The AAAS Science and Human Rights Program, in collaboration with Amnesty International, has created a new database of human rights-related events occurring in northwestern Pakistan.

“Human rights workers in the highly volatile region have had difficulty gathering data,” explained AAAS Project Director Lars Bromley. “Creation of a common database on violations will assist investigations. AAAS and Amnesty International staff worked together to create a database on human rights related events from major news sources for the years 2005-2009. This database was then made accessible via a mapping and analysis tool available on the project Web site, www.eyesonpakistan.org.”

Bromley, his AAAS colleague Susan Wolfinbarger, and Scott Edwards of Amnesty International described their efforts during the AAAS Annual Meeting symposium, “Information Technologies and Remote Sensing for Understanding Human Rights.”

Media sources report a high number of daily events in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, Bromley noted, particularly the Pakistani provinces of FATA (Federally Administrated Tribal Areas) and NWFP (North West Frontier Province), which are the focus areas for the AAAS-AI project.

“Using geographic visualization techniques allows us to paint a broader picture of the human rights situation on the ground in Pakistan across time and space,” said Wolfinbarger, senior program associate at AAAS. “It facilitates isolating trends that would not be uncovered in traditional analysis.”

Internet-based visualization of human rights events provided by Eyes on Pakistan allows the user to interact with the data rather than just read figures from reports and tables. “Moving into more advanced geographic tools to look at human rights from other perspectives is a major goal of the project here at AAAS,” added Bromley, who directs the association’s Geospatial Technologies and Human Rights Project.

The Eyes on Pakistan site is envisioned as a go-to location for researchers interested in learning about the evolution of this conflict, he said. To aid research, updates to the site will be ongoing as the conflict stretches into 2010, and the original database will soon be made available on request.

“This is not just a project that stops at the end of the current data analysis—it will continue to be a go-to location for timely understanding of the conflict,” Wolfinbarger said.

Scott Edwards, director of the Science for Human Rights project at Amnesty International, USA, said: “Establishing and sharing common information pools on abuses is critical if the human rights community is to avoid duplicative or fragmented efforts, and ensure the watchdog function of human rights research is met. Yet, the mere presentation of such information is often a challenge.”

The maps and data available at the Eyes on Pakistan site are part of broader Amnesty International efforts calling for respect of international humanitarian law by all parties to the conflict.

The Eyes on Pakistan site makes use of advanced geo-visualization software, ArcServer from ESRI, Inc., that dynamically serves data and maps and has limitless customization possibilities. The specific configuration developed for the Eyes on Pakistan site is informed by the collaboration of AAAS and AI and is designed to meet specific user needs of the human rights community and policymakers as well.

AAAS has pioneered the use of geospatial technology, especially satellite imagery, in human rights cases and has helped human rights groups document widespread abuses in Zimbabwe, Burma, Chad, and the Darfur region of Sudan.

In 2006, AAAS analyzed satellite images of Porta Farm, a settlement located just west of the Zimbabwean capital of Harare for an AI report. In late 2007, AAAS released a report  identifying 25 sites throughout eastern Burma (also known as Myanmar) showing significant village destruction and forced relocations. AAAS has also worked with Human Rights Watch in 2008 to document violations in Sri Lanka and eastern Ethiopia, and in 2009 to assess civilian casualties in Sri Lanka.

The AAAS analysis was completed with funding from the Oak Foundation.