{"id":911022,"date":"2023-01-11T05:25:34","date_gmt":"2023-01-11T13:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-project&p=911022"},"modified":"2024-10-14T03:27:26","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T10:27:26","slug":"human-rights-technology","status":"publish","type":"msr-project","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/human-rights-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"Human Rights Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Human Rights Technology<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Helping communities take evidence-based action in the fight against human rights violations<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Human rights are universal \u2013 every person on the planet is entitled to the same rights and freedoms that enable a life of dignity. In any given society, however, and especially across global society, the enjoyment and realization of human rights is not uniform. Human rights deficits are pervasive, disproportionately affecting some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged populations around the world. In many cases, they are also perpetuated by the systematic exploitation of people (e.g., human trafficking) or power (e.g., corruption) for private gain. How can we work towards a future in which such organized violations of human rights are no longer possible?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Microsoft Research Special Projects (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, we tackle societal problems through use-inspired basic research (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> \u2013 collaborating with domain experts and frontline organizations to envision technology solutions that would fundamentally transform real-world practice<\/em> for the better, yet which require fundamental research advances<\/em> to achieve. In the context of Human Rights Technology, this means combining our expertise in HCI, data science, and engineering to create human-centered data technologies that are ready for immediate use in specific human rights contexts, as well as future use in other contexts affected by similar data challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our work focuses on human trafficking and corruption as urgent problem areas where new technology has the potential to make a significant impact now and into the future, given the sizeable communities and substantial relevant data that already exist. Despite this potential, however, the use of data to motivate collective action across either community remains challenging in practice. For example, victim case records contain valuable evidence on the nature of human trafficking, but privacy and safety concerns mean that datasets typically remain unshared. Similarly, open government data contains valuable evidence on how actors and entities participate in corruption, but deliberate suppression of incriminating relationships means that risks typically remain undetected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In both cases, and for organized forms of exploitation in general, our collaborations with domain experts suggest the need for a new class of transparency-enhancing technologies<\/em> designed from the ground up with human rights use cases, users, and stakeholders in mind. Our technology portfolio currently comprises four examples of such technology, designed to tackle complementary aspects of the same target problem:<\/p>\n\n\n\n