Last week, Benetech participated in the third annual RightsCon conference in San Francisco—which brought together tech executives, policy advocates, and security experts to examine ways in which the digital sector can be used to protect and expand the rights of people worldwide. The program included multiple sessions with members of Benetech’s Human Rights team.
As hundreds of technologists, businesses, governments, and human rights defenders assemble in San Francisco for the RightsCon technology and human rights conference, our CEO, Jim Fruchterman, and VP of Human Rights, Enrique Piracés, have co-authored a Huffington Post op-ed on human rights and the duty to protect sensitive data. They argue that the “Do No Harm” principle requires social justice advocates to use encryption and other strong security practices.
Amnesty International’s Christoph Koettl discusses the unique opportunities and pitfalls presented by the decentralized, real-time exposure of human rights violations on YouTube. On PBS’ MediaShift blog, Koettl cites Benetech’s Mobile Martus app among the top human rights tools that collect relevant data and securely store that information.
In the light of the recent political reforms in Burma, for the first time, our partners at the Network for Human Rights Documentation – Burma (ND-Burma) felt comfortable planning a comprehensive Martus training in Rangoon. In late November 2013, jointly with ND-Burma, our team co-led a training for seven human rights groups issues such as digital security tools and methods, approaches to documentation, and, of course, a deep training on using Martus. We are honored to have been able to support ND-Burma member organizations at this memorable training and are deeply grateful for their continued partnership.
I recently returned from a weeklong training in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where I worked with our partner, Housing Works, to set up a nation-wide human rights documentation project using Martus, Benetech’s secure, open source documentation tool. The new initiative follows on the heels of a spate of homophobic violence experienced by the Haitian LGBTI community earlier this year. By the end of our training week, we graduated 20 new Martus Human Rights monitors representing 10 organizations working across the country with the goal of ensuring that no human rights violation motivated by homophobia, misogyny or stigma based on HIV status goes undocumented.
