June 28, 2007 | Read Time: 2 minutes
To stanch bloodletting in Darfur, an Amnesty International project is putting satellite images online to monitor 12 vulnerable villages in Sudan and nearby Chad.
The dozen villages have not been attacked but are in danger because of their location near water or other resources, say officials of Eyes on Darfur. In addition to monitoring those areas, the project is intended to alert the Sudanese government that hard evidence of human-rights violations exists, and to force the government to open its borders to peacekeeping forces, which it has so far refused to do.
In related news, Google — the Internet search-engine company — plans to announce this week a new application just for nonprofit groups of its Google Earth program, which uses satellite images to provide three-dimensional maps of the globe. Google has released no details, but the researcher Jane Goodall and representatives from the United Nations Foundation and Earthwatch Institute will help make the announcement.
For the Amnesty International project, which cost $200,000, the Save Darfur Coalition helped provide the funds. The program could also help aid workers in Sudan identify areas in need of help.
Satellite images provide irrefutable evidence of violations, says Ariela F. Blätter, director of Amnesty’s Crisis Prevention and Response Center, because, as opposed to eyewitness accounts, “the only way you can contradict them is by releasing other satellite images that disprove them.” Eyes on Darfur has already collected before-and-after shots of numerous towns destroyed by militias, and of once-empty lands now crowded with refugees.
To develop the technology, Amnesty International recruited experts at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s program on science and human rights.
Ms. Blätter calls satellite images — which can display objects as small as two feet by two feet — the future of human-rights work and says Amnesty hopes to expand the satellite program globally.
Because updated images will be available free on a Web site, Amnesty hopes people worldwide will help monitor the region. It has also set up links so they can write to the Sudanese government to remind it of the continuing scrutiny.
For more information: Go to http://www.eyesondarfur.org.
