Human Rights and Information Technology

1. Human Rights and Information Technology Building a Global Human Rights Knowledge Base for the Post WW II Era

2. Introduction • An Information Age effort to identify and document human rights events • Going from a data base to an information base to a knowledge base • Part of a larger project conducted by the Cline Center for Democracy • The Societal Infrastructures and Development Project (the SID) Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois

3. Organization • Introduce the SID • Discuss the SID’s event analysis & the need for an improved human rights knowledge base • Event Analysis: A Brief Overview • Comparison of SID and prior human rights event analyses • Shortcomings of our approach • The SID and academic research on human rights • The SID and the advancement of human rights Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois

4. The SID • An empirical study of institutions, national settings and development for 177 nations in the post WW II era • By societal infrastructures we mean • Institutions • Economic, • Legal, • Political systems • The context within which institutions operate: • Resource endowments, • Intensity of group-based strife, • Level of economic development, • Economic structure, • Strategic setting, • etc. • By development we mean • Economic • Human • Human Rights • Environmental Quality • Infant Mortality • Etc. Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois

5. Of all the factors that can affect societal welfare, institutional designs are the most amenable to human intervention and change This presumes we know how, where and when different institutional designs SID is designed as a rigorous test of the “Liberal Paradigm” It is an empirical starting point not an article of faith We allow for the possibility that different institutional designs will work in different settings and different times Focus on Institutions Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois

6. SID Data Collection Effort • Multi-year effort • $1.5M already invested in direct costs • Variety of specialized research teams • Three Components • Integrate readily available archival data • Create targeted data collection projects • Legal infrastructures, legal education, free trade, national elections, environmental quality, natural resources, etc. • Major cross-cutting projects • The Comparative Constitutions Project • Computer-aided coding of every constitution in world, 1789- • 668 survey questions; over 1300 raw variables • The Event Analysis • Compilation and analysis of global news reports Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois

7. SID’s Analytical Objectives • We want to • Develop new cross national measures of economic, political and legal institutions • Use these measures jointly to gauge national institutional designs for post WW II era • Use variations in institutional designs, in conjunction with national settings, to assess their independent impact on welfare indicators, including human rights • Use the results of these analyses to provide an empirical base for nation-building efforts • Developing a Collaboration with the Public International Law and Policy Group (PILPG) for real world applications Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois

8. Human Rights and the Event Analysis • Human Rights: A Key Dimension of Well-being • Not subject matter experts • Can’t be for all of the substantive domains! • SID: Highly decentralized Effort • Review of the Literature • Revealed paucity of sound data on human rights • Need to develop a sound human rights information base and develop it into a knowledge base • Capitalizing on existing data using advance IT • Analysis, reflection, dialogue Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois

9. Approaches to Documenting Human Rights Violations • Landman’s 2004 article notes 4 approaches • Qualitative • Amnesty International, State Department • Survey data • Eurobarometer, World Barometer, World Values • Event data • Minorities at risk, World Handbook • Quantitative summaries • Freedom House Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois

10. Event-based Approaches • Landman suggests these are the most promising for constructing a human rights knowledge base • Are the source of information for all other approaches • Provide the basis for • “meaningful, valid time-series data” • “second order” analyses of human rights events • Notes a “tradeoff” between event-specific information and cross-national comparison • The structure of the SID event analysis minimizes this tradeoff Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois

11. SID Event Analysis: Sources • Contemporary (2006-) • Cline Center News Website Crawl • 600 websites; 4800 newsfeeds • Websites located in over 120 nations; 95% of global population • 1-12 hours intervals • 15,000 articles captured each day (5.5M total) • Historical (1946-2006) • 25M+ articles • New York Times • Wall Street Journal • Federal Broadcast Information Service • Summary of World Broadcasts (?) Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois

12. Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois

13. SID Event Analysis: Definition of Human Rights Events • We are as comprehensive as possible in our definition of human rights events • Categories come from • the Universal Declaration of Human Rights • Exploratory phase of event analysis • Two Main Categories • Regard for Human Life Events • Respect for Human Rights Events • Nearly one-quarter of our categories deal with human rights events (political expression, property rights, etc.) • 45 categories of a 200 category classification scheme Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois

14. Regard for Human Life Events • Genocide • Loss of human life (excluding death penalty) • Application of the death sentence • Non-lethal injury to humans • Wanton disregard for human life, despite no actual harm • Coercive constraint of humans • Involuntary servitude • Initiatives to prevent physical harm (not peacekeeping) • Engagement of peacekeeping forces • Actions to release detained individuals • Failure to engage in activities that would have prevented harm • Acts aimed at compensating those injured by prior actions • Post hoc remedial acts by states that have inflicted physical harm • Verbal criticism of those who have inflicted physical harm Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois

15. Regard for Human Rights Events • Basic citizenship rights • National citizenship • Right to equal treatment • Provision of asylum • Right to domestic travel • Right to international travel • Treatment of refugees • Treatment of immigrants • Other basic citizenship rights • The right to privacy • Sexual orientation • Reproductive matters • Other aspects of an individual’s body • Violations of private space • Electronic surveillance • Other privacy matters • Marital and family rights • Treatment of state detainees • Social rights • Employment rights Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois

16. Event Analysis: The Automatic Text Classification Program • Dealing with 30M+ articles and a 200 category scheme requires careful use of most sophisticated and powerful ATC programs • We use • Machine learning techniques; and • Extensive computer-aided human categorization • Exploratory Phase and three-wave pretest • 100,000 randomly selected articles • Human categorized to teach computer • Excellent results midway into 2nd wave of pretest Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois

17. SID Event Analysis: Data Mining • We plan to use a combination of human coding and the most sophisticated and appropriate data mining tools available • Computer-aided surveys that have both • General queries • Category-specific queries • Chaining technologies • Link related events together for data mining • Provide for creation of human rights “episodes” • Not yet at the data mining stage Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois

18. SID’s Human Rights Event Analysis: A Comparison • Sources • Most prior event analyses use NYT • Wholly inadequate for global coverage • Time Frame • 1946 – on • Most studies start around 1976 Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois

19. SID’s Human Rights Event Analysis: A Comparison • Inclusiveness; we capture • Most types of human rights violations • Other studies are more limited (human integrity), or • Don’t differentiate carefully across violations • Events that involve respect for human rights • Events involving private actors • Important for understanding national culture Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois

20. SID’s Human Rights Event Analysis: A Comparison • Unit of analysis • The human rights event • Most studies employ country-year • Analytically limiting • We will have 1-2 M human rights events • Not all independent • Many will be: • Follow-up stories • Redundant coverage • Enormous Implications for building human rights knowledge base • Cross-national, time series data • Linked data on human rights episodes Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois

21. SID’s Human Rights Event Analysis: A Comparison • Richness of information base • Event-specific data • Who • What • Where • Etc. • Nested in SID’s • Institutional data • Contextual data • Supplemented by • Chain data from antecedent and aftermath events Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois

22. SID’s Human Rights Event Analysis: Principal Shortcomings • Can’t capture events that never make it into the press • True of any approach that is a quantitative, cross-national study • Our ATC procedures are highly likely to capture events if they are reported • Less than 1% lost by computer screening • Those that don’t base their assessment on valid news reports are likely to be contaminated by ideological or some other form of bias • Bottom-line: Many not be able to accurately capture all countries for all years. • Good news is that we are likely to know what to exclude Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois

23. SID’s Human Rights Events and Academic Research • Events Data and academic research on Human Rights • Enrich • Our efforts designed to capitalize on key academic insights • HR violations occur when regime authority is threatened • Context matters • Internal setting • International setting • Energize • New people • New analytic capabilities • Number of events; temporal and spatial dimensions to data • Richness of information on events and settings • Chaining of information on episodes Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois

24. SID’s Human Rights Knowledge Base and the Promotion of Human Rights • Transforming the SID data base into a human rights data base through rigorous academic research can have payoffs • Can use empirical based insights to • Determine the effectiveness of different strategies • Understand the conditions under which they will be most effective • Working with PILPG and other groups will enhance these payoffs Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois

25. Three Human Integrity Examples • Early warning indicators and preemptive actions • What characteristics of events and contexts can produce insights into likely regime responses? • How can these insights be used to minimize violence • Nation-focused strategies to minimize violence • When will international sanctions (warning, aid cutoff, boycotting, threatened military intervention) be effective? • Perpetrator-focused strategies to minimize future abuses • What are the effects of national institutional designs on human rights abuses? • What are effects of prosecutions of offenders? Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois