Patrick Ball’s nonprofit, Human Rights Data Analysis Group, will be awarded the Rafto Prize, a Norwegian award bestowed on defenders of human rights around the world.
Ball and his team have been called in during or after conflict to examine human rights abuses in a long list of countries from Ethiopia to Haiti to Kosovo to Timor-Leste, but the “heart” of the work lies in Central America.
“Because of wildly varying levels of social visibility, there are silences in the data. If we’re talking about trying to tell the truth about violence to people in the world, our first commitment should be to make sure that we document the violence against the most marginalized people,” Ball said.
The team is currently cooperating with two transitional justice organizations in Colombia to facilitate the country’s emergence from its own period of conflict.
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