inclusion of a wider range of peoples
and groups in human rights work, support better
and more participatory development practices,
and help governments understand the needs and
priorities of their citizens. Each of these possible
benefits, however, gives rise to new risks and
challenges. Larger volumes of information make
it difficult to ensure accuracy and to identify
relevant information. The use of new technologies
can also exacerbate inequality and security risks.
Information must also be translated into action.
Although the Voix des Kivus case study indicates
that participants may have valued participation
in and of itself, they also participated because
they continued to maintain the hope that their
information would lead to concrete benefits for
the community.
This section of the report presents several
recommendations for projects seeking to employ
new technologies in promoting human rights. It
does not provide recommendations for using ICTs
generally, nor does it go into specifics about issues
such as security or data management. Rather, the
purpose of this section is to identify the types of
questions that might be asked at the outset of such
a project and some of the tensions behind each of
these questions.
1. Build verification mechanisms into the activity
and ensure they are tailored to project goals.
There are a range of mechanisms available
for verifying information submitted by ordinary
individuals though mechanisms like crowdsourcing.
The particular choice of mechanism will depend
on the needs of the particular activity. Professional
researchers may be needed if the information will be
used in a human rights report, where credibility is
key; even then, however, these researchers could use
information provided by crowdsourcing projects
to identify questions or provide corroboration.251
#ICT4HR
As Alston notes, for example, “crowdsourcing
could certainly be used by organizations (e.g.,
national human rights institutions, ombudsmen,
non-governmental organizations) to receive
notifications of alleged abuses which could then
be tracked and investigated.”252 To the extent
new technologies are used for other purposes—
whether as a mechanism for ascertaining trends or
simply for expression—less rigorous verification
protocols may be necessary.253 For example, while
a project designed to solicit information about
the performance of local service organizations
may be overly politicized, a project designed to
collect information about their work may be more
feasible.254
|ndex
A central tension in choosing a verification
mechanism is the risk that this mechanism will
undermine or eliminate the very advantages
provided by new methods of generating
information about human rights issues. One of
the most important advantages of these new
approaches is cost; crowdsourcing can generate
a significant amount of information about broad
range of activities over a wide geographic area at
a fraction of the cost of traditional methods of
investigation. At the same time, the costs of verifying
and managing that volume of information can
eliminate any cost savings achieved in generating
the information in the first place. Voix des Kivus,
for example, decided not to employ more intensive
verification because doing so would defeat the
advantages presented by crowdsourcing; a field
coordinator sent to verify individual reports on
a bi-weekly basis could just as easily gather the
information himself.255
2. Establish appropriate security protocols.
In an ideal world, projects should evaluate
security risks to participants and researchers at
the outset, adopt and implement appropriate
protocols for minimizing the risk, and consider
abandoning the project where it would not be
possible to achieve an appropriate level of risk. It
T H E W O R L D B A N K G R OU P 29
#ICT4HR NOV EMBER 2012
is, however, very difficult in the abstract to say how
projects such evaluate risk, what levels of risk are
acceptable, and how that risk should be minimized.
Based on the cases studied, however, a few general
observations are in order.
First, even information commonly understood
to be “public” can create unintended risks when
collected and disseminated online. In mapping the
health resources in the community, for example,
Map Kibera participants wanted to include chemists,
individuals who dispense medication and provide
other health services. Some of the chemists were
unlicensed, however, and might be shut down by the
government if discovered. There was also a concern
that mapping youth hangouts could lead to a police
crackdown.256 Although all of this information was
publicly available and known to the community,
gathering it all in one place and publishing it in an
online map would make it easier for the government
to take action against these groups.
|ndex On the one hand, it is reasonable to assume that
public information raises fewer security concerns.
The person affected by the information has already
made a decision to release it, or even if not released
under their authority, whatever harm might occur
from publication has likely already been done.
Indeed, regulations for human subjects review
often make this very distinction. Although projects
involving research with humans must go through
a separate review process,257 there is generally an
exception for collecting public information.258
That said, it is not always the case that the
collection and dissemination of information, even
information that is already “public,” does not lead
to harm. Information that is common knowledge in
the local community make take on a very different
meaning and have very different consequences if
released more widely and in a context and form
other than that which was originally anticipated
or intended. Crowdsourcing projects are likely to
encounter this tension and may want to anticipate
the position they will take on “public” information
and how they will draw the line between public
and non-public information.
Second, it will be difficult to decide who should
make decisions about risks. There was considerable
variation in the projects in terms of who assumed
30 WWW.OPENDTA. ORG
authority for assessing risk. In Voix des Kivus, the
phone holders made their own decisions about
how to rate the security risk of the information
they were gathering and were given no guidance
about how to do so.259 The research team,
however, edited the texts for security; indeed, the
team felt uncomfortable being put in the position
of “censors,” deciding who would receive what
information, and tried to get the community
to take over in this regard, but the community
continually deferred to the research team.260 In
Map Kibera, the mapping team decided whether
to include the chemists and youth hangouts;
individual conversations between the mappers
and the chemists may have taken place about the
risks.261 Sisi ni Amani plans to engage community
in process of making decisions about who will
have access to what information.262 The Uchaguzi
project attended less to security concerns because
they viewed the participants as volunteers who
could assess the risks themselves.263
There is a good deal to be said for allowing
those affected by a project make decisions about
risk. They are often in the best position to assess
the risk to themselves.264 That said, informed
consent models may be particularly challenging
in the context of crowdsourcing projects
involving new technologies. It can be difficult
to obtain informed consent even in the best of
circumstances. It is that much more difficult in
a low-resource setting, complicated by social,
cultural, and language barriers as well as a lack
of familiarity with the nature of the technical
risk involved.265 The desire of individuals in
vulnerable circumstances “to have their ‘stories’
told to the international community can outweigh
consideration of the potential danger to themselves
and their communities.”266 Further, the digital
environment has radically changed expectations
about how quickly and how far something might
be shared. Information, once shared, is easily
shared again and remixed, and it may not be
possible to guarantee to a participant that his
or her information will not be used for other
purposes. Crowdsourcing projects are unlikely to
be able to identify participants in advance, and
the volume of participants might make it difficult
to ensure that the proper information has been
conveyed and understood.267
 I NFORM ATI O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S F O R H U M A N R I GH T S
Third, mobile crowdsourcing projects may
need to be particularly cautious about managing
expectations. Providing a means for gathering
information can create expectations that the
information will be provided to those who can
respond and that response will be forthcoming.
Participants should not view a SMS platform as a
“911” line.268 In Voix des Kivus, for example, the
project would often get reports that were requests,
“for support with a health clinic, for support
with schooling.”269 Even the most rigorous of
disclosures, however, may not be enough to
dispel expectations. Although the Voix des Kivus
research team explained in the clearest of terms
that the project had a research purpose and that
participants should not expect that anything would
come of the information, expectations persisted:
“There was inevitably a hope that if information
about the situation of these villages gets out to the
world that someone will answer.”270 When asked
why they continued to participate despite the lack
of any response, the villagers said they knew they
shouldn’t expect a response, but they continued to
take part because it at least kept the possibility of
a response open.271
Fourth, there is a tension between the
conservatism of risk minimization and the
underlying orientation of many of the innovators
operating to employ new ICTs in furtherance of
human rights, development, and humanitarian
goals. This observation is not to critique either
approach. Rather, it is simply to observe that the
values of the technology field—a willingness to
experiment and “to fail, adopt, and iterate”272—
can be in some tension with the need to develop
considered and reasoned security protocols ahead
of time. In other works, while hacking is an
iterative process, security is not.
This tension appears most acutely in questions
about open data. On the one hand, making data
available (or “open”) may help further other
projects and could lead to new uses of the data that
the original generators could not have foreseen.
The data collected from Map Kibera, for example,
is available to be used as long as any subsequent
uses are also shared.273 AAAS often tries to make
its full satellite imagery and analysis available
through a Google Earth layer so that other groups
#ICT4HR
can use the information and check the AAAS’s
results.274 Depending on the project, however,
there may be human rights risks associated with
allowing others to use this data. At the same time,
the technology values of openness may be in some
tension with concerns about the uses of sensitive
data. Uchaguzi, for example, decided to make its
data open not only because the project itself was
a response to the lack of open information about
the electoral process, but also because it reflected
the belief that “the opportunity to have your
voice heard is more important than unexpected
consequences.”275 A report on human rights and
video security put it this way: “Human rights
needs, for example understanding how consent
is secured from video participants, can come into
conflict with the assumption of engineers and user
experience specialists in social media companies,
that content and identity must be spread with as
little ‘friction’ as possible.”276
At the same time, a conservative approach with
respect to risk might hinder project innovation. |ndex
The Voix des Kivus research team, for example,
cited several instances in which their caution
as researchers and desire to avoid any risk to
participants prevented them from introducing
innovations that might have led the project to have
more of an impact on the ground. For example,
their concern about security risks led them to
decide not to share information between villages,
even though sharing of information could have
fostered the development of advocacy networks.277
3. Consider developing ethical protocols for
crowdsourcing in the human rights context.
One of the most fundamental challenges facing
mobile crowdsourced projects in the human
rights context is how to treat the sources who
are contributing information. Citizen reporters
fall somewhere in between the roles of journalist,
human rights researcher, researcher, and ordinary
observer. In some ways, it is their role as non-
professionals that provides value to crowdsourced
projects, generating information that could not be
gathered if the activity were limited to those with
credentials. At the same time, it presents risks. They
do not have the training they need to recognize
risks to others and to take measures to minimize those
T H E W O R L D B A N K G R OU P 31
#ICT4HR NOV EMBER 2012
risks, to protect their own and others’ security, and to
ensure the accuracy of the information they gather.278
Without a professional role, they also lack access to
a set of professional standards that would help them
sort through questions about security and risk.
An important first step would be to recognize
that individuals who collect information—even if
they are not professionals—are nonetheless acting
in a kind of professional capacity and could likely
benefit from training and guidance about how to
exercise judgment in that capacity. The cases studied
tended to treat trusted sources as participants, not
researchers. Voix des Kivus, for example, developed
protocols to protect the security of phone holders but
not for other participants. The research team edited
the texts for security and protected the disclosure
of sensitive information, and some phone holders
themselves withheld sensitive information—for
example, they would not report incidents of sexual
violence if the source asked them not to.279 At the
same time, most of the phone holders appear to have
|ndex been acting as researchers, going out and collecting
information rather than waiting for individuals to
approach them.280 As such, they might have benefited
from training on how to collect information, protect
sources, or avoid secondary trauma.
Despite the difficulties of applying concepts of
informed consent in the crowdsourced context,
projects should also consider methods for
communicating to sources—the victims and witnesses
from whom information is gathered—the way their
information will be used and any associated risks.281
To the extent that trusted sources are affirmatively
going out and collecting information, they are acting
as researchers and are subject to ethical constraints
in that process. It is true that in some instances,
researchers may need to exercise independent
judgment about risks to the victims and witnesses
with whom they work. Nonetheless, this should only
happen when efforts to obtain informed consent
have failed or are impracticable.282 In addition,
clearer discussions about the relationship between
researcher and source will help ensure this judgment
is exercised consistently.
Finally, we recommend that human rights
professionals, medical researchers, and technology
innovators collaborate in developing a set of
ethical principles that could be used to guide
32 WWW.OPENDTA. ORG
projects that employ ordinary individuals in the
collection of information.283 A set of guidelines
developed specifically for this context is preferable
to adopting an existing set for two reasons. First,
it not clear which set of professional standards
would be most appropriate—whether canons of
journalistic ethics, human rights research training
protocols, human subjects research standards, or
others.284 Indeed, the choice could even vary from
project to project. A separate set of standards for
crowdsourcing (in all its variations) may provide
more flexibility to tailor ethical considerations and
security protocols to the particular context. Second,
some of these standards may be too conservative
in many cases, impossible to apply, and risk of
eliminating the very advantages of having citizens,
not professionals, gathering information. A set
of ethical standards for crowdsourcing could be
tailored and flexible while nonetheless providing
at the very least a framework for decision making
about risk that would ensure greater consistency
and transparency. Further, standards for ethical
documentation do not need to be limited to a
static list, but could instead be incorporated into
“site governance and review policies” of online
platforms that handle human rights content,
embodied in learning and training materials, as
well as built into the technological documentation
tools themselves.285
4. Establish partnerships with local organizations
able to respond to information flows.
Projects should also consider involving local
organizations from the very beginning and
ensuring that these organizations are able to act
on the information being generated by the project.
Involving local partners from the beginning
will help ensure that outputs are tailored to the
information needs of the community. In other
words, “technology has to support what local
people are trying to do” rather than the other
way around.286 Thomas Maketa of the ICT4GOV
project in South Kivu emphasized, for example,
that SMS is not a strategy by itself. In order to
foster participation, it is important to build
technology into a comprehensive engagement
strategy with the local community.287 In some
instances, fostering participation may even require
low-tech solutions. For example, because a large
portion of Kibera residents did not have access
 I NFORM ATI O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S F O R H U M A N R I GH T S
to the Internet, Map Kibera made paper print
outs of the map and placed them strategically
within Kibera.288 Collaboration should be ongoing
to aid in responsiveness as needs change. One
interviewee also recommended closing the
feedback loop by asking authorities to relay back
which actions were taken.289
Fostering responsiveness may also help
mitigate concerns about sustainability. The Voix
des Kivus research team, for example, had been
concerned that the lack of response from outside
organizations to the information that was being
generated would lead to less participation and
reporting. They were surprised to find that for these
particular communities, the expressive component
of the project—the fact that it gave voice to the
community’s needs and concerns—provided an
incentive despite the lack of response. In the words
of one participant, “for the first time, we’re being
#ICT4HR
put on the map.”290 At the same time, participants
also noted that they continued to hold out hope
that someone would respond to the information
they were sharing, and they wanted to keep that
possibility open.291 At some point, continued
failure to generate a response would likely result
in diminished participation and sustainability.
To some extent, these principles are not specific
to technology projects. In some sense, that should
not be surprising. New technologies are not ends,
but tools. They will not themselves foster democratic
participation or greater protection of human rights.
Their value depends on the use to which they are
put. As Hagen emphasized, “technology is easy; real
social change is still the most difficult—and most
important—part.”292
|ndex
T H E W O R L D B A N K G R OU P 33
#ICT4HR NOV EMBER 2012

(Endnotes)
1 Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom
of Opinion and Expression, Frank La Rue, U.N. Doc A/HRC/17/27, ¶ 2 (May 16, 2011) [hereinafter
Report of the Special Rapporteur],  available at http://w w w 2.ohchr.org/engl i s h/bodi es /hrcouncil/
do c s / 17s e s s i o n /A .H RC .1 7 .2 7 _ e n .p d f.
2 Information and Communication Technologies for Development, Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_and_communication_technologies_for_development
(last visited June 25, 2012 15:31 GMT).
3 Tommaso Balbo Di Vinadio, World Bank Institute, Information and Communication Technology
for Governance (ICT4GOV) Program, World Bank Institute Capacity Development and Results
(2012), available at w ww.o p e n d ta .org/Know l edge/ICT4G O V% 20Cas e% 20Study.pdf ; s ee also
ICT4Gov.netWork, h ttp ://i c t4 g o v.n e t/ (last visited June 25, 2012).
4 Interim Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions,
Philip Alston, G.A. Res. 65/321, U.N. Doc. A/65/321, at ¶ 5 (Aug. 23, 2010), available at http://dacc ess-
dds - ny. un.o rg /d o c /U N D OC /G E N /N 1 0 /4 92/39/PD F/N 1049239.pdf? .
5 Id. ¶ 5.
6 Erica Hagen, Mapping Change, Community Information Empowerment in Kibera, 6 Innovations
69, at 92 (2011).
7 OpenLearn LabSpace, ICTs in Everyday Life, http://l abs pace.open.ac.uk/mod/res ource/view.
php?id=37 1 9 8 2 (last visited June 25, 2012).
8 Jamie F. Metzl, Information Technology and Human Rights, 18 Hum. Rts. Q. 705, 709 (1996).
9 Social Media, Wikipedia, h ttp ://en.w i ki pedi a.org/w i ki /Soci al _medi a (June 25, 2012 16:30 GMT).
|ndex
10 See, e.g., Lee Baker, The Unintended Consequences of U.S. Export Restrictions on Software and
Online Services for American Foreign Policy and Human Rights, 23 Harv. J. Law & Tech. 537, 556-63 (2010)
(discussing the ways in which activists used social media and mobile phones in the Ukraine, Moldova, and
Iran, and to circumvent online censorship in China).
11 Albert-László Barabási, Linked: The New Science of Networks 43 (2002).
12 The result is the “small world” phenomenon. See Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The
Power of Organizing Without Organizations 214 (2009).
13 Manuel Castells, et al., Mobile Communication and Society: A Global Perspective
201 (2007). Because weak ties can form bridges between groups that do not otherwise overlap, “whatever
is to be diffused can reach a larger number of people, and traverse greater social distance (i.e., path length),
when passed through weak ties rather than strong.” Mark Granovetter, The Strength of Weak Ties, 78 Am.
J. Soc. 1360, 1362–64 (1973).
14 Philip N. Howard & Muzammil M. Hussain, The Role of Digital Media, 22 J. Democracy 35,
48 (2011) (noting that one of the advantages of social media is that it provides networks that are “already
embedded in trusted networks of family and friends”).
15 Larry Diamond, Liberation Technology, 21 J. Democracy 69, 71 (2010).
16 See, e.g., Dan Hunter & F. Gregory Lastowka, Amateur-to-Amateur, William & Mary L. Rev.
951, 989 (2004) (noting that “cheap digital technologies of authorship are increasingly allowing individual,
poorly capitalized players to produce works that are competing for attention with the works created by
corporate and highly capitalized players”).
17 Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks 60 (2006).
18 Peer production and user-generated content can overlap but are not identical. Wikipedia, for
example, uses a model of peer production to collaboratively produce user-generated content. Linux, in
contrast, is peer production by professionals—an effort to create a computer operating system through
incremental improvements contributed by computer programmers collaborating together on a volunteer
basis. See id. at 65–66.
19 For example, “although in some countries the number of fixed lines has actually declined over the

34 WWW.OPENDTA. ORG
 I NFORM ATI O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S F O R H U M A N R I GH T S #ICT4HR

last five years, as of 2009, mobiles were accessible to between 60% and 70% of [Africa’s] population.”
Association for Progressive Communications, ICTs for Democracy: Information and Communication
Technologies for the Enhancement of Democracy — with a Focus on Empowerment (2009), available
at ht t ps : / /w ww.a p c .o rg /e n /s y s te m /fi l e s /SID A_ICTs + for+ D emocracy.pdf ; see also Leapfrogging: A
different route to development, Article 13 (Sep. 2005), available at http://w w w.arti cl e13.com/A13_
P r int a ble P a g e s .a sp ? s trA c ti o n = Ge tP u b l i cati on& PN ID = 1192.
20 Jeff Howe,  Crowdsourcing: A Definition, Crowdsourcing, http://crow ds ourci ng.com
(last visited July 11, 2012); see also Jeff P. Howe, The Rise of Crowdsourcing, Wired, June 2006, at 176.
21 James Suroweiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds XIII (2004).
22 Uchaguzi: An Ushahidi deployment for Kenya’s 2010 Constitutional Referendum, Ushahidi
Blog, h t t p : / / b l o g . u s h a h i d i . c o m / i n d e x . p h p / 2 0 1 0 / 0 8 / 0 2 / u c h a g u z i - a n - u s h a h i d i - d e p l o y m e n t - f o r-
k e ny a s - 20 1 0 -c o n sti tu ti o n a l -re fe re n d um/ (last visited Aug. 2, 2010).
23 Ushahidi is a “free, open source platform that allows its users to gather distributed data via SMS,
email or web and visualize it on a map or timeline.” Marta Poblet, Mobile Governance: Empowering
Citizens to Promote the Rule of Law, at http://cros s road.epu.ntua.gr/fi l es /2010/04/34_MPoblet _
M o bile G o v e rn a n c e .p d f (last visited June 30, 2012). Developed in order to aggregate reports about
irregularities and incidents of violence during the 2008 Kenyan elections, the initial platform has been
expanded into a downloadable and web-based platform that has been used in a variety of contexts.
24 Constitution and Reform Education Consortium (CRECO), Wanjiku’s Decision Referendum
2010, at 9 (2010).
25 Interview by Technology for Transparency Network with Jessica Heinzelman, Uchaguzi Team
Member (Dec. 3, 2010), available at h ttp : //trans parency.gl obal v oi ces onl i ne.org/proj ect/uchaguz i ; see
also Telephone Interview with Jessica Heinzelman, Senior ICT Specialist at DAI and former Non-Technical |ndex

Project Manager for Uchaguzi (June 7, 2012).

26 See Jessica Heinzelman, Overcoming Challenges of Early Warning and Response Systems:
The Promise of Participatory Models 47 (Apr. 2011) (unpublished MALD thesis, The Fletcher School
of Law & Diplomacy, Tufts University).
27 United Nations Development Programme, Voting, Not Violence, in Kenya, http://w w w.undp. or g/
c o n t e n t / u n d p / e n / h o m e / o u r w o r k / c r i s i s p r e v e n t i o n a n d r e c o v e r y / s u c c e s s s t o r i e s / Vo t i n g - n o t - v i o l e n c e -
in- k e ny a . h tm l ; see also E-Mail Interview With Stephen Kirimi, Chief Executive Officer, PeaceNet Kenya (2011).
28 Kenya: SOS by SMS, allAfrica.com (Aug. 3, 2010), http://al l afri ca.c om /
s t o r ie s / 20 1 0 0 8 0 3 1 0 3 9 .h tml .
29 E-Mail Interview with Stephen Kirimi, supra note 27.
30 Heinzelman, supra note 26, at 48–49.
31 Alice Nderitu, Information Partnerships–Building Democracy with Citizens, NGOs and
Government: The Uwiano Experience, at 3, available at http://w w w.j umptel l .com/Information_
P a r t ne r s hi p s _ U WIA N O_ A l i c e _ N d e ri tu . pdf . ; UWIANO Platform for Peace, Soul Beat Africa (Sep. 14,
2010), ht t p ://w ww.c o m m i n i t.c o m /a fri c a/content/uw i ano-pl atform-peace . Uwiano was launched by
PeaceNet Kenya, an umbrella of community-based organizations, the National Cohesion and Integration
Commission (NCIC), and the National Steering Committee (NSC) on Peace Building and Conflict
Management, and had the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Id.
32 “[W]e wanted them to be researchers themselves, not merely distributors of knowledge imparted
by others.” Hagen, supra note 6, at 75–76.
33 Home, OpenStreetmap.us, h ttp ://w w w.opens treetmap.us / (last visited June 25, 2012).
34 Hagen, supra note 6, at 72–73. The project also uploaded photos to Flickr and linked into OSM.
E-Mail from Erica Hagen, Co-Founder, Map Kibera (July 24, 2012).
35 Hagen, supra note 6, at 76, 98.
36 Id. at 86.
37 Id. at 77–78.

T H E W O R L D B A N K G R OU P 35
#ICT4HR NOV EMBER 2012

38 E-Mail from Erica Hagen, supra note 34.

39 About Us, SisiNiAmani.org, h ttp://s i s i ni amani .org/i ndex .php? opti on= com_content& v iew=
a r t ic le & id= 2 &Ite m i d = 1 0 (last visited June 25, 2012).
40 Heinzelman, supra note 26, at 59–60. Sisi Ni Amani uses Frontline SMS, a SMS platform that
“enables users to send, receive and manage SMS over a mobile network.” The Software, Frontline
SMS, ht t p://ww w.fro n tl i n e s ms .c o m/th e-s oftw are/ (last visited June 25, 2012). The platform allows
organizations to communicate with large groups of ordinary citizens via mobile phone—to receive SMS
messages from individual members of the group and send information either to the group or selected
individuals. Id.
41 Patrick Meier, Marketing Peace using SMS Mobile Advertising: A New Approach to Conflict
Prevention, h ttp ://i R e v o l u ti o n .n e t/2 0 1 2 /06/11/peacetx t-marketi ng-peace (last visited July 10, 2012).
42 Columbia Center for the Study of Development Strategies, Voix des Kivus Leaflet 1,
available at h ttp ://c u -c sd s .o rg /w p -c o n t ent/upl oads /2009/10/Voi x -des -Ki v us -Leafl et.pdf.
43 Patrick Meier, From Crowdsourcing Crisis Information to Crowdseeding Conflict Zones,
ht t p: / / iR e v o l u ti o n .n e t/2 0 1 2 /0 7 /1 0 /c ro w ds ourci ng-to-crow ds eedi ng (last visited, July 10, 2012).
44 Voix des Kivus Leaflet, supra note 42, at 1.
45 Telephone Interview with Peter van der Windt, Lead Researcher, Voix des Kivus (June 27, 2011).
46 Id.
47 Peter van der Windt & Macartan Humphreys, Voix des Kivus: Reflections on a Crowdseeding
Approach to Conflict Event Data Gathering 5–6 (2012).
48 E-Mail Interview with Peter van der Windt, Lead Researcher, Voix des Kivus (June 24, 2012).
49 E-Mail from Macartan Humphreys, Voix des Kivus (July 12, 2012).
|ndex
50 Freedom Fone enables users “to create and share audio content using Interactive Voice Response
(IVR), voicemail and SMS.” How It Works, Freedom Fone, http://w w w.freedomfone.org/page/how- it -
w o r k s (last visited June 25, 2012). Using Freedom Fone, an organization can create voice menus (e.g., “press
1 for more information about X”), record information, and set up mailboxes to receive messages. Freedom
Fone also provides a means for polling and collecting information via SMS. Id.
51 E-Mail Interview with Françoise Mukuku, National Coordinator/Deputy President, Si Jeunesse
Savait (2011).
52 Id.
53 Id.
54 See h ttp ://ww w.a m n e s ty u s a .o rg/res earch/s ci ence-for-human-ri ghts (last visited July 10, 2012)
55 Id.
56 Combining Crowdsourced Satellite Imagery Analysis with Crisis Reporting: An Update on Syria,
http://blog.standbytaskforce.com/combining-crowdsourced-satellite-imagery-analysis-with-
c r is is - r e po rti n g -a n -u p d a te -o n -sy ri a (last visited July 10, 2012).
57 AAAS Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program, American Association for
the Advancement of Science [hereinafter AAAS] (Apr. 2, 2012), http://s rhrl .aaas .org/geotech/.
58 Evidence of Destruction in the Democratic Republic of Congo, AAAS (Mar. 19, 2012),
ht t p: / / s hr.a a a s.o rg //g e o te c h /d rc o n g o /d rcongo.s html .
59 World Bank Institute, Case Study: Information and Communication Technology for Governance
(ICT4GOV) Program, at 1.
60 Telephone Interview with Thomas Maketa, Governance Specialist, World Bank (July 20, 2012).
61 Id.
62 Id.
63 Telephone Interview with Jenny Torres, Encargada de Investigación, Proceso de Pobreza y
Políticas Sociales Centro de Estudios Sociales (2011).
64 About Us, Coalición Educación Digna, http://educaci ondi gna.com/about/ (last visited
June 25, 2012).

36 WWW.OPENDTA. ORG
 I NFORM ATI O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S F O R H U M A N R I GH T S #ICT4HR

65 Id.
66 Republica Dominicana Contaminada, http://domi ni canacontami nada.bl ogs pot.c om /
(last visited June 13, 2012).
67 Domivista, Barrick Gold y las Agua Contaminada en RD1, YouTube (Jan. 10, 2010),
ht t p: / / w w w.yo u tu b e .c o m/w a tc h ? v= F u MEccv i 9kQ .
68 Jose Maria Cabral, Rep Dominicana - Espejitos por Oro (¡Fuera Barrick Gold de America Latina!),
YouTube (May 20, 2011), h ttp ://ww w.y outube.com/w atch? v = hLdkSa4FMmg .
69 Id.
70 Kate Bulkley, Fast, Mobile-Based Messaging Service Boosts Healthcare and Cuts Costs, The
Guardian, June 18, 2010.
71 Medic Mobile, h ttp ://me d i c m o bi l e.org / (last visited July 6, 2012).
72 Id.
73 Kevin Asuncion, Text Messages that Save Lives with Josh Nesbit of Medic Mobile, Care2, Aug.
2, 2011, h ttp ://ww w.c a re 2 .c o m /c a u ses /tex t-mes s ages -that-s av e-l i v es -w i th-j os h-nes bi t-of-medic-
m o bile . ht ml # i x z z 1 U GP IF a Z A (last visited July 6, 2012).
74 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, opened for signature Dec. 16, 1966,
999 U.N.T.S. 171 (entered into force Mar. 23, 1976) [hereinafter ICCPR]; International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, opened for signature Dec. 16, 1966, 993 U.N.T.S. 3 (entered into
force Jan. 3, 1976) [hereinafter ICESCR].
75 International Law, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, http://w w w 2.ohchr.or g/
e ng lis h/ la w /.
76 World Conference on Human Rights, Vienna, Austria, June 14–25, 1993, Vienna Declaration and
Programme of Action, A/Conf.157/23. |ndex
77 See Report of the Special Rapporteur, supra note 1, ¶ 22 (“by acting as a catalyst for individuals
to exercise their right to freedom of opinion and expression, the Internet also facilitates the realization of a
range of other rights”).
78 Social Accountability Sourcebook, at 5, World Bank (2006), available at http://w w w.w orl dba nk.
o r g / s o c ia la c c o u n ta b i l i ty_ so u rc e b o o k /Pri ntVers i ons /Conceptual % 2006.22.07.pdf.
79 ICCPR, art. 19.
80 Event Mapping in Congo, Columbia Center for the Study of Development Strategies
ht t p: / / c u- c sd s .o rg /p ro j e c ts /e ve n t-m a ppi ng-i n-congo/ (last viewed June 25, 2012).
81 Telephone Interview with Peter van der Windt, supra note 45.
82 Hagen, supra note 6, at 82.
83 Id. at 84.
84 ICCPR, art. 19.
85 Id. art. 22(1).
86 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Remarks at George Washington University: Internet Rights and
Wrongs: Choices & Challenges in a Networked World (Feb. 15, 2011).
87 ICCPR, art. 21.
88 Pillowlita, Ritmos Amarillos: Solidaridad para Educación, YouTube (May 19, 2011),
ht t p: / / w w w.y o u tu b e .c o m/w a tc h ? v= VbYaR J 71v es .
89 ICCPR, art. 25.
90 As Hagen explained, bringing a map of water resources to a meeting of water stakeholders makes
an impression because that is not information that people necessarily have at their fingertips. Telephone
Interview with Erica Hagen, Co-Founder, Map Kibera (May 31, 2012).
91 E-Mail Interview with Rachel Brown, Founder & CEO, Sisi Ni Amani (2011).
92 ICESCR, arts. 12(1), 12(2)(d).
93 ECOSOC Resolution 1985/17, Review of the composition, organization and administrative
arrangements of the Sessional Working Group of Governmental Experts on the Implementation of the

T H E W O R L D B A N K G R OU P 37
#ICT4HR NOV EMBER 2012

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (May 28, 1985).
94 Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment No. 14, The Right to the
Highest Attainable Standard of Health (General Comment No. 14), UN Doc. No. E/C.12/2000/4 (2000),
¶ 11. The right to health is best understood as the right to enjoy “a variety of facilities, goods, services and
conditions necessary for the realization of the highest attainable standard of health.” Id. ¶ 9.
95 See N. Mahmud et al., A Text Message-Based Intervention to Bridge the Healthcare Communication
Gap in the Rural Developing World, 18(2) Tech & Health Care J. 137 (2010); Asuncion, supra note 73.
96 Bulkley, supra note 70.
97 OpenMRS, About OpenMRS, h t tp://openmrs .org/about/ (last visited July 3, 2012).
98 Wikipedia, mHealth, (as of Jul. 3, 20:12 GMT), http://en.w i ki pedi a.org/w i ki /MH eal th .
99 ICESCR, art. 13(1).
100 Nokia Momaths, Momaths DL Brochure (2011) https ://proj ects .dev el oper.noki a.c om /
M o m a t hs / f i l e s/Mo M a th s % 2 0 D L % 2 0 B r ochure% 20-% 20Webs i te.pdf .
101 Riitta Vänskä, United Nations ECOSOC Innovation Fair Survey Response, at 1 (2011)
ht t p: / / w w w.u n .o rg /e n /e c o so c /i n n o v fa i r2011/docs /noki a.pdf .
102 Neil Butcher & Associates, Evaluation of the Imfundo yami/yethu Project: Executive Summary (2009)
h t t p s : / / p r o j e c t s . d e v e l o p e r. n o k i a . c o m / M o m a t h s / f i l e s / 2 0 0 9 _ 0 9 _ 0 9 % 2 0 I m f u n d o % 2 0 y a m i % 2 0
y e t hu%20e v a l u a ti o n % 2 0 E xe c u ti ve % 2 0 Summary.pdf . The project used MXit as its social networking
service. MXit allows for less expensive communication through the use of internet protocols to send
data rather than the more costly SMS service. Christopher M. Napolitano, “MXing it up”: How African
adolescents may affect social change through mobile phone use, 128 New Directions in Youth
Development 105, 108-109 (2010).
|ndex
103 Nokia Momaths, supra note 100.
104 Id.
105 ICESCR, art. 13(2)(a)-(b).
106 Id. art. 13(2)(d).
107 Hagen, supra note 6, at 74, 77.
108 ICESCR, art. 11(1).
109 Voix des Kivus Leaflet, supra note 42, at 3.
110 Telephone Interview with Jessica Heinzelman, supra note 25.
111 E-Mail Interview with Françoise Mukuku, supra note 51.
112 ICCPR, art. 2(1); United Nations, Comm. on Econ., Soc. & Cultural Rights, General Comment
No. 21: Right of Everyone to Take Part in Cultural Life (Art. 15, Para. 1 (a), of the International Covenant
on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), ¶ 34, U.N. Doc. E/C.12/GC/21 (Dec. 21, 2009).
113 See, e.g., General Comment No. 21, supra note 112, ¶ 48.
114 United Nations, Human Rights Comm., General Comment No. 31 (The Nature of the General
Legal Obligation Imposed on States Parties to the Covenant), ¶ 7, U.N. Doc. CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.13
(May 26, 2004); see also United Nations, Comm. on Econ., Soc. & Cultural Rights, General Comment No. 3:
The Nature of States Parties Obligations (Art. 2, Para. 1 of the Covenant), ¶ 7, U.N. Doc. E/1991/23 (Dec. 14, 1990).
115 General Comment No. 21, supra note 112, ¶ 48.
116 Report of the Special Representation of the Secretary-General on the Issue of Human Rights and
Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises, John Ruggie, U.N. Doc. A/HRC/14/27, ¶ 1
(Apr. 9, 2010).
117 Claude E. Welch, Jr., Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch: A Comparison, in
NGOs and Human Rights: Promise and Performance 85, 107 (Claude E. Welch, Jr. ed., 2001).
118 Alston, supra note 4, ¶ 4.
119 Telephone Interview with Jessica Heinzelman, Senior ICT Specialist at DAI and former Non-
Technical Project Manager for Uchaguzi (2011).
120 Heinzelman, supra note 26, at 35.

38 WWW.OPENDTA. ORG
 I NFORM ATI O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S F O R H U M A N R I GH T S #ICT4HR

121 Crowdsourcing might also be used to reduce the costs of information analysis. The AAAS, for
example, suggested that projects that require the analysis of very large areas could employ “the crowd” to
compare time sequenced satellite images to identify changes on the ground. Although the project would
have to be supervised by a trained professional, the comparison would not require expertise and could be
performed using crowdsourcing. Telephone Interview with Susan Wolfinbarger, Senior Program Associate,
Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights, and Law Program, AAAS (June 13, 2012).
122 DR Congo: Civilian Cost of Military Operation is Unacceptable, Human Rights Watch (Oct. 13,
2009), ht t p ://ww w.h rw.o rg /e n /n o d e /8 6 048 (“The coalition urged diplomats and UN officials, who are
due to meet in Washington, DC, this week to discuss the situation in eastern Congo and the wider region,
to take immediate steps to increase protection for civilians.”).
123 Clay Shirky, The Political Power of Social Media: Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political
Change, 90 Foreign Affairs 28, 29-30 (2011); see generally Howard & Hussain, supra note 14.
124 See, e.g., Herman Wasserman, Connecting African Activism with Global Networks: ICTs and
South African Social Movements, 30 Africa Development 163, 164–65 (2005).
125 Interview with Jenny Torres, supra note 63.
126 Telephone Interview with Jose Delio Area Garcia, Post-Producer and Editor for “Mirrors
for Gold” (2011).
127 Wasserman, supra note 124, at 165.
128 Nadine Jurrat,Citizen Journalism and the Internet,Open Society Foundations Reference Series No.4 12
(2011) (discussing the role played by the images of Neda Agha Soltan in Iran’s opposition movement).
129 Sameer Padania et al., Cameras Everywhere: Current Challenges and Opportunities
at the Intersection of Human Rights, Video and Technology 18 (2011), available at
|ndex
ht t p: / / w w w.wi tn e s s .o rg /c a me ra s -e ve ryw here/report-2011/tabl e-of-contents .
130 Micah White, Clicktivism is Ruining Leftist Activism, The Guardian (Aug. 12, 2010), http: / /
w w w. g ua r d i a n .c o .u k /c o m m e n ti sfre e /2 010/aug/12/cl i ckti v i s m-rui ni ng-l efti s t-acti v i s m .
131 See Molly Land, Networked Activism, 22 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 205, 214, 221 (2009).
132 See, e.g., Malcom Gladwell, Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted, The New
Yorker (2010) (“Social networks are effective at increasing participation—by lessening the level of
motivation that participation requires.”); Land, supra note 131, at 206 (“Online human rights activism
thus seems faced with two equally unsatisfactory choices—involving many individuals in ways that are
meaningful but potentially of limited efficacy, or professionalization and its associated disadvantages.”)..
133 Land, supra note 131, at 232.
134 Gladwell, supra note 132 (“Because networks don’t have a centralized leadership structure and
clear lines of authority, they have real difficulty reaching consensus and setting goals.”).
135 See generally Shirky, supra note 12.
136 Kenneth Roth, New Laws Needed to Protect Social Media, Globalpost (Apr. 14, 2011),
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/opinion/110413/facebook-twitter-social-media-revolution
(“Social media makes possible a seemingly leaderless revolution, which cannot be so easily decapitated.”).
137 Sarah Joseph, Social Media, Political Change, and Human Rights, 35 B.C. Int’l & Comp. L. Rev.
145, 165 (2012).
138 Telephone Interview with Peter van der Windt, Lead Researcher, Voix des Kivus (2011).
139 Hagen, supra note 6, at 100.
140 See generally Linda Mayoux, Evaluation and Impact Research for Rights-Based Development:
Issues and Challenges (2007) (surveying some of the challenges associated with both evidence-based and
participatory methods of evaluation).
141 Joseph, supra note 137. There are also several studies that focus on the effect of online participation
opportunities on political engagement. See, e.g., Georg Aichholzer & Doris Allhutter, Online Forms of Political
Participation and Their Impact on Democracy, Institute of Technology Assessment, Austrian Academy of
Sciences, Vienna, at 12–13 (2011), available at http://epub.oeaw.ac.at/i ta/i ta-manus cri pt/i ta_11_02 . pdf

T H E W O R L D B A N K G R OU P 39
#ICT4HR NOV EMBER 2012

(surveying studies examining correlations between the availability of political information online and
opportunities for online participation with voting, political donations, and voter turnout, among other
measures of political participation).
142 Social Accountability Sourcebook, supra note 78, at 6 (listing, as examples, “public demonstrations,
protests, advocacy campaigns, investigative journalism, and public interest lawsuits”).
143 Id.; see also John M. Ackerman, Social Accountability in the Public Sector, at 1, available at
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTPCENG/214574-1116506074750/20542263/
FI NA L A c k e rm a n .p d f (citing Carmen Malena et al., Social Accountability: An Introduction to the
Concept and Emerging Practice (2004) available at http://s i teres ources .w orl dbank.org/IN TPCE NG/
214578-1116499844371/20524122/310420PAPER0So1ity0SDP0Civic0no1076.pdf (defining social
accountability as “an approach towards building accountability that relies on civic engagement, i.e. in
which it is ordinary citizens and/or civil society organizations who participate directly or indirectly in
exacting accountability”)); see generally Dena Ringold et al., Citizens and Service Delivery (2011).
144 E-Mail Interview With Stephen Kirimi, supra note 27.
145 See, e.g., Diane F. Orentlicher, Bearing Witness: The Art and Science of Human Rights Fact-Finding,
3 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 83, 91 (1990) (describing the attacks of the Regan administration on HRW’s reporting
of abuses in El Salvador); see also Ann Marie Clark, “A Calendar of Abuses”: Amnesty International’s
Campaign on Guatemala, in NGOs and Human Rights: Promise and Performance 55, 62 (Claude E.
Welch, Jr. ed., 2001) (describing the response of the Guatemalan government to AI’s 1979 report on human
rights abuses in Guatemala calling the information “fabulous tales”).
146 See, e.g., William Korey, NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 346 (2001).
147 Howard & Hussain, supra note 14, at 43.
|ndex
148 Joshua Goldstein & Juliana Rotich, Digitally Networked Technology in Kenya’s 2007–2008 Post-
Election Crisis, at 4 (2008), available at http://cy ber.l aw.harv ard.edu/s i tes /cy ber.l aw.harv ard.edu/
f ile s / G o ldste i n & Ro ti c h _ D i g i ta l l y_ N e tworked_Technol ogy _Keny as _Cri s i s .pdf.pdf ; see also Caroline
Hargreaves & Sanjana Hattotuwa, ICTs For the Prevention of Mass Atrocity Crimes, at 1 (2010), available at
h t t p : / / i c t 4 p e a c e . o r g / w p - c o n t e n t / u p l o a d s / 2 0 1 0 / 1 1 / I C Ts - f o r- t h e - P r e v e n t i o n - o f - M a s s - A t r o c i t y -
C r im e s 1. p d f (noting that “new media, it can be argued, gives even more pervasive and persuasive tools for
misinformation, disinformation, partisan propaganda and hate speech”).
149 Goldstein & Rotich, supra note 148, at 1.
150 Telephone Interview with Erica Hagen, supra note 90.
151 Id.
152 Telephone Interview with Thomas Maketa, supra note 60.
153 Padania et al., supra note 129, at 26; see also Sam Gregory, Cameras Everywhere: Ubiquitous
Video Documentation of Human Rights, New Forms of Video Advocacy, and Considerations of Safety,
Security, Dignity and Consent, 2(2) J. Hum. Rts. Practice 191, 202 (2010) (noting that “the possibilities
for remixing, re-appropriation and recirculation” can “pull the material farther and farther from its source
testifier and/or witness and from its original context – even as that process of translation may increase the
chances that the footage will find an audience (even an unexpected one) that may be willing and able to
respond”).
154 Patrick Meier, Information Forensics: Five Case Studies on How to Verify Crowdsourced Information from
Social Media, available at h ttp ://i R e v o l u ti on.net/2011/11/29/i nformati on-forens i cs -fi v e-cas e-s tud ies ;
see also Jessica Heinzelman & Patrick Meier, Crowdsourcing for Human Rights Monitoring: Challenges and
Opportunities for Information Collection and Verification, in Human Rights and Information Communication
Technologies: Trends and Consequences of Use 123 (J. Lannon & E.F. Halpin eds. 2012). Curation is the
process of presenting, in one place, information judged reliable based on triangulation or investigation. Rohit Bhargava,
Manifesto For The Content Curator: The Next Big Social Media Job of The Future?, Influential Marketing Blog
(Sept. 30, 2009), h ttp ://ro h i tb h a rg a v a.ty pepad.com/w ebl og/2009/09/mani fes to-for-the-cont ent -
c ur a t o r- t he -n e xt-b i g -s o c i a l -m e d i a -j o b -of-the-future-.html.

40 WWW.OPENDTA. ORG
 I NFORM ATI O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S F O R H U M A N R I GH T S #ICT4HR

155 Patrick Meier, Why Bounded Crowdsourcing is Important for Crisis Mapping and Beyond,
ht t p: / / iR e v o l u ti o n .n e t/2 0 1 1 /1 2 /0 7 /wh y -bounded-crow ds ourci ng (last visited July 10, 2012).
156 E-Mail from Peter van der Windt, Lead Researcher, Voix des Kivus (July 12, 2012); see also Patrick
Meier, From Crowdsourcing Crisis Information to Crowdseeding Conflict Zones (Updated), iRevolution
(July 10, 2012).
157 Voix des Kivus Leaflet, supra note 42, at 2.
158 Patrick Meier,Verifying Crowdsourced Social Media Reports for Live Crisis Mapping:An Introduction
to Information Forensics, at 9 (2011), available at http://i rev ol uti on.fi l es .w ordpres s .com/2011 / 11/
m e ie r- v e r i fy i n g -c ro w d so u rc e d -d a ta -c as e-s tudi es .pdf (noting that it is possible to investigate the identity,
associates and previous activity of the reporter).
159 Snowball sampling is a form of bounded crowdsourcing in which trusted reporters recommend
others. As such, this approach provides a means to expand the network of trusted sources. Id. at 8.
160 Voix des Kivus Leaflet, supra note 42, at 4.
161 Van der Windt & Humphreys, supra note 47, at 2.
162 Voix des Kivus Leaflet, supra note 42, at 4; see also van der Windt & Humphreys, supra note 47, at 2.
163 Van der Windt & Humphreys, supra note 47, at 4.
164 Telephone Interview with Jessica Heinzelman, supra note 25.
165 Telephone Interview with Thomas Maketa, supra note 60.
166 Meier, supra note 158, at 14.
167 Molly Beutz Land, Peer Producing Human Rights, 46:4 Alberta L. Rev. 1115, 1132 (2009).
168 Id.
169 CRECO, supra note 24, at 10. The project claimed a 90% verification rate. Id. at 13.
170 Hagen, supra note 6, at 81. |ndex

171 Meier, supra note 158, at 13.

172 E-Mail Interview with Stephen Kirimi, supra note 29.
173 Id.
174 Hagen, supra note 6, at 81.
175 Technology for Transparency Network Interview with Jessica Heinzelman, supra note 25.
176 Id. Although none of the projects employed this technique, verification can also be crowdsourced.
For example, a group of activists in Southern Kyrgyzstan responded to misinformation distributed via SMS
and YouTube by checking with a trusted network of contacts on Skype. Meier, supra note 158, at 12.
177 The coordinator would have a list of the information submitted by the three phoneholders and
would meet with each reporter to determine if the message corresponded to what he or she intended to say.
The coordinator would also meet with others to learn if the events actually took place. E-Mail Interview
with Peter van der Windt, supra note 48.
178 van der Windt & Humphreys, supra note 47, at 4.
179 Heinzelman, supra note 26, at 63.
180 Id.
181 Padania et al., supra note 129, at 22 (noting that “new technologies have made it simpler for human
rights defenders (HRDs) and others to record and report violations, but harder for them to do so securely”).
182 Id. at 25.
183 Gregory, supra note 153, at 203.
184 Eric Schmidt & Jared Cohen, The Digital Disruption: Connectivity and the Diffusion of Power, 89
Foreign Affairs 75, 77 (2010); see also Fred Pretrossian, Iranian Officials ‘Crowd-Source’ Protestor’s
Identities Online, GlobalVoiceOnline.org (June 27, 2009), http://gl obal v oi ces onl i ne.org/2009/06/ 27/
ir a nia n- o f f i c i a l s -c ro w d -so u rc e -p ro te ster-i denti ti es -onl i ne/.
185 Gregory, supra note 153, at 201–02.
186 “All content and communications, including visual media, leave personal digital traces that third
parties can harvest, link and exploit. Hostile governments, in particular, can use photo and video data

T H E W O R L D B A N K G R OU P 41
#ICT4HR NOV EMBER 2012

—particularly that linked with social networking data—to identify track and target activists within their
countries, facilitated by the growth of automatic face-detection and recognition software.” Padania et al.,
supra note 129, at 12.
187 “In general, it is easier to be located and identified, and simpler to have your communications
intercepted on mobile devices than it is on the internet.” Id. at 22; see also Telephone Interview with Erika
Smith, Women’s Rights Project Associate, Association for Progressive Communications Women’s Network
Supporting Program (June 21, 2012).
188 Telephone Interview with Susan Wolfinbarger, supra note 121.
189 Hagen, supra note 6, at 85.
190 See Christian Kelleher et al., The Human Rights Documentation Initiative at the University of
Texas Libraries, 15 New Review of Information Networking 94 (2010).
191 E-Mail Interview with Peter van der Windt, supra note 48.
192 Heinzelman, supra note 26, at 76.
193 Id.
194 Id. at 62. Access to information might be limited through segmentation and password protection of
the technical platforms as well as limited permissions for downloading, removing, or modifying data. Id. at 77.
195 Voix des Kivus Leaflet, supra note 42, at 3.
196 E-Mail Interview with Peter van der Windt, supra note 48.
197 Telephone Interview with Thomas Maketa, supra note 60.
198 E-mail Interview with Françoise Mukuku, supra note 51.
199 E-Mail Interview with Peter van der Windt, supra note 48.
200 Heinzelman, supra note 26, at 84.
|ndex
201 Telephone Interview with Peter van der Windt, supra note 45.
202 Id.
203 Heinzelman, supra note 26, at 77.
204 Id.
205 See Aichholzer & Allhutter, supra note 141, at 12–13.
206 Map Kibera, for example, was initially only available online but few people accessed it because
they lacked an Internet connection. A later deployment included a mobile phone browser version that
allowed individuals to submit and view reports by web-enabled phone. Telephone Interview with Erica
Hagen, Co-Founder, Map Kibera (2011).
207 Tom Sarrazin, Texting, Tweeting, Mobile Internet: New Platforms for Democratic Debate in
Africa, fesMedia Africa Series 1, 17 (2011), available at http://l i brary.fes .de/pdf-fi l es /bueros /afr ica-
m e dia / 083 4 3 .p d f .
208 Quarterly Sector Statistics Report: 1st Quarter July-Sept 2011/2012, Communications Commission
of Kenya (2011), available at h ttp ://ww w.cck.go.ke/res c/dow nl oads /SECTO R _STATISTICS_R EPORT_
Q 1_ 11- 12.p d f .
209 E-Mail Interview with Erica Hagen, supra note 32.
210 Telephone Interview with Thomas Maketa, supra note 60.
211 Sarrazin, supra note 207, at 16.
212 Vänskä, supra note 101, at 4.
213 Sarrazin, supra note 207, at 16.
214 Jamie M. Zimmerman & Sascha Meinrath, Mobile Phones Will Not Save the Poorest of the Poor,
Slate (Feb. 9, 2012), h ttp ://ww w.s l a te .c om/arti cl es /technol ogy /future_tens e/2012/02/m_pes a_and_
o t he r _ ic t 4 d _ p ro j e c ts _ a re _ l e a vi n g _ b e hi nd_the_dev el opi ng_w orl d_s _poores t_peopl e_.s i ngl e.htm l.
215 E-Mail Interview with Stephen Kirimi, supra note 29.
216 Telephone Interview with Thomas Maketa, supra note 60.
217 E-Mail Interview with Françoise Mukuku, supra note 51.
218 Voix des Kivus Leaflet, supra note 42, at 4.

42 WWW.OPENDTA. ORG
 I NFORM ATI O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S F O R H U M A N R I GH T S #ICT4HR

219 Telephone Interview with Thomas Maketa, supra note 60.

220 Report of the Special Rapporteur, supra note 1, ¶ 61; see also Wasserman, supra note 124, at 174.
221 S. Revi Sterling, AIR: Advancement through Interactive Radio, at 4 (2007), available at
ht t p: / / w w w.c s .c o l o ra d o .e d u /d e p a rtm e nt/publ i cati ons /reports /docs /CU -CS-1006-06.pdf.
222 Voix des Kivus Leaflet, supra note 42, at 2.
223 Id. at 4.
224 E-Mail Interview with Françoise Mukuku, supra note 51.
225 Telephone Interview with Jessica Heinzelman, supra note 25.
226 Id.
227 E-Mail Interview with Françoise Mukuku, supra note 51.
228 Voix des Kivus Leaflet, supra note 42, at 2.
229 Hagen, supra note 6, at 72.
230 Id. at 83.
231 Telephone Interview with Erica Hagen, supra note 206 (users “saw web not as participatory tool
for change but as a way to seek information and chat with friends”).
232 Hagen, supra note 6, at 75.
233 E-Mail Interview with Françoise Mukuku, supra note 51.
234 Telephone Interview with Erica Hagen, supra note 90.
235 Preventing Violence — Lessons from the Kenyan Constitution Referendum — Peace Watch
8/2010, Kubatana.net (Aug. 13, 2010), h ttp://w w w.kubatana.net/html /archi v e/l egi s l /100813v erit as.
a s p?s e c t o r= L E GIS L .
236 Interview with Jessica Heinzelman, supra note 25.
237 van der Windt & Humphreys, supra note 47, at 6. |ndex
238 See Tom Mclean, Not with a Bang but a Whimper: The Politics of Accountability and Open Data
in the UK, at 11, available at h ttp ://p a p ers .s s rn.com/s ol 3/papers .cfm? abs tract_i d= 1899790 (2011)
(concluding that, in the context of the UK’s open data initiative, that although technology has reduced the
costs of accessing data, costs of interpreting and using that data remained prohibitively high).
239 Telephone Interview with Peter van der Windt, supra note 45.
240 Heinzelman, supra note 26, at 74.
241 Kenya SOS by SMS, IRIN Africa (Aug. 3, 2010), http://w w w.i ri nnew s .org/R eport/900 50/
K ENYA - SO S -b y -S MS .
242 Heinzelman, supra note 26, at 48–49; see also E-Mail Interview with Stephen Kirimi, supra note 29.
Uwiano received 14,000 messages in the three weeks leading up to the referendum, and another 6,000 on
the day itself. Heinzelman, supra note 26, at 47.
243 E-Mail Interview with Peter van der Windt, supra note 48.
244 Bulkley, supra note 70.
245 E-mail Interview with Peter van der Windt, supra note 48.
246 Van der Windt & Humphreys, supra note 47, at 8.
247 Telephone Interview with Jessica Heinzelman, supra note 25.
248 Telephone Interview with Erica Hagen, supra note 90. An analysis of the UN’s early warning
mechanism from 1997 succinctly noted: “The UN’s problem is not the absence of information. Rather, it is
the absence of an organization to manage the information flow, linking early warning to the other processes
crucial to rapid reaction. To be effective, this early warning mechanism must be linked to individuals
and organizations capable of acting on such information.” George Bowers, The United Nations—
Enhancing Its Early-Warning Mechanism iii (1997).
249 E-Mail Interview with Rachel Brown, supra note 91.
250 Telephone Interview with Jessica Heinzelman, supra note 25.
251 Land, supra note 167, at 1131–32.
252 Alston, supra note 4, ¶ 6; see also Beutz Land, supra note 167, at 1131-35 (describing how amateurs

T H E W O R L D B A N K G R OU P 43
#ICT4HR NOV EMBER 2012

and professionals could work together to produce human rights reports).

253 In describing uses of Frontline SMS, Alston notes it “can be used as an early warning system, or
to track patterns of violence or the effects of a natural disaster, or to facilitate rapid response or service
delivery. Crisis mapping can provide important visual representation of events, facilitating more effective
strategic planning or advocacy.” Id.
254 Grassrootsalquds.net, for example, provides an interface that allows organizations operating
in Jerusalem to provide information about themselves and what they do. Grassroots Al-Quds Network,
GrassRootsAlQuds.ne, h ttp ://g ra ss roots al quds .net/gras s roots -al -quds -netw ork (last visited June
26, 2012).
255 E-Mail Interview with Peter van der Windt, supra note 48.
256 Telephone Interview with Erica Hagen, supra note 90.
257 Chris Beyrer & Nancy E. Kass, Human Rights, Politics, and Reviews of Research Ethics, 360 The
Lancet 246, 247 (2002) (noting that U.S. regulations require ethical review of human subjects research and
that this review considers “whether studies have an adequate balance of benefits to risks, whether consent
procedures are adequate, and whether any groups of participants are improperly targeted or denied benefits
as a result of the study”).
258 Institutional Review Board, h ttp ://en.w i ki pedi a.org/w i ki /Ins ti tuti onal _rev i ew _board .
259 Voix des Kivus Leaflet, supra note 42, at 3.
260 Van der Windt & Humphreys, supra note 47, at 8.
261 Telephone Interview with Erica Hagen, supra note 90; E-Mail from Erica Hagen, supra note 34.
262 Heinzelman, supra note 26, at 62.
263 Telephone Interview with Erica Hagen, supra note 90.
|ndex
264 Research ethics codes all require informed consent, see Beyrer & Kass, supra note 257, at 248, as
do human rights protocols, see [need cite].
265 Comments of Susannah Sirkin, Symposium Proceedings—Human Rights Impact: General Issues
and Sectoral Perspectives 64 (Yasmine Ergas & Kristina Eberbach eds. 2010); see also Eileen Pittaway et al.,
“Stop Stealing Our Stories”: The Ethics of Research with Vulnerable Groups, 2(2) J. Hum. Rts. Practice
229, 233 (2010) (noting the difficulty of communicating the implications of releasing a DVD to the media
in a refugee community).
266 Pittaway et al., supra note 265, at 233.
267 Gregory, supra note 153, at 204 (noting that models of informed consent that emphasize communicating
the worst-case scenarios for impact—that the information will be seen by your oppressor or opponent—may
be “impossible to sustain in the online participatory culture context of user-generated media”).
268 Telephone Interview with Jessica Heinzelman, supra note 25.
269 Van der Windt & Humphreys, supra note 47, at 5.
270 Telephone Interview with Peter van der Windt, supra note 45.
271 Id.
272 Hagen, supra note 6, at 92. The “hacker’s ethos” is an approach that tries, among other things, to
“build the best services over the long term by quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations rather
than trying to get everything right all at once.” Mark Zuckerberg’s Letter to Investors:‘The Hacker Way’,
Wired (Feb. 1, 2012), available at h ttp ://w w w.w i red.com/bus i nes s /2012/02/z uck-l etter/ .
273 Hagen, supra note 6, at 73.
274 Telephone Interview with Susan Wolfinbarger, supra note 121.
275 Telephone Interview with Jessica Heinzelman, supra note 119.
276 Padania et al., supra note 129, at 26.
277 Van der Windt & Humphreys, supra note 47, at 7.
278 Tom Sarrazin argues, for example, that “awareness-raising and promoting media literacy among
ordinary citizens are the best tools in the fight for balance and fairness in citizen journalism.” Sarrazin, supra
note 207, at 36.

44 WWW.OPENDTA. ORG
 I NFORM ATI O N A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S F O R H U M A N R I GH T S #ICT4HR

279 Telephone Interview with Peter van der Windt, supra note 45.
280 Approximately 70-80% of the phone holders would go out and gather information about what
was happening in the village; the remainder would wait until villagers came to them with something to
report. Id.
281 Although principles of ethics in the human rights context are not codified and vary by organization,
most approaches emphasize informed consent—disclosing the purpose for collecting information and how
the information will be used, ensuring the person understands (and is able to understand) the consequences
of sharing information, and obtaining that person’s voluntary consent to share the information. See Gregory,
supra note 153, at 202–03.
282 Witness, for example, supports the use of informed consent or, if that is not possible, “an assessment
based either on objective, established principles (termed ‘a professional practice’)—or carried out by a well-
informed individual who seeks to determine what a person who has not given explicit consent might be
expected to grant (‘a reasonable person’ guideline).” Id. at 202; see also Comments of Susannah Sirkin, supra
note 265, at 64 (noting that in some instances, researchers may conclude that the risk is too great despite
the witness’s consent; although motivated by security, “in making such decisions, it [the organization] runs
the risk of becoming paternalistic”).
283 The choice of professional standards can have profound consequences for decision making. For
example, there are tensions between “the medical ethics lens, which addresses each person individually, and
the public health ethics lens, which primarily focuses on delivering the greatest good to the greatest number
of people at the lowest cost.” Comments of Susannah Sirkin, supra note 265, at 64.
284 Human rights research ethics may actually be most flexible but least developed of these three. See
Paul Gready, Introduction—“Responsibility to the Story,” 2(2) J. Hum. Rts. Practice 177, 179 (2010)
(“Human rights practitioners lack a more general ethical code similar to those followed by other professions, |ndex
such as lawyers, physicians and journalists.”).
285 Gregory, supra note 153, at 205.
286 Telephone Interview with Erica Hagen, supra note 90.
287 Telephone Interview with Thomas Maketa, supra note 60.
288 Hagen, supra note 6, at 72–77.
289 Telephone Interview with Jessica Heinzelman, supra note 25.
290 Telephone Interview with Peter van der Windt, supra note 45.
291 Id.
292 Hagen, supra note 6, at 92.

T H E W O R L D B A N K G R OU P 45
|ndex