award challenge

Human Rights and Mobile Apps: A New Challenge

Posted by KatrinVerclas on Feb 02, 2009

The Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley is announcing the Human Rights Center Mobile Challenge. The deadline for submission of applications is March 13, 2009. Winners will receive cash awards of $15,000 (first place), $10,000 (second place), and $5,000 (third place) to implement their ideas.

While there have been few implementations of mobile technoogy so far in human rights work, recent innovations have the potential to be used to expose war crimes and other serious violations of human rights, and disseminate this information in real time throughout the world. Mobile phones, combined with GPS, cameras, video, audio, and SMS are transforming the way the world understands and responds to emerging crises. Handheld data collection devices, such as PDAs, provide researchers with new ways of documenting mass violence and attitudes toward peace, justice, and social reconstruction in conflict zones.