HURIDOCS (short for Human Rights Information and Documentation Systems) endeavors through innovative technologies to help human rights groups gather, organize, and use information to create positive change in the world. Concerned with optimizing digital information management systems within human rights organizations, they collaborate with local activist groups, national institutions, and large international NGOs alike. Often incorporating artificial intelligence and machine learning into their efforts, HURIDOCS has assisted in everything from building a case law management system of decisions made by African rights mechanisms to a public database of missing persons in Turkey.

Theory of Change

Providing technologies which improve the efficiency, reliability, and utility of information management systems for human rights organizations increases organizational output and empowers rights defenders to work more effectively and forcefully.

Activities

The work of HURIDOCS can be split into three broad categories: designing information management technologies, advising human rights organizations, and sharing knowledge. In 2015 they developed an open-source database application, Uwazi. Produced with the specific needs human rights defenders in mind, Uwazi is powered by machine learning and is designed to capture and organize various datasets, from rights violations to internal financial information. When acting in an advisory capacity, HURIDOCS partners with human rights organizations at no cost. In doing so, partners define goals while HURIDOCS recommends tools, strategies, and workflows to achieve those goals. Finally, HURIDOCS has an extensive resource library available for free on their website which provides methodologies, guides, and frameworks for documenting evidence of rights violations, compiling libraries of human rights law, and monitoring ongoing situations.

Results

Over the past 40 years, HURIDOCS has been involved in a myriad of human rights initiatives. In 2023, for instance, they partnered with the National Coordination for the Defense of Indigenous Peasant Territories and Protected Areas, a Bolivian organization, to launch a public database mapping violent attacks against environmental defenders in the country. To do this, they synchronized three separate Uwazi databases, each serving a separate function: data collection, information organization, and public communication. Similarly, in 2020, they worked with the organization UPR Info—which provides data for policymakers and researchers on the Universal Periodic Review (UPR)—to improve their database by implementing machine learning features. Resulting in a facilitated user experience, more up-to-date data, and improved analysis.