Mnemonic

Mnemonic’s vision is a future where justice and accountability are legally implemented in concept and practice. We wish to see countries experiencing conflict and human rights violations transition to a future with justice, equality and rule of law, where citizens enjoy freedom of opinion, speech, thought and belief.

We do this through our Syrian, Yemen, and Sudan Archive projects, and through increasing the capacity of journalists and human rights defenders to verify data to create counter narratives to the misinformation arising during conflicts.These including activists documenting chemical weapons attacks in Syria,those working to show the effect of famine in Yemen, those working to show the abuses of power and violence against protesters in Sudan and
Nicaragua during an internet blackout, and efforts to document violence
by police in the United States.

Mnemonic is comprised of a team of 23 human rights advocates, journalists, archivists, technologists, and open source investigators.

Mnemonic's core mission is preserving and enhancing documentation of human rights violations for reporting, justice and accountability. We use our unique position as cross-sectoral and cross-disciplinary to help human rights defenders hold power to account.

We do this through our Syrian Archive, Yemeni Archive, and Sudanese Archive projects, increasing the capacity of journalists and human rights defenders to verify data to create a counter narratives to misinformation arising during conflicts, and developing publicly-available tools and replicable methods.

Mnemonic addresses challenges related to preserving and verifying information in three ways:

1. Collect and archive open source visual content and information from conflicts so that key documentation is safely preserved in case of content takedowns
2. Invest in the capacity of monitoring teams to verify and centralise documentation and conduct special investigations into major incidents
3. Engage in policy discussions with social media companies and governments to address loss of critical content.

1. To preserve content through our archival projects which combined have archived over 4 million records from over 9 thousand sources across various social media platforms

2. To work with social media platforms to reinstate content inadvertently removed due to overzealous content moderation policies

3. To strengthen the ecosystem of human rights defenders and journalists using open-source data to advance social justice among socially marginalised and economically disenfranchised, focusing on training and capacity building in order to scale and expand the use of best practices within civil society

4. To increase human right’s defenders capacity to strategically work with data to advance social justice through the development and maintenance of new ethical tools and methods

5. To increase human right’s defenders capacity to strategically work with data to advance social justice through the development and maintenance of new tools and methods

6. To verify archived content to create counter narratives to the misinformation published by all actors in the conflicts in which we work.

7. To publishing searchable databases of verified open source content through our archival projects that include for example: the destruction of civilian infrastructure, the targeting of hospitals and medical facilities, and the use of chemical weapons

Through projects that are often large-scale, multi-year, and collaborative in nature, Mnemonic provides high-quality content to inform conflict monitoring, accountability, advocacy, and field-building contributions to academia and research.

We build ecosystems through continual maintenance and improvement of technical workflows and replicable methodologies used for the preservation and processing of digital content, as well as increasing the capacity of human rights defenders worldwide through trainings on the skills and expertise we have developed.

We preserve at-risk content through our archival projects such as Syrian Archive, Yemeni Archive and Sudanese Archive which combined have archived over 4 million records from over 15 thousand sources across various social media platforms.

We analyse content to create counter narratives to the misinformation published by all actors in the conflicts in which we work. We do this through our high-impact open-source investigations that have resulted in the conviction of three Belgian firms who shipped chemicals to Syria, an internal audit of the Belgian customs system, parliamentary inquiries in multiple countries, a change in Swiss export laws to reflect EU sanctions laws on specific chemicals, and the opening of additional investigations in Germany and the Netherlands related to shipments of chemicals directly or indirectly to Syria.

Our main beneficiaries include international human rights NGOs, intergovernmental institutions including the United Nations, activists and human rights defenders, journalists and advocates in various countries who  benefit from the creation of freely available, replicable and adaptable workflows, trainings, and technology tools regardless of the context in which they are working.

By archiving digital documentation relating to human rights violations, our work directly benefits the work of those working towards advocacy, justice and accountability. International human rights organisations and institutions we have partnered and collaborated with also have increased capacity to respond to violations and better tools and information to demand accountability against the perpetrators of these violations as a result of our work.

We have collaborated with and trained people of all genders, ethnicities, abilities and political backgrounds. Our work is strongest when we ensure that people feel they are in a safe space where they can share ideas and learn. To that end, we conduct security assessments before trainings and pay close attention to ensuring diversity, with a focus on gender inclusion. There are no formal prerequisites to attending a Mnemonic training. Our trainings are also free of charge.

Our project relates to "elevating issues by building awareness" and "driving action to solve the most difficult problems of our world" by harnessing Mnemonic's unique position as a cross-sectoral, cross-disciplinary innovative organisation that helps human rights defenders hold power to account.

Through preserving and enhancing documentation of human rights violations for use in reporting, justice and accountability, our project addresses issues of:

• Inaccessibility of conflict zones because of security risks/Covid-19
• Misinformation/propaganda
• Scale
• Lack of open-source tools to preserve and analyse content
• Lack of awareness/knowledge of skills needed to verify content
• Issues of vicarious-trauma when analysing extreme and often graphic documentation

Mnemonic began with the creation of Syrian Archive in 2014 as a low-cost, sustainable, and rapid-response initiative that quickly established a working methodology, and tested, robust technical workflows to archive internet content quickly and methodically before it was removed from the online platforms it was being posted to. From our earliest days, we listened to frontline human rights defenders about their needs, and developed a collaborative partnership model, cultivating lasting relationships. 

In our first five years, we provided trainings on digital security, archival, verification, and open-source investigative techniques to a broad range of over one thousand activists, journalists, and human rights defenders from different countries. Now with the increase in remote work as a result of Covid-19, digital security is more important than ever. 

These including activists documenting chemical weapons attacks in Syria, those working to show the effect of famine in Yemen, those working to show the abuses of power and violence against protesters in Sudan and Nicaragua during an internet blackout, and efforts to document violence by police in the United States. Based in Berlin and formally incorporated in 2018, Mnemonic is comprised of a team of 23 human rights advocates, journalists, archivists, technologists, and open source investigators.

We believe that visual documentation of human rights violations that is transparent, detailed, and reliable is critical towards providing accountability and can positively contribute to post-conflict reconstruction and stability. Such documentation can humanise victims, reduce the space for dispute over numbers killed, help societies understand the true human costs of war, and support truth and reconciliation efforts.

By creating low-cost, sustainable solutions that are sensitive to the human rights violations being captured, we are dedicated to preserving this important data as digital memory and increase public access to this essential knowledge. 

Archiving and preservation of digital materials providing information about human rights abuses and war crimes is increasingly recognised as critical for legally implementing justice and accountability. The sheer amount of content created and removed from public platforms means we are in a race against time; content we have preserved and verified might offer the only evidence indicating a human rights violations had happened, implicating potential perpetrators and aiding in long-term transitional justice efforts.

Mnemonic has a positive public image with a reputation as an investigative and research organisation concerned with important social questions, and research and tools that are regarded as of high-quality and findings as credible. We have sectoral renowned work on archiving and preservation of open-source documentation of human rights violations, and sectoral renowned work on advocacy efforts concerning human rights documentation on social media platforms. We have a high public profile in the media, public-visibility of our senior-researchers and technologists as experts in their field, and a positive image amongst our partners and amongst our staff members.

Our work holds perpetrators of human rights violations and their accomplices to account in European courts of law, while our investigations with media and NGO partners generates much needed global public attention to chemical-weapons attacks and attacks on civilians in Syria, Yemen, and Sudan. Our Yemeni Archive published a database of attacks on Yemen hospitals, and our Syrian Archive contributed to New York Time’s data investigation into hospital attacks that won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize.

We lead the field in highlighting the risks of content moderation on social media, and work with social media companies to reinstate hundreds-of-thousands of posts that have been removed. Every step of the way, our documentation has been publicly available for use by lawyers, journalists and human rights defenders everywhere.  

Mnemonic is committed to building capacity and we have trained over one thousand activists, investigators, and advocates, in effect building a field we also lead.

We have developed rapidly in terms of scale and scope since our relatively recent beginnings. While we have steadily increased our levels of funding and range of supporters, the demand and need for our work by key activists in several geographies is increasing, and we are struggling to secure enough flexible support to maintain key investigative staff and resources for critical projects.

The Elevate Prize would be invaluable to increasing our visibility and relevance to a range of partners and supporters that would be critical to sustaining this work over the long term, while broadening the recognition and reach our achievements as a group of activists that catalyzed what began as volunteer driven initiative with zero funding – one that has developed in a short period of time to become a key player driving momentum and impact in relation to truth, justice, and accountability for widespread and systematic violations committed in high risk and volatile environments.

Starting as a small, volunteer initiative with zero funding for several years, Mnemonic has grown to become an internationally recognised non-profit organisation with a large and diverse network of collaborators and variety of funders to create high-impact work helping to support others in solving some of the world's largest challenges related to preserving, memorialising, and adding value to publicly available information related to human rights violations.

Mnemonic is one of the only groups worldwide who has quantitative data
on the real impact of content moderation policies, as well a qualitative
data on the types of content being removed. This includes our published
work highlighting a half million videos documenting human rights
violations that have been removed by platforms across several conflicts,
engaging with press to advocate for a more critical approach towards
content moderation implementation, working with platforms to reinstate
hundreds of thousands of records, writing policy papers addressing the
risks of content moderation policies on human rights documentation, and
involvement in the Christchurch Call Advisory network represented at the
United Nations General Assembly and the Internet Governance Forum.

We specialise in archiving at-risk digital materials and developing accessible and innovative long-term preservation strategies. There are currently no other organisations that are working to create replicable pipelines, open-source tools and workflows needed to address issues related to the preservation and analysis of critical human rights documentation.Activist and journalists from around the world regularly reach out to us, seeking assistance as they are facing similar problems.

Using this methodology we have created three standalone archives. Alongside collecting data we also analyse and use it for active investigations. The team behind the Archives regularly publishes in international media outlets as well as contributing to ongoing legal cases.

We believe that as the amount of discoverable documentation continues to increase, it is important for the human rights sector to take an interdisciplinary approach towards utilizing workflows and technologies effectively. The worlds of investigations, research, documentation and technology are coming ever closer together, and a meaningful effort in any of one of these is likely to contribute to all other related disciplines. For this reason, Mnemonic team members also engage in academic research, having published a number of highly-cited peer-reviewed articles. We also do this through engaging in advocacy and policy work related to content moderation issues such as our involvement in the Christchurch Call Advisory Network.

We see the core mission of Mnemonic as preserving and enhancing documentation of human rights violations and other crimes for use in reporting, justice and accountability. We use our unique position as a cross-sectoral, cross-disciplinary organisation to help human rights defenders hold power to account.

We work to create impact on three levels.

1) On the local level, we work with resource-constrained activists, such as human rights defenders, journalists, and documentation groups, who are advancing social justice issues. We help them:

• Securely monitor, collect, verify, process and present digital records documentation human rights violations

• Act as an intermediary between journalists, small civil society initiatives and large social media platforms to restore channels, videos, and posts that documented human rights violations

• Increase skill-set of journalists and other human rights defenders to use open source materials for their investigative journalism pieces

• Stay up-to-date about potential attacks in digital sphere, proactively prioritise and defend their operations and mitigate those risks even with limited resources. 

• Amplify their work by connecting them to other institutions who can directly support them. 

2) On the international/global level, we work with NGOs, large humanitarian organisations, prosecutors, and intergovernmental bodies and social media platforms:

• Use documentation to assist lawyers in their work on using the legal system to pursue justice and accountability

• Understand how technology can support the work of the sector, particularly given their increased power, visibility and resources.

• Strategically invest in their own and their partners’ organisational security practices. 

• Carry out research and build evidence on the impact of technology and data in their workflow, to inform their own work and strengthen the mission of others.

3) Across communities and spaces, we work with a diverse set of actors to: 

• Avoid the permanent erasure of documentation and use verified materials for immediate humanitarian relief and advocacy, and for long-term legal accountability or crimes committed

• Build capacity of civil society actors including those in journalism, academia and technology sectors

• Amplify the work of our partners and of other emerging approaches, strategies or organisations promoting the effective and responsible use of data and technology.

In 2019, online activities carried out by our Syrian Archive, Yemeni Archive, and Sudanese Archive projects  (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and our website), reached a diverse audience of over 800 thousand people.

This is in addition to the number reached through in-person trainings, events and online articles in which our work has been featured.

Mnemonic’s overall goals over the next five years are to:  

Build ecosystems: through continual maintenance and improvement of technical workflows and replicable methodologies that can be used for the preservation and processing of digital content, as well as increasing the capacity of human rights defenders worldwide through trainings on the skills and expertise it has developed.  Mnemonic will also do this through engaging in advocacy and policy work related to content moderation issues 

Preserve at-risk content: through its archival projects such as Syrian Archive, Yemeni Archive and Sudanese Archive. This includes work with social media platforms to reinstate content inadvertently removed due to overzealous content moderation policies, and through policy work with partner organizations through replicating archival infrastructure developed for the Syrian Archive and Yemeni Archive projects for its rapid response project to identify, collect sources and social media channels at risk of removal, as well as to prepare content for verification in order to counter propaganda. This emergency work also includes coordination with existing documentation efforts working in these countries to minimize duplication of efforts. Currently its rapid response projects are focused on preserving content from Iran, Chile, Myanmar, and Hong Kong.  

Analyze content to create counter narratives to the misinformation published by all actors in the conflicts the group is focused on through publishing databases through its archival projects that include: the destruction of civilian infrastructure, the targeting of hospitals and medical facilities, and the use of chemical weapons.

Mnemonic has developed rapidly in terms of scale and scope since its relatively recent beginnings. While we have steadily increased our levels of funding and range of supporters, the demand and need for our work by key activists in several geographies is increasing, and we are struggling to secure enough flexible support to maintain key investigative staff and resources for critical projects.

The Elevate Prize would be invaluable to increasing the visibility and relevance to a range of partners and supporters that would be critical to sustaining this work over the long term, while broadening the recognition and reach of our achievements as a group of activists that catalyzed what began as volunteer driven initiative – one that has developed in a short period of time to become a key player driving momentum and impact in relation to truth, justice, and accountability for widespread and systematic violations committed in high risk and volatile environments. 

In order to create the most efficient and effective data piplelines and technology workflows for preserving and analysing human rights documentation, we realised early on that there is no "one solution" but rather a variety of different actors who are needed to contribute to an open-source investigative pipeline that addresses various problems and workflows.

We currently work with a wide variety of partner organisations at both local and international levels and are hoping to use the funds from Elevate Prize to sustain these valuable relationships. We are always open to new potential partnership opportunities, and are eager to discuss potential possibilities with the Elevate Prize selection committee.