GIS Technology as a Tool for Genocide Prevention

Thanks to Patrick for his thoughtful taxonomy of the field of Crisis Mapping. Another way to organize our conversations about this field is according to the various potential goals of interactive mapping projects, e.g. stimulating public awareness and activism, providing policymakers with early warning of emerging crises, or enabling civilian populations in conflict zones to defend themselves against impending attacks.

I recently wrote an article entitled "Geographical Informations Systems Technology as a Tool for Genocide Prevention: The Case of Darfur," published in the journal Space and Polity (vol. 13, no. 1, April 2009, pp. 69-76), which explored several potential applications of crisis mapping technology, based on a discussion of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's "Crisis in Darfur" project and Amnesty International USA's "Eyes on Darfur." The key conclusions of this article are excerpted below:


"The use of satellite surveillance and virtual globes as tools for human rights promotion raises questions of both ethics and efficacy.... [P]ublic advocacy – even when supported by sophisticated information technology – is a blunt instrument, which is only one of many factors that influence government policies. Advocacy movements are typically slow to mobilize and most effective when they stress a simple message – e.g. “Save Darfur.” Such movements are less suited to parsing the complexities of a situation in which the Sudanese government, its proxy militias, and a factionalized opposition all share some measure of blame for the ongoing violence. Moreover, it is difficult for such movements to focus simultaneously on multiple crises – for example, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Northern Uganda, and Burma as well as Darfur – without diminishing the impact of their lobbying efforts.

"Perhaps the greatest value of GIS technology is its capacity to display complex and diverse sets of data on a unified information-sharing platform, and to allow for regular updates to illuminate changing conditions on the ground. Rather than communicating a simple, focused and repetitive message, this technology is best suited to revealing the complexity, interconnectedness, and fluidity of events. These attributes of GIS technology and virtual globes mean that they may have the greatest value not so much for mass public audiences in the U.S. and other Western countries as for relatively sophisticated users – such as government officials and staff members of humanitarian NGOs. Such data sharing can provide better “situational awareness” that may facilitate better conflict analysis and early warning, as well as help diverse organizations operating in a conflict zone coordinate their policy responses.

"GIS technology may also have great potential value for populations with a direct stake in a given conflict, such as residents of villages or displaced persons camps that are at risk of attack by perpetrators of mass atrocities.... With the advent of projects such as “One Laptop Per Child,” which is distributing millions of laptop computers to children in developing countries, an ever-increasing proportion of the world’s population has access to the Internet, and thus has the potential to take advantage of electronic communication capabilities. Creating mechanisms for timely communication with civilian populations on the ground might enable endangered civilians to take more effective protective measures of their own to defend against impending attacks, as well as give them a megaphone to communicate their concerns to the outside world."


The full text of this article is attached:

GIS technology and genocide prevention article 12-08.doc