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Part 2: Human Rights - Gorbachev and Rights View

  • Writer: Con Bartels
    Con Bartels
  • Feb 27, 2020
  • 3 min read

Today, Human Rights violations still occur every-day and in many countries around the world, Russia included. Human rights activists and politicians who strive to preserve and increase human rights have grown in numbers in the last thirty years, thanks in large part to early pioneers such as Gorbachev. However, the methods for identifying and tackling human rights violations has changed immeasurably in this time too.



The potential of Artificial Intelligence and big data analytics is still yet to be seen but these technologies have already been put into use by the UN in their quest to halt the atrocities occurring around the world. With the emergence of instant internet access and growing flow of information, photos, videos and stories around the world through mobile phones, it has become a lot easier to find evidence of human rights violations as they happen in real-time. This technology can help field officers overcome legal and physical obstacles to access and help these groups by reporting abuses and speeding up response and communication times (Hardawar, 2017).


However, the information overload provides new problems for human rights advocators as well. The plethora of photos and videos must be analysed, verified and cross-referenced with written accounts and potentially conflicting information before they can be acted upon, which makes for a lengthy and arduous process. To help the capacity of groups such as the UN to process this data AI technology has been developed to put together the vast amounts of data and create a dashboard where all of it can be centralised, accessed easily and bundled together based on search parameters. The dashboard, known as Rights View, can also help verify if videos are real or doctored and if they come from the claimed country (Ith, 2017). This is carried out by checking the backgrounds of photos for minute details which match with other sources of information from that date, time and location. This information system cuts down the long process of searching through this data and allows human rights advocators to focus their efforts on combatting more violations.




Given the ability of modern technology to create efficient data structures such as Rights View, I believe such a tool would have been a go-to for Mikhail Gorbachev had the tech been available in the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Gorbachev would have advocated the use of Rights View when he came to power to tackle the oppression which was widespread in the state at the time and show to the western leaders that he was serious about reversing the atrocities that were commonplace in his country. Gorbachev would have utilised Rights View to provide a coherent human rights perspective on human rights crises and gain the appropriate support from within his government and the international community to understand the urgency of the matter. I believe if Gorbachev had access to this AI technology he would have been forced to appease to the likes of Ronald Reagan a lot faster over the issue of human rights in the USSR. The evidence provided by the dashboard would make it evident to the wider public that changes needed to be made and Gorbachev would not have come under pressure from the US for his inability to put an end to all of the human rights violations that went on under his leadership.



As Gorbachev had no such access to any technology like this that could have helped his crusade for human rights protection, it makes his achievements all the more impressive for the time and the situation he was in.






2- Ith, T. (2017). Technology helps the UN advance the protection of human rights in new ways - Stories. [online] Microsoft-Stories. Available at: https://news.microsoft.com/features/technology-helps-un-advance-protection-human-rights-new-ways/


 
 
 

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