Hacking for Human Rights

Since 2013, “Diplohacks” have been held once or twice a year in locations around the world to “creatively ‘hack’ real world problems — to explore innovative ideas that leverage new technologies to solve old challenges.”  Diplohackers include diplomats, techies, social entrepreneurs, academics, civil society representatives and human rights activists.  

In February 2016, Diplohackers met in Geneva and took on a list of challenges presented by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.  Specifically,  the hackers spent 48 hours developing new ways to gather and verify evidence of human rights abuses.  Read the full report and see the video here.  For a description of one team’s solution to the problem, check out this link. 

For more information on innovative approaches to human rights methodology in the US, follow the progress of the newly launched Human Rights Methodology Lab, co-sponsored by the NYU Center for Human Rights, Global Justice and Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute, and Human Rights Watch.