Google and George Clooney Aim Satellites at Sudan, Become ” Anti-Genocide Paparazzi” [Satellites]

Before an early January referendum, the two partners, in addition to Harvard and the United Nations, want Sudanese rebels to grasp that they may be being watched.

George Clooney is joining Google, the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, and the United Nations in an effort called the Satellite Sentinel Project to watch violence and human rights violations in Sudan as the country prepares to vote on January 9 on whether or not to split into two nations-North and South Sudan.

The explicit goal of the partnership is deterrence-Clooney and his partners have the desire to make sure that Sudan doesn’t erupt in another civil war. Some small pockets of violence have already been reported and the employment of satellites is meant to offer war-mongers on the ground the message that the realm is watching and genocide is not really tolerated.

Clooney’s interest in Sudan just isn’t new-back in 2007 he was featured within the documentary film, Darfur Now , co-produced by actor Don Cheadle. And he has maintained his interest inside the embattled country since then, paying a contemporary visit amidst preparations for the approaching referendum.

The partnership pulls on the varied strengths of the participating organizations-Clooney and his organization, Not On Our Watch , add star power-not to mention awareness power-and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT) will collect and analyze the satellite images. The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, meanwhile, will provide field research and Google is constructing an internet platform to supply public access to information with the goal of pressuring public officials. (We profiled an independent, Ushahidi-backed voting monitoring project just more than one weeks ago-performed by a Sudan-born Texan .)

UNOSAT has done this before-in truth it’s their mission to snap satellite images in cases of such disaster, but with regards to Sudan they’ve kind of been on standby to work out what happens and may start snapping satellite images as soon as they receive requests from their field staff and partner organizations to accomplish that. ” It’s an excellent thing that we haven’t yet had to take many images in Sudan,” Lars Bromley of UNOSAT tells Fast Company.

So the belief isn’t entirely Clooney’s alone (despite what a Time magazine article suggests). I had spoken to UNOSAT several weeks ago, ahead of the announcement of Clooney’s project, and, for them, here is essentially routine work.

But there is one difference this time around. It’s Clooney who has hired the satellites. Which means there is more freedom to snap away in whatever geographical areas and on whatever basis the gang wants, in place of the U.N., which has certain rules and guidelines to work within. Specifically, Clooney will monitor the movement of troops, whereas UNOSAT’s primary-and most flexible-prerogative is the monitoring of natural disasters, not man-made ones.

” We are the anti-genocide paparazzi,” Clooney told Time . ” We would like them to enjoy the level of celebrity attention that I usually get. While you know your actions are going to be covered, you are inclined to behave much differently than after you operate in a vacuum.”

The project as an entire is a multi-layered approach and the programming and monitoring capabilities of multiple crisis mapping tools, websites, and organizations are being pulled together. The work of the Sudan Vote Monitor-who we profiled earlier this month -will soon be incorporated and the Google mapping component was actually built off the work of two Pakistani-British entrepreneurs who built LOCAL , a monitoring site for the Pakistan floods.

” What is new and reworking is the idea that of leveraging Google Map Maker into a public human rights and human security early warning system to forestall a war before it starts,” Jonathan Hutson of the Enough Project, another partner, tells Fast Company.

” We’d want to engage the worldwide, volunteer community of Google power mappers,” adds Hutson, ” and combine their efforts with on-the-ground field reports from the Enough Project and crowd-sourced, crisis response information from groups like Ushahidi, analyze it, add context and concise clear calls to action, and publish it all on a public platform to detect and deter war crimes, including potential genocide.”

[Image copyright 2010 DigitalGlobe. Produced by UNITAR-UNOSAT]

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This post is tagged: human rights violations, humanitarian initiative, monitoring project, satellite applications, united nations institute