Using Technology to Understand How Conflicts Affect Children

Imagine having the power of teleportation, like Captain Kirk and the crew from Star Trek, you could transport yourself to any location to witness firsthand what is happening for children caught in the conflict in Ukraine or another global hotspot. Or, like Officer Spock, you could analyze vast amounts of data within a second, helping to create a quick intervention to prevent cruel acts of violence against children. While these abilities may still be a thing of science fiction, technology offers new ways to understand how armed conflicts impact children and develop more effective ways to protect them.

Overcoming “the Triple-D” Challenges

While technology cannot think for us or replace the hard work of human rights and child protection workers who are on the ground working directly with children and communities, it can help us address some other challenges that make monitoring violations and situation analysis in armed conflict settings so difficult. We call these the “Triple-D” challenges:

· Distance to locations where violations are occurring due to lack of access

· Data overload due to the huge amount of data being generated and collected

· Danger of harm for those gathering information.

In other words, technology can help us get data from hard-to-reach or dangerous locations and make analysis more efficient and effective.

Potential Uses of Technology for Collecting and Analyzing Data

While the process of exploring and testing the potential uses of technology to assist data collection and analysis related to children and armed conflict goes on, here are some examples of potential uses we are excited about:

· Natural language processing (NLP) can help detect human rights violations by analyzing text from various sources, such as social media, news articles and official reports. The technology searches for key words and phrases associated with such violations, and machine learning algorithms can flag relevant content. Child protection workers, human rights experts and others can then scrutinize this information to determine areas where children are potentially at risk. For example, researchers at the National College of Dublin have developed an algorithm that can help organizations detect human rights violations via social media.

· Sentiment Analysis (a part of NLP) can identify social sentiment around certain topics or issues based on social media posts and machine learning algorithms can deeply analyze this data. Organization can then use this information to determine public sentiment towards children in armed conflict and use this information to counter negative or harmful messages or for other programming insights. For example, sentiment analysis has been used to gain insights on how the population in Nigeria views Boko Haram, an armed group that relies on social media for its messaging.

· Satellites and geospatial information technologies can help humanitarians and others identify locations where children and other civilians may be most at risk of experiencing violence due to armed conflict and can help them assess the impact of attacks if/when they occur, as described in a report by the Center of International Cooperation. Remote sensing (the science of gathering data from a distance) is now commonly used in research and documentation of human rights abuses. For example, in-depth analysis of satellite imagery showed the destruction of hundreds of Rohingya villages in Rakhine State, Myanmar in 2018, which assisted activists to shed light on the military’s efforts to control the region and reshape its ethnic composition.

Venturing into Unchartered Territory

Nothing is more thrilling than “to boldly go where no one has gone before,“ as the deep, resonant voice at the beginning of each Start Trek episode reminds us. Our colleagues working to protect children in armed conflict are no strangers to bold explorations and embracing new technologies. Yet, it is crucial that we equip ourselves with the knowledge of how to use these technologies safely and efficiently. Just like outer space, the opportunities in this field are vast and limitless.