Some of the NGOs participating at SA III came up with 8 considerations for tech companies interested in developing solutions for peacebuilding and humanitarian aid systems.
1. How does the technology strengthen local community leaders’ ability to communicate and influence resource decisions in a disaster?
2. What are the social, cultural, political and economic implications of the deployment of the technology for the recovery stage of the disaster and how does it affect the community’s attitude towards existing infrastructure and services following the disaster?
3. What is the suitability for use by local respnders in terms of ease of use, apporpriate languages and the possibility of easily modifying its application to particular environments and users skills and needs?
4. Can it be adapted for use with a PDA, cellphone or other relatively inexpensive mobile communication device?
5. Does it reflect and support an itegrated architecture solution and open standards?
6. Does it provide easy access to the internet and / or is it easily accesible from the internet?
7. Is it affordable to local community leaders, non-profits etc from a cost standpoint?
8. As much as possible, ensure that solutions are rugged, portable, scaleable and appropriate for use in impact (affected) areas.
An Ashoka, Rotary World Peace and TED Fellow, I have since 2002 used, studied and advocated Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to strengthen peace, human rights & democratic governance.
I founded in 2006 and till June 2020 edited the award-winning Groundviews, Sri Lanka's first civic media website. From 2002-2020 I was a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives. I pioneered both the use of social media for activism and online citizen journalism/civic media in Sri Lanka, including setting up South Asia's first Twitter and Facebook accounts for civic media, in 2007. Having started digital security training for human rights activists in 2010, I continue to advise civil society on digital hygiene, mass and personal surveillance, privacy and secure communications to date. I also curate a comprehensive digital archive of material linked to peace and conflict in Sri Lanka, since 2002.
I specialise in, advise and train on social media communications strategy, countering-violence extremism online, web-based activism, online advocacy and grounded, context-based, platform-specific social media research. My work experience over two-decades spans five continents.
Through the ICT4Peace Foundation and since 2006, I help strengthen information management during crises and work on countering violent extremism online. For over a decade, this included leading the Foundation's work on these lines with the United Nations and other multi-lateral organisations involved in peacebuilding, peacekeeping, and humanitarian affairs.
Since 2008, I have worked in South Asia, South East Asia, North Africa, Europe and the Balkans to capture, disseminate and archive inconvenient truths in austere, violent contexts.
I completed doctoral studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand, looking at the symbiotic relationship between offline unrest and online instigation of hate and harm in Sri Lanka and, in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre in 2019, facilitated by leading research based on New Zealand's first ever Data for Good grant by Twitter.
View all posts by Sanjana
ICT for Peacebuilding (#ICT4Peace) 