Amnesty International Training: Introduction to Digital Verification for Human Rights

Amnesty International’s Evidence Lab supports human rights researchers and advocates in using cutting edge technology, open source investigations and crowdsourcing to expose human rights abuses around the world.

Want to be at the cutting edge of investigating human rights abuses?

This hands-on training is designed for students, activists, journalists and technologists who want an introduction to this fast-developing field of open source investigation and digital verification.
Join Amnesty’s Evidence Lab for a hands-on session where you will learn digital investigation techniques such as citizen media verification, geo-location, remote sensing and satellite imagery analysis, weapons analysis and data visualisation.

Limited places: to confirm your participation please email Milena Marin, milena.marin@amnesty.org , email title "RSVP: Digital Verification Training".
If you confirm attendance and cannot join, please let us know ASAP so that someone else can take your place.
Please bring a laptop to make sure you can follow the training.

Speakers:
Milena Marin, Amnesty International’s Senior Adviser, Evidence Lab, led the Strike Tracker project. She has over ten-year experience working at the intersection of technology, data and social good on issues like public sector transparency, corruption, open data and human rights. Before joining the Crisis Response Team, she led the development of Amnesty Decoders, an innovative platform using data science, crowdsourcing and artificial intelligence to process and analyse large volumes of data such as documents, satellite images and pictures. Previously she worked as programme manager of School of Data and also with Transparency International where she supported TI’s global network to use technology in the fight against corruption. Milena holds a Master in Interdisciplinary Research and Studies on Eastern Europe, with a focus on EU-Russia relations.

Micah Farfour is a Special Adviser in Remote Sensing for the Crisis Response Team at Amnesty International. After returning from Peace Corps in Africa, Micah received her Master’s in GIS and spent four years working with high resolution satellite imagery to monitor events globally. She developed skills to align open source information with the analysis of remotely sensed imagery to produce visual evidence of human rights abuses all over the world from her home in Colorado. Micah's work has provided corroboration of mass graves, attacks on civilians, indiscriminate bombings and other humanitarian crises to support research for numerous NGOs and government entities. Currently, she is working on projects in Syria, Nigeria, Sudan, Myanmar and Iraq.

Scott Edwards is a Senior Analyst with Amnesty International. His work focuses on the development of early warning mechanisms for humanitarian crises, as well as the practical use of new methods and technologies for human rights compliance monitoring and evidence collection, especially as it relates to international justice and accountability. He completed his doctoral work in Political Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, focusing on causes and consequences of violent political conflict, and has written and consulted extensively on complex humanitarian crises, forced displacement, and armed conflict. He is currently a Professorial Lecturer at George Washington University’s Elliot School of International Affairs.

Caption: Amnesty staff verifying video footage on human rights violations in Nigeria.
Credit: © Amnesty International