Tag: peacebuilding

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Social media plays a major role in raising awareness about mass atrocities. In the most visible example, Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 video has garnered more than 90 million YouTube views. But the utility of social media for preventing atrocities goes beyond advocacy—a utility that the U.S. government (USG) should explore and embrace. How can the USG best leverage these tools for its atrocity prevention efforts?

For one, the White House should commission a study that assesses the value of creating a Mass Atrocities Prevention Center (MAPC) to collect, analyze, and distribute intelligence on atrocities from all relevant sources including social media platforms.

There are, of course, dangers in establishing new bureaucratic structures. In many cases, they muddle lines of communications and authority. But, certain new structures have significantly enhanced the USG’s response to complex threats. One such example is the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which could serve as a model for the MAPC.

The NCTC was created as a fusion center for intelligence from a range of disparate sources on terrorist activities.

As with terrorism, there is a wide range of potentially useful sources for garnering intelligence on atrocities. Social media platforms that are household names—YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook—can be used for documenting and warning about atrocities. Less well-known but equally useful initiatives such as Ushahidi and Small World News can serve a similar purpose.

Organizations are already using these tools to bring atrocities into the public eye. Amnesty International’s Eyes on Syria and Resolve’s LRA Crisis Tracker are two notable examples in this regard.

The USG should now look at ways to leverage the information from these and other “open” (i.e. unclassified) sources in its atrocity prevention efforts.

The MAPC would thus build a strong working relationship with the intelligence community’s Open Source Center given that, based on the center’s stated mission, it’s theoretically best positioned to collect intelligence from social media platforms.  As an independent center, the MAPC would then be able to synthesize open source with classified intelligence on atrocity threats.

A challenge brought by social media and other technological developments is the tsunami of information now available on any given event. In fact, humans today create as much information every fifteen minutes as collected by the Library of Congress in over two centuries. And endemic in the information overflow is falsehoods and untruths.

The 2008 Albright-Cohen task force on genocide prevention readily recognized these challenges:

“The bounty of information—which can only be expected to grow in the future—does not necessarily ease the analytic challenge. First, the amount of material can be overwhelming, and second, it is hard to judge the accuracy of the reporting. For example, a crucial and difficult task for analysts is to distinguish systematic killing of civilians from more general­ized background violence, as most if not all mass atrocities occur in the context of a larger conflict or a campaign of state repression.  The accuracy of analysts’ warnings will also depend on the extent to which they can identify warning signs or indicators of genocide and mass atrocities.”

The MAPC should have a directorate—based on the NCTC’s Directorate of Strategic Operational Planning (DSOP)—that develops an analytic framework for managing the high volume and veracity of intelligence flows. The MAPC’s version of the DSOP would inter alia identify the most relevant sources, develop a framework for analyzing social media, and create a comprehensive mass atrocity prevention intelligence strategy that synthesizes open and classified sources.

In sum, social media could be an important tool for improving the USG’s intelligence on mass atrocities. But the intelligence community and policymakers won’t be able to leverage these sources unless the USG has the bureaucratic structure in place do so. As of now, this structure doesn’t exist. The White House should consider standing up a MAPC to change the status quo.

 

Andrew Miller recently participated in TC104: Global Innovations in Digital Organizing. He works on conflict prevention at a Washington, DC think-tank and can be found on Twitter at @andrewmiller802.

After 40 years of rule, Colonel Gaddafi is gone.  Reports say he was killed today in a military offensive in Sirte, Libya after a protracted insurgency that was backed by NATO forces.  While there is room for a conversation about NATO’s actions, whether they’re an example of Responsibility to Protect doctrine, and normative questions of supporting violence.  In the immediate though, history tells us that the more effectively we can help Libya achieve a stable political and economic situation, the more likely we are to see a stable peace.  This is an area where emerging mobile technology and crisis mapping could prove valuable to the development and peacebuilding communities.

 

There is already an example of Ushahidi’s mapping platform being used to track the violence and gather data for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).  The launch of this map was managed by OCHA with volunteers from the Standby Volunteer Task Force.  As Patrick Meier explained at iRevolution, this deployment was called for by OCHA with a predefined set of data management processes and a fully trained team of mappers.  In this example we see the humanitarian community grasping the value of mapping technology and supporting the systems to make it viable in what was an evolving conflict situation when the map launched in March 2011.  You can see the public map here.

 

Having seen a proof of concept for crowdsourcing in the form of the Ushahidi map, Libya in the post-rebellion stage could be a case study for how mobile technology might be leveraged going forward to develop participatory government, rebuild an economy, and provide the citizenry with decentralized access to information.  The high level of mobile penetration means that crowdsourcing tools such as FrontlineSMS could be valuable for gathering and disseminating information about access to health care and justice, as well as supporting participation in governance functions at the local and national levels.

 

A large part of a successful transition will hinge on the desire of Libyans to develop a system of governance that is right for them with the support of the international community, and mobile telephony is only part of the equation.  SMS crowdsourcing and tools such as FrontlineSMS could provide a great deal of value in the transitional process as stability returns to Libya.  I’d like to invite everyone to comment and start a discussion about where we see technology fitting into Libya’s development going forward.

 

 Charles Martin-Shields is TechChange’s Director of Special Projects and Simulation Design.  He  is also a doctoral student at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason  University, where his research focuses on conflict management, technology and analytic  methodology.  He can be reached at charles@techchange.org and you can follow him on Twitter  @cmartinshields.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia was established in 2005 as part of the country’s transition of bloody civil war into an emerging democracy. Considering the mass destruction of basic services and infrastructure, however, lack of physical access to the capital of Monrovia for many Liberians has posed a serious obstacle to the objective of the Commission. A solution has come from an unlikely source in Atlanta, Georgia, thanks to some creative technological innovations.

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Yesterday’s Can You Help Me Now? Mobile Phones and Peacebuilding In Afghanistan panel at the United States Institute for Peace (USIP) showcased experts on Afghanistan from all walks of life—government officials, programmers, and even social media gurus.

This event drew in a crowd of enthusiastic Twitterers using the hashtag #usipmobile, sharing questions and comments throughout the event and highlighting some of the key quotes of the day. Corresponding with the panel discussion, Twitter users tweeted about everything from improving governance (i.e. rule of law and anti-corruption) to countering extremism (i.e. media development and counter-insurgency) to delivery of essential services (i.e. education, health, agricultural development, and commerce).

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