[RESOURCES] Empowering people to monitor human rights violations through Citizen Data

By DOMINIC GUTOMAN
Bulatlat.com

The role of quantitative data in assessing the human rights situation of a country is crucial, especially in the Philippines, where the duty-bearers attempt to downplay violations.

One example is the number of drug-related extrajudicial killings (EJK) under the administration of former President Rodrigo Duterte. Government data reported 6,000 EJK victims, while human rights watchdogs report more than 30,000.

Bulatlat joined the recent workshop session of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) on monitoring human rights violations, particularly the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Indicators 16.1.2 (conflict-related deaths) and the SDG 16.10.1 (verified cases of killing, kidnapping, enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention and torture of journalists, associated media personnel, trade unionists and human rights advocates in the previous 12 months).

What is Citizen Data?

Citizen data are data originating from initiatives where citizens either initiate or are sufficiently engaged at the minimum, irrespective of whether these data are integrated into official statistics. This data is often gathered through crowdsourcing platforms or citizen reporting efforts, typically coordinated by civil society organizations (CSOs).

Collaborative on Citizen Data (CCD), a broad umbrella of stakeholders within the national data ecosystem (e.g. CSOs, human rights groups, research institutions, public and private institutions), said in a report that citizen data improve the documentation of lived experiences of marginalized populations, identifying drivers of vulnerability, and monitoring the level of recognition and implementation of their rights.

By leveraging citizen data, communities can play an active role in addressing challenges and driving social change, and most importantly, improve the inclusiveness and timeliness of the official statistics. However, the full potential of citizen data faces many challenges in integrating it into policymaking.

“These include the lack of trust or engagement between the state and non-state actors, concerns about quality of data collected by non-state actors, the lack of knowledge and capacity of CSOs and national statistics offices (NSOs) to work with citizen data, and concerns over its sustainability,” said the Collaborative.

To illustrate, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., after his first year in office, claimed that the human rights violations (HRVs) were down by half in 2023, compared to the previous year.

CHR data, however, revealed that reported cases of alleged human rights violations (HRVs) did not decrease by 50 percent. Based on its monitoring, the CHR recorded 1,608 cases, reflecting a slight drop of less than five percent compared to the 1,684 cases it recorded in 2022.

Data from human rights organization Karapatan showed a completely different picture. In its 2023 year-end report, Karapatan documented more than 100,000 civil and political rights violations, and more than 1.6 million for threats, harassment, and intimidation dating from July 2022 to December 2023 alone.

A notable part of their data tells that the number of enforced disappearances in the first year of Marcos administration (13), already surpassed the half of cases under the Duterte administration (21).

Karapatan, as the premiere human rights organization in the country, collects its data from the ground, through its chapters and partners across the country. This is as an example of citizen data, which the group uses to hold duty-bearers to account.

Another example of this is the program of UP Third World Studies named Dahas, which continues to monitor the drug-related killings under the administration of Marcos Jr.

A framework and an enabling environment

Copenhagen Framework provides a scope that helps conceptualize and agree on different ways that citizens can play a role in data gathering and analysis (See Table 2 below).

There is no official government policy yet on the integration of citizen data in the official statistics. Even in the international community, it is still being discussed among member-states of the United Nations (UN).

The CHR is initiating discussions among CSOs and executed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) to recognize the former as a national custodian for SDG indicators 16.1.2 and 16.10.1. This means that the data collected and verified by the CHR for these indicators will be the official statistics.

Under the framework, the highest level of citizen participation in the data is the self-determination of the communities, who actively control the entire data process with grassroots-level influence, avoiding imposition from above or the duty-bearers themselves.

In the Philippines, there are a number of organizations that already function with self-determination, especially people’s organizations and local human rights watchdogs that conduct their own fact-finding mission for cases of human rights violation. Aside from the national and local chapters of Karapatan, Bulatlat joined the fact-finding missions of Tanggol Magsasaka for the land rights violations. Other sectoral institutions also have their own databases such as Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR), Center for Women’s Resources (CWR), among many others.

Often, fact-finding missions led by human rights groups and people’s organizations are being met with hostility by state security forces, such as the recent case of Talaingod 13. Such a response from government entities erodes trust, which is a critical component of the citizen data.

“Trust among stakeholders is essential for a robust national data ecosystem. This trust is nurtured when there is transparency from both the state institutions and citizens in their processes and decisions, implement mechanisms for citizen oversight, involve citizens in decision-making, and adapt to their evolving needs and concerns,” said CCD.

What do the communities need to monitor?

While the enabling environment is still not present in the government policy, empowering communities to monitor human rights violations remains crucial, especially in the context of continuous extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and other forms of state violence.

In the minimum data requirement, it can help if the communities and people’s organizations take note of the following analytical syntax: Who did what to whom, when, where, and why?

• • “Who did” refers to the alleged perpetrators. This can be identified or unknown, and it should also be identified whether the perpetrator is a state actor or a non-state actor.

• • “What” refers to the act or cause of death.

• • “To whom” refers to the name of the victim and further details about them: status (civilian/combatant), sex, age, ethnicity, sector (journalist, human rights defender).

• • “When” refers to the date of incident.

• • “Where” refers to the location, and if possible, the data can be geo-coded.

• • “Why” refers to the nexus of the conflict: possible motive of the perpetrator, reasonable basis, patterns of harassment.

Disaggregation of these cases can be submitted to the data providers who have the mandate, capacity, and independence to document and investigate human rights violations. This includes the CHR and the UN entities working on casualty recording. However, it is still up to the communities and organizations whether to report the cases of HRVs to the abovementioned offices, since it is up to their self-determination and assessment of potential harms.

While the numbers are crucial to identify and count the instances of victimization, it should not be used to undermine human experience and should never contribute to further dehumanization of victims. (RTS, RVO)