Interview conducted by Mackenzie Jorgensen and the Conversations with Practitioners Working Group
Yolanda Booyzen, at the time of the interview in 2023 was the Interim Director of Programmes at HURIDOCS. She is currently in 2024 the Director of Development and Communications. HURIDOCS is an NGO that helps human rights groups gather, organise and use information to create positive change in the world. During 2023, Yolanda led a growing team of Programme Managers and Programme Officers who supported dozens of human rights organisations with their information and documentation needs. She is passionate about the intersection of information technology and human rights, and has been actively working in the human rights field for the last 19 years.
Our Mechanism Design for Social Good (MD4SG) working group, Conversations with Practitioners, had the pleasure of interviewing Yolanda. In this blog, we discuss the main insights from the interview for our community of researchers.
Can you tell us a bit about HURIDOCS?
HURIDOCS was founded in 1982 with the main goal is to use information for good and to find a common language between the technology and human rights domains. The NGO has 36 staff working remotely worldwide; the two main staff buckets include the technology team and the other half are on the programmes team. They created an open source flexible database application called Uwazi, which is based on the Swahili word meaning “openness”. Uwazi allows users or organisations to “organise a collection of information and, in the process, reveal previously hidden patterns, relationships and opportunities for action.” Since human rights organisations must collect, store, and use documentary evidence and big data (e.g., images, videos, and legal documents) that can span decades, HURIDOCS provides Uwazi to safely, efficiently, and collaboratively manage organisations’ data needs so that insights are taken from the data to assist human rights priorities.
What sorts of human rights organisations do you work with? What specific topics do they consider?
HURIDOCS works with both public and private partners–they do not work directly with governments but they do work with government-adjacent organisations. Civil society is their main focus. Some human rights projects they have worked on involve documenting prison violations in North Korea and violation of Indigenous, environmental and land rights in Bolivia. The North Korean prison database was used as evidence in a report from a partner who advocates at regional and international fora for policy development for accountability for North Korea. They also have worked on capturing collective memories for transitional justice projects like the Syrian Oral History Archive. Another project was gathering virtual evidence for the Afghanistan Memory Home database–this museum provides a safe and inclusive space for victims and survivors to share their experiences, fostering collective memorialisation and providing a comprehensive perspective on the impact of war in Afghanistan. They work alongside grassroots organisations and networks–oftentimes, these organisations are using pen and paper for their documentation initiatives which is neither sustainable nor secure. They have worked with academics on a variety of human rights issues and over the years have been involved with a number of research projects where documentation plays a key role.
What are the biggest challenges you find in your work?
From an organisational standpoint, fundraising is the hardest challenge! HURIDOCS is a nonprofit that is dependent on donations from foundations and other donors to be able to provide their accompaniment services to human rights organisations across the globe. In addition to sustaining its global team, machine learning resources and computing equipment are not cheap and take a great deal of time to learn how to use. Ideally, they would like to have a pro bono business model. Another challenge is the sustainability of projects–partner organisations usually complete projects in phases, as funding becomes available. At the moment they are working on refining their machine learning services in Uwazi and aim to roll it out to as many partners who may need it.
For their partners, digital and physical security are massive issues (e.g., raids pose a threat). As a result, they train partners on good digital security practices, especially when using Uwazi or related tools. The cost of computing resources is also a challenge for their partners. Sometimes, access to the internet is a challenge in specific regions; this stems from the larger challenge of electricity access. Uwazi, HURIDOCS’ tool needs an internet connection to work so if electricity and internet are unavailable then their partners cannot access it. Recently, HURIDOCS has teamed up with Horizontal, whose secure app Tella helps users collect and save data into Uwazi while in the field, which can be uploaded at a later stage when an internet connection is present and it is safe to do so.
Why the human rights interest?
Yolanda grew up in South Africa under apartheid but like many white South Africans who had a background of privilege, she was mostly sheltered from the devastating effects apartheid had on the majority of the country’s population. When she went to university in the late nineties, she learned so much more about the realities of the political situation in South Africa. She was fortunate enough to meet Professor Frans Viljoen and the late Professor Christof Heyns, both celebrated human rights experts, who inspired her to join the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria. It was an activist environment that she thrived in and she spent a large part of her professional life using information, communication and technology to work towards righting wrongs in Africa and beyond. On why she prefers to work in the human rights sector Yolanda says: “I want to be proud of the work that I do, and this is something that I want to teach my children: trying to make a real difference in the world we live in and leave behind.”
How can researchers better support the human rights domain?
Academic research influences HURIDOCS’ work; yet, more connections between academia and HURIDOCS would be desirable. In particular, researchers who can combine theory and practice would be a major help in advancing HURIDOCS’ work. HURIDOCS’ staff are especially interested in learning more from academia about how to use AI effectively in the social impact space. One of their specialists on human rights documentation is currently finishing his PhD–he studies the use of databases for transitional justice purposes. Furthermore, there is an ongoing collaboration between Information Science students from a tertiary institution in Geneva (where their head-office is based) and HURIDOCS for archiving their own work. Apart from Uwazi, HURIDOCS has developed a tool called Preserve that preserves information from social media and websites before it is removed and can be directly added to Uwazi. HURIDOCS is continuously working on refining their tools and more research needs to be done on how their tools align with international evidentiary standards and practices. HURIDOCS is eager to facilitate better communication and knowledge sharing between academia and the NGO world. One of the areas where they are focusing on is leveraging the power of machine learning to make human rights information more accessible and up-to-date. HURIDOCS plans to host a side event at the Human Rights Council to showcase how the responsible use of AI can support the work of human rights defenders and empower those who battle injustices through credible and accessible information.
We would again like to thank Yolanda for the amazing conversation, as well as the Conversations with Practitioners members for their engagement and thoughtful questions.
The October 23 2023 interview with Yolanda was led by Mackenzie Jorgensen, and this blog post was edited by Mackenzie, Wendy, Kristen, and the social media team.
