Last week, Human Rights Watch released a report describing human rights abuses in a remote area of Ethiopia. With that region closed to foreigners by the Ethiopian government, the report relies on a combination of eyewitness reports and commercial satellite imagery performed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science's (AAAS) Science and Human Rights Program. The report highlights the growing importance of commercial imagery in monitoring abuses in areas otherwise off-limits to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). We talked with the AAAS' Lars Bromley, Project Director of the Science and Human Rights Program, about the history and future prospects for this application of technology.

Satellites and rights abuses

The Ogaden region of eastern Ethiopia lies just to the north of Somalia, and the population there includes several groups of Somali extraction. A subset of this population has been engaged in a rebellion against the Ethiopian government, hoping to gain autonomy. Human rights abuses have occurred on both sides, but rose in 2007, after the rebels assaulted a Chinese-run oil installation in the area, killing a number of civilians. The Ethiopian army followed with an aggressive campaign against rural villages in the region.

Human Rights Watch has documented the systematic destruction of villages and summary execution of their occupants through interviews with refugees in countries bordering Ethiopia. Seeking independent confirmation of the eyewitness accounts, they worked with the AAAS to obtain before and after images of the areas identified by the refugees' accounts. 11 individual areas were identified and, by obtaining images from commercial satellite companies, the organizations were able to identify hundreds of structures that were destroyed during the time interval identified by the refugees.





The village of Labigah in 2005. © 2008 DigitalGlobe

Getting from a village name to the coordinates needed for using satellite imagery can be a real challenge. The coordinates, as the AAAS' Bromley said, "really have to get down to several decimal places." Typically, they build a list of the villages they think they have good coordinates for, then they compare it with what's available in the archives of the imaging company. Archived "before" images are much less expensive than having new images created on order. Unfortunately, from remote areas such as the Ogaden area, archived pictures from after the occurrence of rights violations aren't common, making them expensive to obtain.

Prioritizing the final list of sites for the purchase and analysis involves close cooperation between the AAAS and the participating NGOs. "It's all done in close cooperation," Bromley said. Once the images are obtained, a combination of computerized image analysis and visual examination determines whether the before and after pictures corroborate eyewitness accounts.

Advancing science to human rights

Bromley also described how the AAAS became involved in human rights work in the first place. He has a Masters in geography, and started working with satellite imagery to support the AAAS' population and sustainable development efforts, which required ecosystem and resource analysis of remote areas. These initial projects were funded largely by the National Science Foundation. The transition to human rights work was inspired by US Government satellite imagery that exposed the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. "The notable thing about that product was," said Bromley, "that while undoubtedly classified imagery was used to create it, the public version cited only commercial satellite imagery."

Bromley approached the Science and Human Rights program director, who arranged seed funding from the MacArthur Foundation and, by 2006, the project was underway. Now, they have funding from a number of sources, and have done contract work for some organizations. The funds have been enough to allow Bromley to hire a second full-time staff member; so far, most of the work has been done with a rotating group of analysts and interns, supported by the infrastructure provided by AAAS.





Labigah in 2008, with red showing destroyed and damaged buildings. © 2008 DigitalGlobe

"So far the response has been pretty overwhelming," said Bromley, "We don't have the money or the staff time to meet the demands." The cost of up-to-date images has tended to be the largest bottleneck, but he identified other limitations as well. The process of ordering, paying for, and processing the images is also unwieldy, and Bromley would like to see the AAAS create a standardized system that acts as a clearinghouse with access to a constellation of satellites for human rights organizations to plug in to. The project is also beginning to evaluate other forms of imaging, such as those provided by radar mapping satellites, for use in this project.

Looking forward, Bromley hopes that the success of the first few commercial ventures will encourage the continued launching of commercial imaging satellites. "The test of that is—did they continue to put up satellites?" he asked. "The answer is yes." With greater imaging capacity, more data will appear in the cheaper-to-access archives, and the cost of pointing a satellite at a specific area may drop a bit.

The greater coverage may allow expanded use of a technique he called "protective imaging"—Amnesty International has identified villages in Darfur located in areas that left them likely to be attacked, and informed the Sudanese government that they would be subject to regular imaging. "It helps with advocacy," Bromley said, "but some have been attacked, so the impact can be limited."

Ultimately, the goal is to move the imaging to real time so that it can have an immediate impact on diplomacy. "Can we catch things in the act?" Bromley asked, adding that he wasn't sure if or when they'd be able to. But, he said, "everyone wants a 'smoking gun' image," so the effort to get there is likely to continue.

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