Sameer Padania, the lead author/researcher of our “Cameras Everywhere” report spoke recently at “The Power of Information” conference in London, organized by the Indigo Trust, the Institute for Philanthropy and the Omidyar Network. His presentation focused particularly on some of the ways donors can better integrate support for technology and human rights into their work – in line with some of our analysis and recommendations in our report.

As a teaser for his presentation here’s one of his slides:

Read more about his presentation on Sameer’s blog (and watch his overall summary of the human rights panel here). Below is a summary of the recommendations for funders we make in our report:

Governmental, foundation and private donors play a critical role in conducting and supporting research, activism and advocacy on issues related to human rights and technology. To increase impact, their funding need to become more transparent, accessible, harmonized and less risk-averse.

  1. Increase transparency in funding around who is funding what and how.
  2. Collaborate with other funders, investors and technology developers: Create multi-donor spaces on technology and human rights, including emerging crowdfunding platforms, as well as new donors outside U.S./Europe, and create both joint funding mechanisms with investors and review boards that can assess risk in proposals.
  3. Collaborate more, compete less: Create a human rights-technology network, coordinate cross-platform discussions and engage with key policymakers, civil society, media, business and technology funders/investors, and develop human rights principles for investments in information and communications technologies.
  4. Lead in developing effective monitoring and evaluations methodologies for human rights and technologies.

You can read more detail on these recommendations here (PDF). What do you think? Do you have other ideas about how funders can support programs and initiatives that would better enable and protect human rights activists using emerging technologies? 

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