Welcome to the Official Schedule for RightsCon 2019, the world’s leading summit on human rights in the digital age.
Together at RightsCon Tunis, our first summit hosted in the Middle East and North Africa, more than 2500 expert practitioners will come together across over 400 sessions to shape, contribute to, and drive forward the global agenda for the future of our human rights.
Important note: Whether you’re a session organizer, speaker, or participant, you’ll need to login to Sched or create an account in order to get the most out of the program (including creating a profile and building your own customized RightsCon schedule).
The session will feature an engaging discussion with experts and the audience regarding the evolving challenge of how to document and promote accountability for violations of international law in the world of Facebook and YouTube. Still equipped with primarily traditional tools, international justice institutions have had difficulty navigating the digital deluge of data to take advantage of social media's offer of wider access to truth. In Syria, the efforts of civil society, journalists, and human rights defenders have resulted in what is today the most documented conflict in history. But with millions of videos in their collection, it may take investigators years or decades to comb through and identify key evidence. This is where new technologies can help. By strategically applying artificial intelligence, computer vision, and metadata analysis methods to sort, identify, preserve, and analyze documentation of abuses and potential war crimes, investigators can be empowered to effectively convert their data troves into actionable evidence, which will be essential to promoting justice for victims. This session will explore such possibilities, as well as the challenges and ethical concerns inherent in leveraging AI, regardless of the good intentions behind its application.
I am a lawyer focused on rule of law and human rights in the MENA region. At Benetech, I am leading efforts to apply artificial intelligence to help civil society organizations pursue justice and accountability in Syria and beyond.