Amnesty launches open source human rights investigation courses

Advocacy Assembly is delighted to announce we have launched two new courses developed by Amnesty International to train people in how to carry out open source research for human rights investigations and advocacy.

Human rights researchers, activists and journalists are among those who will benefit from these two free online courses on the rigorous methodologies employed by Amnesty International’s Digital Verification Corps – an award-winning partnership with seven global universities. The courses will train people in investigative techniques used to verify digital content and tackle disinformation.

“Never has it been more relevant for activists, journalists and human rights practitioners to understand how to use digital verification and open source investigative skills,” said Sam Dubberley, Head of Amnesty International’s Crisis Evidence Lab and the course instructor.

“These online courses take the same toolkit and methodologies used by Amnesty International’s Crisis Evidence Lab and Digital Verification Corps to solve digital human rights challenges day in and day out, and make them more accessible to anyone interested in learning vital new skills to establish the truth and combat disinformation.

Among the skills taught in the courses are digital verification – including how to discover relevant content and how to establish where (geolocation) and when (chronolocation) events took place – as well as more advanced open source methods, including weapons identification and analysis of satellite imagery and other remote sensing data.

The same methodologies have been applied to scores of Amnesty International outputs in recent years, including ground-breaking investigations into the abuse of tear gas around the world, the widespread use of police violence against Black Lives Matter protests in the USA, and Russian and Syrian strikes on hospitals and schools in north-west Syria.

The first course covers the fundamentals while the second delves into more advanced skills. Both include practical, real-world case studies from Amnesty International’s research, presented by experts from Amnesty International and elsewhere, as well as covering ethical concerns, resiliency and mitigating the risk of vicarious trauma. In addition to experts from Amnesty International, the courses feature experts from WITNESS, UC Berkeley Human Rights Center and Swansea University.

Each course lasts 90 minutes and is offered in English, Spanish, Arabic and Persian. Sign up today for free on Advocacy Assembly.

You can listen to a podcast interview with Amnesty International’s Sam Dubberley discussing the online training courses and his work in open source investigations.