For techPresident, I wrote a long article about how the use of data and statistics can help assign responsibilities and punishments in the case of human rights violations.
The article deals mainly with the work of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, a San Francisco nonprofit which does exactly this kind of job.

Here’s the beginning of the piece:

On September 20, 2013, in Guatemala, the former director of the National Police of Guatemala, Col. Héctor Bol de la Cruz, and his subordinate Jorge Alberto Gómez López were convicted for the abduction and presumed murder of student and labor leader Edgar Fernando García, who disappeared in 1984, during the conflict that devastated the South American country between 1960 and 1996. Three years earlier, two lower ranking officers were also convicted for the crime.

The convictions were made possible thanks to the work of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that uses statistical analysis to support the cause of human rights. “In 2010, documents in the national police archive were discovered that linked police officers at the time to his disappearance,” HRDAG’s director of research Megan Price tells techPresident. “The defense said they were fabricated but we showed, with a statistical analysis that they shared many attributes with the other documents in the archives,” meaning that they were almost certainly authentic.

HRDAG’s analysis also made clear that the files related to the disappearance of García showed a higher level of communication with higher ranking officers than the average document in the archive. “There was this real evidence of a pattern –that higher ranking officers within the police structure were aware of García’s disappearance,” Price explains.

That’s why, when in 2010 the judges came back with their verdict and sentenced the two lower ranking police officers to 40 years in jail, they also asked the attorneys to investigate further. Three years later, de La Cruz and López were convicted as well.

Read the whole article “Using data and statistics to bring down dictators” on techPresident