A Shared Data Model for Improved Documentation of Human Rights Violations.

Human rights groups of all sizes and specializations gather evidence of human rights violations. Those with sufficient resources commonly use dedicated databases to manage the intricate web of sources, events, and analyses that build a strong case. However, developing databases for the needs of each organization remains a challenge. Effective database design requires a data model, which functions as a blueprint for how the data is structured and related. A most basic example of what a data model can specify is that a human rights violation is committed by at least one perpetrator, and that the perpetrator's attributes, such as name or date of birth, should be recorded. A data model that is shared and generic reduces the need to reinvent the wheel since its design can be reused for several databases. In the information systems field, such shared models are called ontologies. Despite the critical nature of the matter, no ontology for human rights violations documentation exists. The present note, therefore, will present the design of the first ontology of this kind. It was developed in association with the human rights group HURIDOCS, which specializes in information management. The requirements elicitation included unstructured interviews with HURIDOCS, document analysis of human rights manuals, and a survey with practitioners. The resulting ontology, named OntoRights, is freely available online with an open license. The evaluation of OntoRights suggests that OntoRights could be highly useful for case databases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]