Open Source Research for the Public Good
Human Rights Accountability
Launched in Fall 2019, the Human Rights Investigations Lab for the Americas offers digital verification support to non-governmental organizations, news outlets, and other advocacy partners that are conducting open source investigations. Housed in the Research Center for the Americas (RCA) at UC Santa Cruz, this Lab harnesses digital technologies to address and confront human rights violations. The Lab’s social justice mission is to track and monitor ongoing humanitarian, environmental and socio-political crises throughout the Americas by using open source investigative methods to promote justice and achieve accountability for communities adversely affected by human rights violations. For more information, please email hrlab@ucsc.edu.
The Human Rights Investigations Lab has received UC Santa Cruz funding from the Institute for Social Transformation, Social Sciences Division, Graduate Division, Arts Division, Film and Digital Media, The Humanities Institute, and Radical Resilence, and technical support from Hunchly, Bellingcat, and Facebook Research.
We have secured external funding from the Public Interest Technology University Network and the University of California Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives.
What We Do
Students at the UC Santa Cruz Human Rights Investigations Lab collaborated with UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center on open-source research focused on the ongoing human rights crisis in Chile, where massive anti-government demonstrations from 2019-2020 have been met with sometimes brutal government crackdowns.
Campus Supporters
University of California Supporters
