Digital justice

Border Violence Monitoring Network

Balkan region

2024

Border Violence Monitoring Network includes 13+ grassroots organisations working together to document human rights violations along the Balkan migration route and bringing these injustices to light through a multi-level advocacy strategy at national, European, and UN levels. The network seeks to consolidate its monitoring activities at the borders, make cases and testimonies of border violence visible and open-source through monthly audited reports, and build an effective joint strategy to address criminalisation and the malpractices of ‘managing’ migration flows at borders in this region. It is currently building the first ever legal database in this region, addressing how advocacy efforts must be conjoined with effective research and a focused litigation strategy.

I Have Rights and Homo Digitalis

Greece

2024

Based on the Greek island of Samos, I Have Rights is an essential actor working towards systemic change through strategic litigation while closely monitoring, documenting, and advocating against human rights violations, in particular on the Samos Closed Controlled Access Centre, a “pilot” refugee camp which has been denounced by Amnesty International for degrading, inhumane conditions. In collaboration with Homo Digitalis, a Greek civil society organisation dedicated to the protection of digital rights, freedom of expression, and non-discrimination, they’re building on an unprecedented win: the Hellenic Data Protection Authority has fined the Greek Ministry of Migration and Asylum for data protection violations in Closed Controlled Access Centres. Through participatory research and litigation they are holding the Greek government accountable, monitoring the implementation of the decision and ensuring its enforcement to demand real, lasting change.

Search Wing

Mediterranean

2022

SearchWing is an independent coalition of volunteers, developing and building unmanned aerial vehicles to find people in distress at sea. SearchWing drones are provided to all organisations who pursue these same objectives of saving lives of those in distress regardless of origin or background, if they want to be found. Taking a human rights approach to technological advancement, SearchWing does not provide third parties with drones or sensitive technologies if their values and objectives do not align. SearchWing regularly works in coalition with other groups to promote the use of technology in service of human rights and against the wrongful repression of people on the move, especially regarding the current humanitarian catastrophe of the Central Mediterranean.

Skills 4 Utopia

Germany, pan-European

2021

Skills for Utopia is a grassroots-oriented political education collective training activists and political groups across and beyond Europe. Throughout 24 workshops and webinars, and with a network of 30+ qualified trainers, the collective provided expertise for practical, free skill-sharing directly tailored to migrant justice organisers and support structures at the external EU borders. Results included support groups in strategically dreaming of utopic visions, launching effective public campaigns, engaging knowledgeable with cyber security, and deconstructing power-critical structures.

Skill-sharing becomes increasingly important to strengthen the tissue of our movements. As an activist-led collective, with low-barrier and cost-free trainings, Skills4Utopia is specifically intended to be accessible to and empower smaller groups, grassroots activists, and directly impacted populations to benefit from the program. Their training approach enables activists to share gained knowledge within their organisations and beyond, creating a multiplying effect of capacity-building.

Border Forensics

Switzerland, pan-European

2021

We helped seed Border Forensics, a research and advocacy institution that mobilizes innovative methods of spatial and visual analysis to investigate practices of border violence. Collaborating with migrant groups and civil society organisations, the aim is to promote and defend the dignity and rights of migrants, and to foster mobility justice. Working across human rights, technology, research, and arts and architecture, Border Forensics produces reports, maps, video reconstructions and other visualizations that ground demands of accountability for the violation of migrants’ rights and support claims for the identification of the deceased.

Findings are presented in national and international courts and people’s tribunals, discussed in parliaments and political assemblies of various kinds, published in the international press and academic journals, and featured in exhibitions and public events.

Civil MRCC

pan-European

2020

The Civil MRCC was created from transnational grassroots activists in response to the malpractice of systematic omissions, delayed interventions, and facilitation of forcible returns in violation of international human rights by European states’ maritime rescue coordination centers (MRCCs). Specifically, it provides a coordination and documentation platform for the fleet of NGOs that have assisted and brought to safety tens of thousands of people across the Central Mediterranean sea since 2014. This coordination includes an app used between civil search and rescue operations, an extensive and regularly updated database to make information more reliable and available to civil society actors, and a live online map of events in the Mediterranean.