“'Big data' is a term that has come into vogue only in the last couple of years, and it refers to the tremendous explosion in volume and velocity and variety of digital data that is being produced around the world,” said Robert Kirkpatrick, Director of UN Global Pulse. “The statistics are somewhat astonishing: there was more data produced in 2011 alone than in all of the rest of human history combined back to the invention of the alphabet.”

Mr. Kirkpatrick’s department at the United Nations—Global Pulse—deals almost exclusively with big data, and its existence speaks volumes as to how some multilateral organizations are working to use this information.

“Global Pulse is an initiative that came out of the global financial crisis, at which point there was a recognition that we now live in this hyper-connected world where information movies at the speed of light, and a crisis can be all around the world very, very quickly, but we’re still using two- to three-year-old statistics to make most policy decisions.”

“A lot of this data is so new that even the private sector, which is the source of much of the data, is still struggling to learn how to use it,” Mr. Kirkpatrick said.

Big data makes some stunning claims. It can predict, with 90 percent accuracy, household incomes just by the frequency and amount people use mobile phones. It can predict unemployment spikes by examining online conversations about work. And health crises can be detected from spikes in Google searches for various symptoms.

However, this data mining has its critics. “Right now, the conversation around big data is very polarized,” said Mr. Kirkpatrick. “You might call it ‘Germany vs. Mark Zuckerberg.’ You have the very conservative prohibition against reuse without explicit permission that has become pervasive in the European Union; it’s a very guarded approach. At the opposite end of the spectrum, you have companies that live on big data, which are saying privacy is dead, profit is king. We’re trying to insert a third pole into this debate, which is to say, big data is a raw public good.”

The interview was conducted by Marie O’Reilly, Publications Officer at the International Peace Institute.

Listen to interview (or download mp3):

Marie O’Reilly: I’m here today with Robert Kirkpatrick, Director of UN Global Pulse. Thank you very much for speaking with us today, Robert. I’m wondering if you can briefly explain for our listeners, what is big data and what is UN Global Pulse? We’re particularly interested in hearing more about your strategy of combining research and practical field-based pulse labs. So why have you chosen this strategy, and what are you hoping to achieve as Global Pulse?

On October 22, Uruguay’s President José Mujica signed into law the complete decriminalization of abortion, thus making Uruguay only the second country in the region (after Cuba) that allows for abortion based solely on the woman’s decision to have one. This ruling is a remarkable shift on a continent where laws have remained virtually unchanged with regards to reproductive rights since the beginning of the 20th century, and where the region’s conservative penal codes criminalize women for having an abortion and practitioners for conducting them. Most countries only allow abortions if the life of the mother is at risk and/or when the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest. In others, such as El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Chile, and Brazil, abortions are illegal under any circumstances. El Salvador takes it a step further, stating in the country’s constitution that life begins at conception.

Not even the pink tide that brought to power progressive governments in the early 2000s in many countries in Latin America—including women heads of state in countries like Argentina, Brazil, and Chile—could transform the penalizing reproductive laws. Argentina legalized same-sex marriage in 2010 as a sign of a progressive gender-rights agenda, but President Fernández de Kirchner has publicly opposed the decriminalization of abortion.  President Rousseff of Brazil experienced a dramatic fall in polls when she spoke in favor of decriminalizing abortion, forcing her to promise to leave the abortion laws unchanged in a written statement before the 2010 election to pacify the Partido dos Trabalhadores’ evangelical voters. In Chile, Michelle Bachelet’s government attempted to approve the use of the morning-after pill, since tackling the decriminalization of abortion would have been politically impossible, and was shut down by the Constitutional Court, which declared the decree unconstitutional.

“I am concerned that the pattern is one of intensifying–or worsening–human rights abuses, with really no light at the tunnel,” said Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Iran.

Mr. Shaheed was in New York to deliver his latest report on human rights in Iran to the UN General Assembly. His report was based on hundreds of interviews with Iranians outside the country, and he has not been permitted to enter Iran. He discusses his methodology in depth, and his findings.

“The worry I have is that impunity appears to be an entrenched culture in Iran, there has been no accountability for actions meted to people in custody,” he said, adding that the pattern of abuse is focused on journalists,  human rights defenders, and other people who are subject to interrogation.

Iran's comment on the report was to say that torture was forbidden in the Iranian system; that it’s anti-Islamic and against Iranian laws, and therefore shouldn’t happen. But, Mr. Shaheed said, “What exists on paper does not actually hold up in practice.”

Mr. Shaheed said his two broad concerns are rule of law and discrimination including faith-based discrimination, ethnicity-based discrimination, gender-based discrimination, and sexual orientation-based discrimination

The interview was conducted by Warren Hoge, IPI SeniorAdviser for External Relations.

Listen to interview (or download mp3):

Warren Hoge: Our guest in the Global Observatory today is Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Iran. He was named for that post a year and a half ago by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, and he’s in New York to formally deliver to the UN General Assembly his latest report compiled from interviews with hundreds of alleged human rights abuse victims outside of Iran, usually in places with large Iranian diaspora communities. He has had to do it that way because Iran has not granted his request to enter the country.

On October 16, the Cuban government announced long-anticipated changes to its migration policy, including the elimination of exit permit requirements for Cuban citizens to travel abroad. The changes, which will go in effect January 14, 2013, represent the latest attempt by President Raúl Castro to respond to the demands of the Cuban people and stimulate economic growth.

The Cuban government began imposing restrictions on travel in 1961 in an effort to stem the flow of people fleeing the country following Fidel Castro’s rise to power. Under the existing rules, Cuban citizens are required to obtain an exit permit as well as present a letter of invitation from an individual or institution overseas in order to travel abroad and pay a prohibitive fee, without guarantee that the permission to travel will be granted. Starting on January 14, Cubans will now only need to have a valid passport and a visa, if required by the receiving country, to travel.

In addition, the new measures allow Cubans to live abroad for longer periods of time–24 months, up from 11—without having to relinquish their rights in Cuba and could make it easier for Cubans that left the country both permanently and/or illegally to re-establish residence in Cuba. Currently, Cubans that reside outside the country lose their residency and access to such benefits as healthcare and social security after 11 months.

The expectation is that these changes will give Cubans the opportunity to work abroad and an incentive to return home and invest much needed capital into the country. This follows the experience of other Communist-run countries that also loosened travel restrictions and engaged their diasporas in order to pull their countries out of economic stagnation. In Vietnam, the government implemented policies following the Doi Moi economic liberalization to encourage investments by Vietnamese exiles and considered their contributions “patriotic.” The fact that Cuba is now willing to modestly engage Cuban emigrants, and welcome their return, is perceived as a step in the right direction.

“Shabaab is in trouble,” said Ken Menkhaus, Professor of Political Science at Davidson College and a specialist on Somalia and the Horn of Africa. “It has been pushed out of almost all of the urban areas that it once controlled, including the very important seaport of Kismayo, which was a major source of its revenue.”

Mr. Menkhaus said that the real challenge for the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) is shifting “from war fighting against Shabaab to peacekeeping in areas that it has liberated. It is going to need to provide an environment that is secure, so that people feel as safe or safer than they did than when Shabaab controlled it.” He said that "AMISOM is certainly stretched right now" and a lot of new challenges are going to be "more political than military."

Security remains the most obvious challenge in Somalia. "[The government] has to start to gain control over the many security forces that are nominally hatted as part of the government, which in fact are autonomous from the government and do not answer to a chain of command," Mr. Menkhaus said. "Until it does that, it’s in a very precarious position. It also is going to have to start generating revenues–it currently does not have money."

On piracy, he said, "Piracy attempts remain very high, but successful piracy has dropped way off, and what that’s done is it has produced a situation in which frustrated pirates are now increasingly turning to on-land criminality to make a livelihood, and that really underscores the point you made, that even if piracy is resolved at sea, it’s going to plague Somalia in other ways unless there are livelihoods."

When asked what the international community can do to support the end of foreign domination in Somalia, Mr. Menkhaus said, “Somalia is going to need considerable external support for the foreseeable future… If the assistance that is offered comes in the package of lots of conditionality and lots of demands and lots of top-down orders from the international donors, it is going to go down badly, and it is not going to work. So we need to find a way to provide the maximum support that Somalis need, while giving the Somalis maximum ownership of this recovery process.”

The interview was conducted by John Hirsch, Senior Adviser at the International Peace Institute.

Listen to interview (or download mp3):

John Hirsch: I am here today with Ken Menkhaus, Professor of Political Science at Davidson College and a specialist on Somalia and the Horn of Africa. Thank you, Ken, for joining us on the Global Observatory today.

A 14-year old girl was shot in the head in Pakistan’s Swat Valley last week in retaliation for speaking out against the Taliban’s ban on girl’s education. It now seems Malala Yousafzai will survive, but the story of her attack provoked outrage around the world. How can such a despicable attack be condemned using the “ammunition” of international law? What relevant UN resolutions apply in this case? And how does this compare to previous Taliban actions against girls in Pakistan?

For policymakers, journalists, and human rights advocates seeking answers to these questions, there may be an app for them.  A new Children and Armed Conflict smartphone app, created by Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict in collaboration with Liechtenstein’s mission to the UN, focuses on tools for influencing UN policymakers in particular.

While this latest atrocity by the Taliban may seem unprecedented in its brazenness, the Children and Armed Conflict app quickly dispels this myth. In the Country Situation section, it provides information on grave violations committed against children in Pakistan extracted from the UN Secretary-General’s latest report on children and armed conflict. According to the report, children have consistently been victims of indiscriminate attacks in Pakistan, and schools and school buses have been directly targeted by armed groups. In an ominous precursor to last week’s attack, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for a double attack on a government primary school in December 2011, reportedly acting in opposition to secular and girls’ education. Similar language was used by the armed group this time around when they claimed responsibility for shooting Yousafzai and said they singled her out for her role in preaching secularism.

In fact, the report counted 152 incidents last year of partial or complete destruction of school facilities in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where Swat is located, and the neighboring Federally Administered Tribal Areas. It’s not clear how many children and civilian deaths resulted from these attacks on educational facilities, but 57 children were killed in an array of bombings, shellings, and targeted attacks over the course of the year.

On the sidelines of an IPI event on the Special Court of Sierra Leone, IPI’s Maureen Quinn spoke with two of the principals of the court, Justice Shireen Avis Fisher and Registrar Binta Mansaray. The principals of the Special Court are all women, which is a first in international justice.

Justice Fisher explained that the Special Court of Sierra Leone is a hybrid court in with international backing and participation, but staffed nationally, to help the justice and reconciliation process in that country to prosecute violators of international humanitarian law and Sierra Leonean law committed after November 30, 1996 and during the 11-year Sierra Leone Civil War.

“What you find in most war-torn countries is a willingness to prosecute the crimes, and to try the crimes, but not the ability to do so because of the infrastructure destruction that occurs in any war situation,” said Ms. Fisher.

Ms. Fisher also said that a woman on the bench is not required in cases involving gender-based crimes. “I don’t know that gender makes a difference,” she said, adding, however, that gender is a factor in who you are. She said that training on gender issues for both men and women is extremely important.

In the second part of the interview, Registrar Binta Mansaray spoke about the ways in which the Special Court supports victims of these horrifically violent crimes during the trial, including offering a witness protection program.

“First of all, women are scared to come to the court,” Ms. Mansaray said, “Either they are afraid of retribution or reprisals from perpetrators, either they’re ashamed, or, for whatever reason, it’s difficult for them to come before the court.”

World Polio Day is on October 24, and we are closer than ever to eradicating this life threatening and crippling disease. The number of cases is at a historic low. We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to ensure that no child has to suffer from it again.

The fight against polio is important to me, and not just because it is a terrible disease that kills and maims children. For me, it's personal: I survived polio. In fact, millions of children in India contracted polio in the not-so-distant past and were forced into lives of infirmity and despondency because of poverty, ignorance, and poor access to health services.

But for the first time since its independence, India is polio free—a tribute to the government, international and national partners, and, most importantly, the health workers who made sure that they reached every child.

However, the threat has not passed. Countless children in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria—the three countries where polio still exists—suffer the consequences of this awful disease. This disease, like many others, can migrate across borders, and left unchecked, will resurface in neighboring and distant countries.