HDRO Conference Room
18 March 2010
Time: 12.30- 2.00 p.m.
Topic
Human rights monitoring consists primarily of receiving information from witnesses and by conducting investigations; the resulting information is often stored in databases. However, the statistics generated from databases collected in this way may tell us more about the functioning of the organization doing the monitoring than about the violence being monitored. Using examples from Guatemala, El Salvador, Kosovo, Colombia, Timor-Leste, and Sierra Leone, the presentation will explain how statistics produced from data collected by non-random sampling can be fundamentally incorrect. It concludes with two examples showing how reliable statistics can be produced using multiple independent databases or a random sample of respondents.
About the Speaker
Patrick Ball, is Vice President for Human Rights Programs at the Benetech Initiative. Since 1991, Dr. Ball has designed information management systems and conducted statistical analysis for large-scale human rights data projects used by truth commissions, non-governmental organizations, tribunals and UN missions in El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, South Africa, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Perú, Timor-Leste, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Chad. Dr. Ball is currently involved in Benetech projects in Colombia, Burma, Congo and other countries around the world.
HDR 2010 seminar series
The event will take place in the HDRO Conference Room, 304 East 45th Street, FF building 12th Floor. For more information, and to organize a building pass, please contact ekaterina.berman@undpaffiliates.org
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