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 THE STAT 26Percentage of wireless customers who use their cell phones to take picturesMore Vitals
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AUGUST 19, 2003
Technology with Social Skills Simple or sophisticated, it's being used to fight poverty and diseases and improve the lives of the world's neediest For 30 years, civil war has raged on the island of Mindanao at the southern tip of the Philippines. Muslim separatists want an independent Islamic nation, while the Philippine government strives to preserve its nation's territorial integrity. Caught in the crossfire are Mindanao's 18 million people. Over the past three decades, more than 120,000 have lost their lives in sectarian raids, extrajudicial killings, and kidnappings. Witness to the terror are more than a dozen human-rights groups. But documenting the island's troubles -- and presenting damning evidence of systematic abuse to the global community -- has been a challenge. Handwritten reports can be stolen, lost, or damaged as they move from the groups' regional offices to the Philippine capital, Manila. And rebel groups -- or government-sponsored militias -- can take revenge on civilians who report human rights violations. ELECTRONIC OBSERVER. Today, thanks to technology, Mindanao's troubles have a new witness: Martus, a software program that helps watchdog groups compile, analyze, and securely transmit data on human-rights abuses. Named after the Greek word for witness, Martus allows staffers of groups such as Human Rights Watch and Mindanao Tulong Bakwet (Mindanao Help For Evacuees) to enter key data -- a victim's name, plus the date and description of an alleged abuse -- into an e-mail-style format and securely transmit it to a database. The program's simplicity is its strength, since many human rights workers in the field have limited computer skills. Also key is that the program is built using nonproprietary, open-source software. That way, the groups can examine the code to ensure that prying eyes have no backdoor in. "Until now, it was all paper-based or, if they were really cooking, fax-based," says Steve Rood, Philippines representative for the nonprofit Asia Foundation, which is distributing Martus to human rights groups throughout the country. "This is their way into the computer age." By year's end, the Asia Foundation, which is headquartered in San Francisco, plans to roll out Martus software in Cambodia and Sri Lanka. Benetech, the Palo Alto-based nonprofit that developed the program, also makes Martus available via its Web site. Since January, more than 400 human-ights groups in places ranging from Sierra Leone to Saudi Arabia have downloaded the software. "THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY." Martus is emblematic of the kinds of technology being employed around the world to tackle sticky social problems -- from eliminating poverty and disease to aiding in conflict resolution and creating transparent views of suspect governments' actions. Today, the focus is on technologies with few bells and whistles that cater to the limited computer capabilities of human-rights workers in the jungle or in capital-poor but labor-rich developing countries. "It's not high technology or low technology but the right technology that we're interested in," says Cowan Coventry, executive director of British nonprofit Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG), which works to bring locally available, affordable technologies to the developing world. What a change that is from just four years ago. At the height of the Internet boom, tech evangelists proclaimed that a PC and an Internet connection in every household could solve most, if not all, of the world's ills. But just months after the bubble burst, so did dreams that wiring the world with fast fiber-optic cables would cure intractable social problems. In November, 2000, Microsoft (MSFT ) founder Bill Gates -- the personification of both capitalism and the computer revolution -- warned a Seattle audience that those who thought the developing world could benefit from the e-economy were out of touch with reality: "Mothers are going to walk right up to that computer and say: "My children are dying -- what can you do?" They're not going to sit there and, like, browse eBay or something…. What they want is for their children to live. Do you really have to put in computers to figure that out?" (See "The Digital Divide That Wasn't".) BILLIONS IN NEED. To the point: One-third of the world's population -- 2.4 billion people -- burn wood, agricultural residues, or dung for cooking and heating, according to ITDG. Illnesses caused by the smoke from these fires kill 1.6 million people each year, an average of more than three people per minute. Some 1.6 billion of the world's people have no access to electricity and, in the absence of new policies, 1.4 billion will still lack it in 2030. And so, just as corporations now focus on implementation costs and return on investment, development organizations are zeroing in on smart ways to use technology to solve the world's most pressing social problems. During the May, 2002, election in Sierra Leone, conflict-resolution organization Search For Common Ground, which is based in Washington, D.C., handed out cell phones to journalists who called in polling results every hour -- which were then announced to the country's public via a network of radio stations. The regular updates calmed fears of corruption and vote rigging, says Search For Common Ground COO Shamil Idriss, permitting the vote to take place without outbreaks of violence. In the Sudan, meanwhile, ITDG makes cell phones available in market towns so that traders can phone in the selling prices of commodities to radio networks. Farmers can then find out where they'll get the best price for their products. In the wake of the collapse of the dot-com bubble, "the sensible use of technology is back in vogue," says ITDG's Coventry.
BW MALL
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