On the same day as I read about Gul Meena — a 17 year old Pakistani girl who was almost killed and severely maimed by her own brother — I bought a pair of skinny jeans. When I got home, I noticed they were made in Pakistan. I think I don’t need to say more… Gul Meena, 17, left her abusive husband in Pakistan for another man. Meena’s brother hacked her friend to death with an ax, before turning on her. Skinny Jeans Made in Pakistan
This month, The Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law (HiiL) announced the finalists for its Innovating Justice Awards. The top three justice innovations for 2012 were The Human Rights & International Criminal Law Online Forum, a partnership between International Criminal Court Office of the Prosecutor (ICC OTP) and UCLA School of Law; The National Justice in Your Community programme of Peru, a project that supports volunteer efforts of judges in their local communities to share their legal knowledge and experience; and Peace Tones, a project that works to protect the rights of world musicians through technology and education. “Innovation is one of the important growth variables. We also see the rule of law as one of the most important factors in the welfare and well-being of the society,” stated Dr. Anne van Aaken, Innovating Justice jury chair and Max Schmidheiny Foundation Professor for Law and Economics, Public, International and European Law. “Justice innovations have the potential to contribute immensely to human welfare, just like technical innovation do.” Thinking broadly, there are three categories of justice innovations. One focuses on providing education and access to the existing laws to the undeserved communities. There’s lots of misinformation out there. And those…
This week, I was invited to attend a BRIDGE Summit at Stanford. I was there to represent Ushahidi’s work and wasn’t particularly sure what to expect… But it turned out to be a very interesting brainstorming session for a new product/service in the health space: BRIDGE. Dr. Stephen Friend (M.D. and PH.D., president/co-founder/director of Sage Bionetworks) ran the show. What you will read below are just my notes, ideas, and understanding of what we were trying to do. I’m sure others at this summit came away with a whole different set thoughts, but, in the interest of advancing my own understanding and sharing of ideas in general, it seemed worth putting together a narrative of the product we were designing. So what is BRIDGE? After a two day discussion, we settled that BRIDGE is a platform (rather than an app) that will strive to: help gather medical information; crowdsource algorithms that would act on collected data with an aim to make medical advances; provide services to patients (information, education, support); facilitate research and make it easier for scientists to get access to data and to post requests for crowdsourcing projects; ease communication between all individuals and organizations working to advance…
So I’ve learned a new word: Speed Geeking. It’s like speed dating but for geeks to quickly present their ideas to a small group. You have five minutes strict, and then move on to the next presenting geek. It was a very interesting format, but it clearly had accessibility issue: I walk with a cane and I found it very hard. It would have been impossible in a wheelchair. And others with disabilities clearly had issues with this format. But that said, I’ve learned a lot. Below are my notes on the Speed Geeking event at US Rio +2.0. Noel Dickover — Senior New Media Advisor, Office of eDiplomacy, U.S. Department of State — introduced Speed Geeking and ran the event with an iron fist! FrontlineSMS Demoed by Sean Martin McDonald, Director of Operations http://www.frontlinesms.com Main Point: SMS is cheap data that is easy to structure and moves over cell networks (without Internet) Yahoo Demoed by Gil Yehuda, Director of Open Source Product Management at Yahoo! Gil talk about the use of Flickr for journalism, human rights, and keeping people safe. He raised the issue of copyright. KIVA Demoed by Beth Kuenstler, VP of Marketing & Communications If you haven’t…
Below are the notes from the US Rio+2.0 conference hosted at Stanford last week. The notes are from the Education: Environment and Conservation breakout session. US Rio+2.0 Breakout Session Education: Environment and Conservation Attendees: Prof. Anthony D. Barnosky: Professor and Curator, Department of Integrative Biology at University of California Berkeley Wali Modaqiq: Deputy Director General (DDG), National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan Dr. Khalid Naseemi: Chief of Staff & Spokes Person for National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan Julie Noblitt: The Green Ninja — Climate-action Superhero Prof. Robert Siegel, M.D., Ph.D.: Associate Professor, Microbiology & Immunology Human Biology/African Studies at Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences Dr. Beth Stevens: Senior Vice President, Corporate Citizenship Environment and Conservation at Disney Worldwide Services, Inc. Madam Anyaa Vohiri, M.A., J.D.: Executive Director, Environmental Protection Agency of Liberia Olga Werby, Ed.D.: President, Pipsqueak Productions, LLC. Mostapha Zaher: Director General (DG), National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan Our breakout group was partly the result of the conversation started the day before in the Environment session. Some of the members of our breakout group were present in that session as well. The main discussion…
ICT & Human Rights Panel at IADIS The presenters in attendance, in order of presentation: Professor Sangeeta Sharma Title of presentation: Reinvigorating Human Rights Through ICT School of Public Administration University of Rajasthan, India Professor Alice Robbin Title of presentation: ICTs and Health: Complexity Redux Indiana University Bloomington Dr. Sarai Lastra Title of presentation: ICTs and Children: Bridging the Gap between Digital Immigrants, Digital Natives Universidad del Turabo Gurabo, Puerto Rico Dr. Miranda Kajtazi Title of presentation: Information Inadequacy in Information Society: advantages of ICTs School of Computer Science, Physics and Mathematics Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden Dr. Jacques Steyn Title of presentation: Prerequisites for ICT Rights School of IT Monash South Africa Patrick Meier and Dr. Virve Siirak were unable to attend in person. I summarized Patrick’s work in my opening statement and I hope Dr. Siirak would comment on his work below or on our LinkedIn community (ICT & Human Rights—all are welcome to join our open group). Opening Statement I chose to introduce each subtopic of the panel as part of my opening statement and to give it a slightly unusual take for each topic. Below are my notes and I’ve posted the PDF of my KeyNote on…
IADIS conference is fast approaching. It will take place at the end of July in Rome, Italy. I’m chairing the ICT & Human Rights panel. Here’s a list of speakers and their topics. I’m also attaching the poster for the session. Please feel free to pass it on to those who might be interested in this topic. Thank you! I hope to see some of you in Rome! 2011-06-29 ICT Human Rights Poster Download ICT & Human Rights Monday, July 25th 11:30 a.m. until 1:00 p.m. This panel is dedicated to discussing how Information and Communication Technologies can be used to advance human rights around the world. Individuals can impact society, react, and reach out with the aid of technology. ICT is a powerful tool for encouraging, teaching, and protecting human rights. To learn more, please visit the IADIS web site: http://www.ict-conf.org/panel.asp To continue the conversation beyond the conference, please join our LinkedIn Group: LinkedIn: ICT & Human Rights linkedin.com/groups/ICT-Human-Rights-3398838 Presenters Dr. Miranda Kajtazi “Information Inadequacy in Information Society: Advantages of ICTs” School of Computer Science, Physics and Mathematics Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden Dr. Sarai Lastra “ICTs and Children: Bridging the Gap between Digital Immigrants, Digital Natives” Universidad del Turabo…
