IJCentral: International Justice Central

The potential for mobile technology to make waves and bring change to the ever-evolving fight for international justice is a crucial and fundamental philosophy that we here at IJCentral strongly believe in.  Since our inception we have always believed that what has made us different is our focus on global conversations through mobile phones. Currently we are using Twitter as our prototype platform here in the US and other participating countries. In the future we hope expand using such programs as FrontlineSMS to expand our network and put it in the hands of literally any user with a mobile phone in the world. This goal is an often exciting and humbling task.

We wanted to announce that IJCentral has been invited to present at this years UC Berkeley Human Rights Center Mobile Challenge where 9 other groups will also be presenting ideas that will try to help evolve the application of mobile technology to Human Rights work around the world. It is very exciting to have been accepted and we would love to hear your thoughts on this.  Here is some info on the HRC conference:

“The Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley is pleased to announce the Human Rights Center Mobile Challenge.  Recent innovations in science and technology, especially mobile technologies, have provided human rights advocates, journalists, and scientists with new tools to expose war crimes and other serious violations of human rights and disseminate this information in real time throughout the world. Cell phones, combined with GPS, cameras, video, audio, and SMS are transforming the way the world understands and responds to emerging crises. Handheld data collection devices, such as PDAs, provide researchers with new ways of documenting mass violence and attitudes toward peace, justice, and social reconstruction in conflict zones.”

The Human Rights Center is sponsoring a challenge to encourage innovations for applying mobile technologies for human rights investigations and advocacy. Through a NetSquared Community vote, 10 finalists will be chosen. All 10 finalists will be invited to present their ideas at an international conference, “The Soul of the New Machine: Human Rights, Technology, and New Media,” at UC Berkeley, May 4 and 5, 2009. A panel of judges, selected by the Human Rights Center, will choose three winners, to be announced at the conference. Winners will receive cash awards of $15,000 (first place), $10,000 (second place), and $5,000 (third place) to implement their ideas.

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