Work on recovering human rights data from the previously secret national police archives Photo: Benetech
This post by Benetech's Communication Director, Ann Harrison, appeared on Benetech's blog. It gives a really insightful update on the work going on to digitize and organise the paper records of the secret police archives found in Guatemala.
"Discovered last summer, the warehouse contains approximately 80 million
records from the archive of the Guatemalan National Police. These
papers, books, photos and floppy disks contain critical information
about police procedures during Guatemala's 30-year internal armed
conflict that claimed an estimated 200,000 lives. This data is now
under the protection of the Guatemalan Human Rights Ombudsman, Sergio
Morales, who is researching human rights violations that occurred
during those 30 years."
The post highlights the issue of time and the imperative to record as much of the information as possible:"The archive workers are racing against time. In March the Guatemalan
Human Rights Ombudsman is up for reelection. The project must take full
advantage of the current Ombudsman's unconditional support while he is
in charge. In a country that has a long tradition of impunity and
denial of justice, prominent figures may feel affected by the archive
investigations."
You can find out more about the important work of Benetech in Guatemala here and read about their initiative called the Human Rights Data Analysis Group which develops
information technology solutions and statistical techniques to help
human
rights advocates
build evidence-based arguments. Of particular interest as well is the Martus project.Dr Patrick Ball through the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) did a lot of important work that made possible the CIDH (International Centre for Human Rights Research in Guatemala) and the statistical work of the CEH (Commission for Historical Clarification).
Background
You can read previous reports on the discovery of the secret police archives here.
