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Agriculture, Democracy & Governance, Governances, Humanitarian Assistance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Activists Use New Tools to Challenge Repression

Woman holding sign that says "Egyptians creating their future"

Throughout Africa human rights violations are being conducted all over the continent, but technology is shifting the power of information into the hands of the repressed.

Leveraging mobile phones and FM radio have been the channels to achieve this objective, according to the 2011 Amnesty International Annual Report.

Political activists and citizens have used other new communications forms, such as Facebook and Twitter, now easily available on mobile phones, to bring people to the streets to demand accountability.

Salil Shetty Photo Credit: Amnesty International

“In many countries in Africa,” says Secretary General, Salil Shetty, “there is now a vibrant civil society, which, although often still repressed, can no longer be ignored by those in power.”

The report states that 2010 may be known as the year where technology aligned both activists and journalists to bring truth to the world of power.

The Secretary General also mentioned that innovative crowdsourcing technologies, such as forerunner Ushahidi.com of Kenya, have opened up a whole new set of possibilities for conflict prevention by tracking and recording abuses.

He acknowledges that they have been tools that have aided the struggle for human rights, despite the adversary from governments, in particular those in the Middle East and Northern Africa, to restrict the flow of information and censor communication.

In this sense, Shetty cautions, that the use of technologies are not a magic bullet solution that can completely determine and end human rights violations: “Technology will serve the purposes of those who control it – whether their goal is the promotion of rights or the undermining of rights,” he advised.

“We must be mindful that in a world of asymmetric power, the ability of governments and other institutional actors to abuse and exploit technology will always be superior to the grassroots activists, the beleaguered human rights advocate, the intrepid whistleblower and the individual…”

Even so, Shetty digressed that these are amazing times for human rights activists who recognize the potential of technology, which provides the context to evade censorship and reveal truth. They also holds the promise, he continued, that we will be, “living in a truly flat world,” where we are all connected by an accessible information that flows across borders and all can provide a voice to help determine major decisions in our lives.

“Fifty years on the world has changed dramatically, but the imperative for individuals to stand together to fight injustice and protect the rights of human beings, wherever they may be, has not,” the Secretary General emphasized.

Assessments of the state of human rights in countries across Africa, Amnesty concluded:

Uganda—law enforcement officers “committed human rights violations, including unlawful killings and torture, and perpetrators were not held to account” and “a number of new and proposed laws threatened the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly”.

Zimbabwe—“police continued to arbitrarily arrest and detain human rights defenders and journalists undertaking legitimate human rights work”. However, there was “some loosening of restrictions on the media and parliament debated a bill to reform the repressive Public Order and Security Act”.

Swaziland—“human rights defenders and political activists were subjected to arbitrary detention, ill-treatment and harassment … Torture and incidents of unjustified use of lethal force were reported. The prime minister appeared to publicly condone the use of torture.”

Sudan—“human rights violations, mainly by the National Intelligence and Security Service, continued to be committed with impunity. Perceived critics of the government were arrested, tortured or ill-treated and prosecuted for exercising their rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly. Death sentences were handed down, including against juveniles. Women, young girls and men were arrested and flogged in the north because of their ‘dress’ or ‘behaviour’ in public places.”

These summaries were provided on a post on AllAfrica.com

June 16, 2011/by actualize

Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Governances, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Participatory Mapping for Government Accountability

map of roads either complete or incomplete

Photo Credit: Rising Voices

In India, fishermen living in the city of Olcott, Chennai have relied on the beach for hundreds of years to earn livelihoods. After the British acquired this three-mile strip of land, members of this fishing community were deemed trespassers in their own homes.

Now, participatory mapping drawn up by Olcott citizens helps to create a visualization of the relationship between the fishermen and the coastline to make the government more responsible and accountable.

This is the objective of Transparent Chennai, a hands-on platform created by The Center for Development Finance, working under a Rising Voices Microgrant.

Aggregating, collecting, and displaying data for public interest use, on Usur and Olcott fishing communities in South Chennai, provides a visual to the gaps where legislation needs to be created. This ensures that fisherman have access to the water and can claim rights to their land.

The statement on the website clarifies their end goal:

Our goal is to enable residents, especially the poor, to have a greater voice in planning and city governance

Residents of Usur and Olcott engage in participatory workshops where they contribute to the map, mark the boundaries of their village, and land use patterns. They can show varying livelihoods within the community, and how space outside of their homes is used, particularly along the water.

The maps identify local resources, points of historical and ritual importance, and gaps in local infrastructure and government services. By providing easy-to-understand information, the maps can better highlight citizen needs, shed light on government performance, and improve their lives in the city, one issue at a time.

Transparent Chennai believes that lack of data has sometimes allowed for the government to evade its responsibilities and to provide basic entitlements to all city residents.

They collaborate with citizen to integrate accurate, first hand information. “We work closely with individuals and citizens’ groups to create data that can help them counter inaccurate or incomplete government data, and make better claims on the government for their rights and entitlements,”

Creating the maps is not limited to just the perspective of adult citizens, though.

Recently, eighth grade students at Olcott Memorial School in Besant Nagar participated in a four-week mapping workshop run by Transparent Chennai. Using Google Earth and Google Maps, along with paper maps, they marked their own important landmarks of the city.

Students use paper to figure out how their symbols should look. Red writing with things like bathroom posted on it [Photo Credit: Siddharth Hande

Students use paper to figure out how their symbols should look Photo Credit: Siddharth Hande

Anjney Midhall, who facilitated the mapping workshop describes the scene at the school: “…around me, children of the eighth grade at the Olcott Memorial School in Besant Nagar are busy mapping out their school’s campus in groups, developing their own unique symbols and keys, color schemes and layouts…By the end of the session, maps emerge, each diagram telling a story of its own.”

Through locally generated maps, Transparent Chennai aims to do their part in rectifying a lack of data and the lack of government accountability to meet the basic needs of its citizens. ‘Participatory mapping’, is one of the best ways to do this.

June 15, 2011/by actualize

Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Governances, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Innovative “Internet Suitcases” to Bypass Government Censorship

boy with binoculars and man with mac computer in afghanistan

Photo Credit: NYTimes

The State Department is financing the creation of external wireless networks that would enable dissidents to undermine repressive authoritarian governments trying to censor or disable telecommunication networks, according to a New York Times report.

According to the Times story released on Sunday, Internet and mobile phone networks are being created so they can be deployed in an area independent of government control.

The State Department-led project involves the building of a $2-million prototype “Internet in a suitcase”, and independent “shadow” phone networks by a group operating out of a building on L Street in Washington, D.C.

This comes to light after the U.N. and the U.S. proclaimed Internet access and Internet freedoms as central to free speech and human rights.

“We see more and more people around the globe using the Internet, mobile phones and other technologies to make their voices heard as they protest against injustice and seek to realize their aspirations,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote to the Times.

The new technologies made to circumvent oppressive regimes are currently in development by the New America Foundation under their nonpartisan think tank, Open Technology Initiative (OTI). The D.C. entrepreneurial engineers are cultivating both new technologies, and finding ways to utilize the tools from the previous uprisings.

The State Department, for example, is financing projects to create stealth wireless networks, including a $2 million grant to develop the “Internet in a suitcase.” The networking access points are designed to look like regular suitcases that communicate with each other to create mesh networks connected to the global Internet.

Diagram of a stealth network and wireless mesh network

Photo Credit: NYTimes

These suitcases, which contain all the necessary hardware, could be smuggled into a country and deployed over an area to create a service independent of government control in countries like Iran, Syria and Libya, according to participants in the projects.

The other project is even more ambitious, the article states, where the State Department and Pentagon have spent $50 million to create an independent cellphone network in Afghanistan to offset the Taliban’s ability to shut down the official Afghan services.

This all comes after the “Arab Spring” uprisings over the past several months, which have drawn attention to network shutdowns and censorship conducted by regimes under threat like the Syrian and Egyptian governments. They attempt to stifle citizens’ ability to communicate with each other and to inform the outside world of what’s going on in the protest zones.

“The implication is that this disempowers central authorities from infringing on people’s fundamental human right to communicate,” recounted Sascha Meinrath, project director of the OTI, who is leading the “Internet in a suitcase” project.

However, Meinrath cautions that the cultivation of these independent networks also have can have a negative aspect:

Repressive governments could use surveillance to locate and arrest activists who use the technology, or persecute them for simply bringing hardware across the border.

Others believe that the risks are outweighed by the potential impact. “We’re going to build a separate infrastructure where the technology is nearly impossible to shut down, to control, to surveil,” says Meinrath.

The Times specifically discusses the foreign policy implications of these U.S. financed projects. After a decade long struggle in fostering media to evade hostile regimes like Voice of America, these ambitions are grandiose in scale. Alternatively, the creation of these new tools could be the next step helping to empower civil society.

June 14, 2011/by actualize

Anti-corruption, Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Governances, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Make Aid Funds Transparent

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make aid transparent banner- one cartoon with money the other two with nothing

Last week, Publish What you Fund launched their Make Aid Transparent campaign, which calls on aid donors to publish information on what they are doing with their development aid.

Over forty civil society groups from twenty countries around the world, pledge to call on governments and other aid donors to publish more information on how, when, where and why their budgets are being spent.

At the center of the campaign, whose members include Oxfam International, Transparency International, ONE, and eighteen groups from developing countries, is a petition aimed at donor governments to make their aid more transparent.

The message after signing the petition clearly illustrates their overall mission:

Your action will remind donors to keep their promises to make aid more transparent. And this in turn will help citizens around the world to benefit from better aid and hold their governments to account.

All of these organizations have been working to improve the transparency on how aid money is distributed and should be mindfully spent, as any scope for corruption and inefficiency should be diminished and eliminated.

One of the best ways to do this rarely costs a thing: transparency.

Last December, the State Department and USAID launched a Foreign Assistance Dashboard that helps U.S. citizens know more about how their taxes are being spent on foreign assistance. It provides a visual presentation of, and access to, key foreign assistance budget and appropriation of data for the Department of State and USAID.

The Make Aid Transparent campaign has a similar aim, but targets the spending of civil society groups to enhance transparency and accessibility for their donors.

Making the information available can also help citizens of developing countries know how much their governments are receiving and can push for it to be spent it in ways that really meet their needs.

The first petition handover is planned to present in Paris, at a meeting of Working Party on Aid Effectiveness (WP-EFF) in early July hosted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The organization has other activities and actions that will take place through the year, with the campaign culminating at the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, Korea from November 29 – December 1.

June 13, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Anti-corruption, Democracy & Governance, Governances, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Apps4Africa Finalist Uses Mobile to Fight Corruption

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Announced last week, an application won second place in the Apps4Africa competition allowing citizens to record and report real time information on government corruption.

Launched last July in Nairobi, the Apps4Africa competition funded by the U.S. State Department, united the brightest African developers with social problems that could benefit from innovative mobile technology.

The competition attracted 20 entrants – each offering a unique approach to improving life in the region.

The second place winners, Kleptocracy Fighters Inc., developed a mobile application empowering citizens for fighting kleptocratic government officials using mobile technology. They received $3,000 USD and a Nokia N900 for the innovation.

Kleptocracy is a term applied to government authorities taking advantage of power positions to extend their personal wealth by appropriating public funds and goods through corruption, impunity, and political power.

Government corruption runs rampant in Kenya amongst other Sub-Saharan African countries. According to the 2010 Corruption Perception Index, Kenya received a score of 2.1—on a scale from 10 being very clean, to 0 being highly corrupt.

Kleptocracy Fighters (K Fighters) seeks to offset this by lending the crowd souring potential of SMS service, mobile phone applications, and web-enabled applications to report and record real time incidences of corruption.

The citizen’s reports include audio, video, as well as text recordings, and are meant to report both positive and negative issues of public governance. The aggregated data reports are forwarded to legal and media partners to help publicize the cases of corruption, and lead to possible persecution.

This mobile application aims to help build trust, accountability, and transparency for those in developing nations lacking a trustworthy outlet.

K Fighters is an international organization headquartered in Delaware. The four founding members are from East Africa, the U.S., and Latin America, all choosing to remain anonymous for their personal integrity until the platform is finalized.

They have started pilot projects in Latin America and Africa to see if the platform is a scalable and sustainable model that can bring corrupt governments to justice.

June 10, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Democracy & Governance, Governances, Humanitarian Assistance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Local Capacity & Governance in Humanitarian Assistance

people unpacking food in a humanitarian assistance mission

Photo Credit: IIE

While humanitarian response spans a wide range of operations from aid delivery and temporary shelter, to training and preparedness, a successful humanitarian operation also depends heavily on local capacity building and existing governance structures.

Yesterday at the Aid and International Development Forum, the speakers at the governance panel wholeheartedly agreed.

Jessica Vogel, Manager of Operations for International Stability Operations Association (ISOA), moderated the discussion.

She paralleled strong governance and building local capacity, with increasing the rate of success during humanitarian assistance. “Without local capacity the challenges and delivery of relief is ten fold,” Vogel emphasized.

Robert Wells, strategic consultant at Whitney, Bradley and Brown, Inc., reiterated her point. He argued that initiating and constructing partnerships on the ground are both keys to local capacity building.

Wells also stressed that the local governance should be “in the cockpit” of their own humanitarian assistance missions. By organizing constructive collaboration, he maintained, it leads to sustaining professional development.

Johanna Mendelson Forman, senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, explored a gap in local capacity: the local diaspora.

Referencing the disaster in Haiti, she asserted that the educated citizens who fled the country were those same individuals who had the most ability to revitalize their damaged country.

“It is the talent and skill of the Haitian diaspora that will recreate Haiti,” Forman stated.

Local capacity building and good governance structures are at the heart of sustaining humanitarian assistance after the temporary funding disappears.

June 9, 2011/by actualize

Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Governances, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Brazil Govcamp Continues Gov 2.0 Global Growth

”]”]Governments from across the world are using e-government to deliver timely, accessible information to citizens while increasing the transparency and efficiency of delivering public services.

Sao Paulo, Brazil is now adopting ope n source e-government software as an early adopter of open government 2.0.

On June 8, 2011 Microsoft will be sponsoring Govcamp Brazil to facilitate the collaborative discussion and create an open learning environment to foster understanding in this emerging field.

E-governance takes the input of many parties, within the governing body, civic society, and needs the participation of private sector to service them. As a result, there has been an the technology of Government 2.0 has been highlighted, rather than the results it enables.

As former U.S. deputy CTO Beth Noveck pointed out, though, there is more to these new tools: “Gov 2.0 is a popular term but puts the emphasis on technology when our goal was to focus on changing how government institutions work for the better.”

Microsoft’s involvement in Brazil’s initiative demonstrates the global company’s exclusive and evolving role in looking outwards, where Government 2.0 and e-government is increasingly more prominent around the world.

Rodrigo Becerra of Microsoft provided this insight on the purpose of the Gov 2.0 camps:

This is a space for creating connections to happen between citizens, organizations, groups and governments that may otherwise not exist. We have done them in Berlin, Mexico City, Colombia, Moscow, Toronto, London, Sydney, Wellington, Boston, India, and we’ll sponsor the Brazil event in the coming month. We specifically have local organization committees running each event, We conduct them in all local language and invite social media, competitors and partners to revel in the discourse to help drive the progress of the Gov 2.0 movement

The open source software represents how the Government of Brazil wants to create a solution where civic society has documentation and support online.

It also generates knowledge networks, shares information, and fosters the growth of domestic technology, as the systems design can be adapted to local Brazilian needs.

June 7, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Humanitarian Assistance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Serious Gaming—It Plays to Develop

Screenshot of the game Peacemaker

You can now play an active role in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as either the Israeli Prime Minister, or the Palestinian President, straight from your living room.

Will you put pressure on the United States to publicly condemn your enemy? Will you withdraw your settlements from the Gaza Strip? Your decisions will render a live computer generated response. Similar to the importance of real life, timely decisions in the Middle East, your decision will affect if the entire region will be at peace or explode in violence.

”]This is the aim of the “serious game” called the Peacemaker developed by Asi Burak, and co-founder of GamesforChange.org.

These “Serious Games” are burgeoning agents for social change being used in the development world by advocates, nonprofit groups, and technically keen academics searching for new ways to reach young people.

The main idea is the player becomes immersed in a real-world situation where human rights, economics, public policy, poverty, global conflict, news, and politics are some issues confronted in the games.

The player deliberates and makes conscious choices while they play and those actions either benefits one side or harms another, making a complete resolution difficult.

Objectively, the player can play as many times as they need to resolve the issue to win the game.

As Jarmo Petäjäaho from Finland, states in a review after playing Peacemaker, “Making the policy decisions in the game and pondering the possible ramifications on all parties really makes the issues hit home and stay with you. It is a wonderfully efficient and fun way to study the real world.”

That is the true beauty behind all the efforts: games are innately helpful in simplifying large, complex systems and teaching them to people.

Two weeks ago Tech@State had a two-day Serious Games conference where game creators, technology executives, and social entrepreneurs, exchanged ideas and experiences on the best mechanics of games for social change.

While most of the games focused on issues of international affairs, public policy and diplomacy, one group focused on how to leverage this educational tool for developing nations lacking computers.

Playpower, created by a group of programmers and researchers, is a great, simple educational tool to bring video gaming to developing nations.

By constructing a $10 TV-compatible computers out of discarded keyboards and outfitting them with cartridge-based educational games, the Playpower team aims to make learning games affordable for “the other 90%.”

The Serious Games shown at the conference is rowing as a tool used for social change, but no one knows how sustainable the method may be.

USAID is interesting in exploring the effects of the gaming venture on development.

An Innovations for Youth Capacity & Engagement (IYCE) game is currently in development with the Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance (DCHA) Bureau in conjunction with Nethope. The game targets resolving youth and social issues in Jordan.

June 7, 2011/by actualize

Asia, Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Where we work

TechCamps Converge Civil Society With Silicon Valley

Picture of a man with computer open with group of Indonesians listening

Photo Credit: U.S. Department of State

The US State Department hosted the second of its TechCamp workshops in Jakarta last month, in an effort to strengthen civil society organizations in disaster prone areas.

The idea is to take the knowledge of non-governmental (NGO) and civil society organizations (CSO) familiar with the humanitarian problems and unite them with the technology gurus who might have ground breaking ideas to solve them.

When the recent tsunami annihilated Japan, the world was able to band together on the Internet because innovative systems were created to help locate lost victims and donate funds. The State Department wants to leverage these inventive minds to help grassroots organizations around the world fight humanitarian crises.

“We saw the ability of digital natives and the networked world, using lightweight and easily iterated tools, to do something rapidly that a big organization or government would find difficult, if not impossible, to do,” Richard Boly, the State Department’s director of eDiplomacy, stated. “The question is: Can we get that same magic to happen when people aren’t dying?”

Secretary of State Clinton’s vision of Civil Society 2.0 is embodied in the Techcamps, to empower civil society groups with the digital tools and hands-on training needed to better execute their missions in the 21st century.

TechCamps focus on the challenges and needs of civil groups and then provides the technology consultations and digital literacy training to help solve them. The goal is to improve the resilience of NGOs and CSOs by increasing their literacy and connecting them with local, regional and international technology communities.

Last November, the TechCamp program piloted in Santiago, Chile as part of Secretary Hilton’s Civil Society 2.0 goal. In that gathering, NGOs and technologists from around Latin America discussed new tools to promote democracy and economic development.

Woman in discussion with group with TechCamp image in the background

Photo Credit: U.S. Department of State

TechCamp Jakarta, however, focused on disaster response and climate change.

Indonesia has a large social media presence, with the second largest number of Facebook members (after the U.S.), and like Haiti and Japan, is more susceptible to future disasters.

In addition to the change in topic, during the Techcamp in Jakarta, the State Department invited additional stakeholders—including the World Bank, USAID, and large technology corporations—so that emerging ideas would have the capital needed for a sustainable lifespan. Boly explained, “It’s a way to identify the next Ushahidi or FrontlineSMS and help them scale quickly”.

Several corporate partners signed on for the second session including Alcatel-Lucent, Novartis, Intel, Google, Microsoft, and Cisco. Leading technologists, including Josh Nesbit of MedicMobile and Kate Chapman of OpenStreetMap facilitated the discussions with Indonesian civil society leaders.

USAID is open to the new, collaborative approach. “TechCamp is all about digital development,” USAID Chief Innovation Officer Maura O’Neill asserted to Fast Company. “We are mashing up local insights and tech tools to save lives, create stable and open governments, and greater prosperity for all.”

The next TechCamp will take place in Lithuania this month to coincide with the biennial convening of the Community of Democracies. Following will be Moldova in July with a focus on open government. Another six or seven gatherings are in the works, the State Department says, to possibly take place in India, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America.

June 2, 2011/by actualize

Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Governances, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Rule of Law

Uganda Blames Food Price Protests on Media

Ugandan man throwing a brick into a fire

Photo credit: Reuters/Edward Echwalu

Protests over rising fuel and food prices continue despite Ugandan government attempts to slow them down by blocking Facebook, Twitter, and censoring media content.

Last week, President Yoweri Museveni cited social media and negative media coverage as primary proponents of fueling social unrest amid state led violence.

Protestors boycotted fuel purchases by “walking to work” for the past two months in an effort to demonstrate against the government spending at a time of heightened government expenditures.

In Uganda, the price of staples such as wheat have increased up to 40%, according to the World Bank.

UCC wrote to all ISPs last month asking them to block access to the two social media websites for 48 hours, but their request was denied.

“If someone is telling people to go and cause mass violence and kill people and uses these media to spread such messages, I can assure you we’ll not hesitate to intervene and shut down these platforms,” Godfrey Mutabazi, executive director of the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) stated last month.

The Uganda’s communications regulator relies on Internet service providers to enforce their demands, as they cannot block access to the sites themselves.

Separately, last week Museveni described both local and international media, like the BBC, as “enemies of the state” at a time when journalists are reporting brutal assaults and harassment by security forces.

Journalists have imposed a news blackout on the Ugandan government in protest against what they described as rising brutality against covering demonstrations over the high prices. The media blackout includes official police and army functions.

Following Museveni’s warning this week, the outgoing Minister for Information, Kabakumba Masiko, told BBC’s Network Africa program that Ugandan laws would be amended to deal with any journalist who behaves as an “enemy of the state”.

She state on the program:

If you look at the way these media houses have been reporting what has been going on in our country, you realise they were inciting people and trying to show that Uganda is now ungovernable, is under fire as if the state is about to collapse.

Early last year the minister took a proposed Press and Journalist Amendment Bill to the Cabinet, where it creates a new publication offense of “economic sabotage”.

Ugandan president Museveni with paper accusing media of sabotage

Museveni accused media of sabotage in 2008 address Photo credit: Monitor

If passed, the law would give absolute dominance to Media Council, the statutory regulator, the authority to revoke the license of any media outlet that publishes “material that amounts to economic sabotage”.

The officials’ efforts are part of a recent trend by autocratic governments to block social media sites and having media blackouts to control social movements.

The US State Department spokesman issued a statement of concern in how blocking communication mediums adversely affects civil society.

“We are also concerned by reports that the Ugandan government has attempted to restrict media coverage of these protests and, on at least one occasion, block certain social networking websites,” the statement said.

The ongoing role of social media and the concurrent suppression of media freedom in anti-government protests make governments’ actions against civil society measurable and accountable.

It is clear that the future of reporting will be increasingly difficult for authoritarian countries to really control what their people see and hear.

June 1, 2011/by actualize