New funding opportunity from DRL: “Secure and Sustainable Human Rights Documentation Solutions”
Below is a snapshot of the opportunity. Click HERE for the full announcement, including proposal requirements.
Deadline is Friday, December 7, 2018 at 11:30pm EST
The U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) announces an open competition for organizations interested in submitting applications for projects that support the research, development, and implementation of secure human rights (HR) documentation solutions . In support of the 2017 National Security Strategy, DRL’s goal is to promote accountability for perpetrators of genocide and mass atrocities. Further, in support of the U.S. government’s policy to “promote an open, interoperable, reliable, and secure internet that fosters efficiency, innovation, communication, and economic prosperity, while respecting privacy and guarding against disruption, fraud, and theft,” as described in E.O. 13800, DRL supports the development of secure communications tools and platforms, as well as digital safety training. These goals will be advanced through research, development, and implementation of secure human rights documentation solutions . DRL invites organizations interested in potential funding to submit proposals outlining program concepts that reflect this goal.
Priority Regions :
Global, with a focus on environments where past or ongoing gross human rights violations during conflict or repressive rule will be addressed by current or future justice, truth, and accountability processes.
Project Objectives :
Justice, truth, and accountability processes, when deployed in a contextually appropriate way and in consultation with local stakeholders, can be effective tools for calling to account those responsible for the worst human rights abuses and preventing the recurrence of conflict and abuse.
The need for sustainable technical solutions to support HR documentation for justice, truth, and accountability processes within the context of community and local civil society-led efforts has only increased in recent years. Advances in the development of technical platforms for secure communication, secure file storage, long-term and cloud archiving, data analysis, and interface with both international and national justice sector institutions and proceedings have been critical to pursuing accountability, but major challenges continue to obstruct this work. No single long-term, sustainable solution or set of solutions has emerged to serve the needs of the human rights documentation community, leaving organizations at risk of information loss and compromising data security. In order to ensure that civil society actors engaged in documentation-gathering processes have access to critical tools necessary for this work, DRL is seeking proposals for multi-year research, development, and training programs for human rights documentation technologies that can be utilized in a variety of contexts around the world. Programs should provide civil society actors with sustainable solutions for usable and secure documentation-gathering, short and long-term storage, delivery and interface with international and national truth, justice, and accountability bodies and processes, and training in the implementation of such technologies and strategies.
DRL anticipates having approximately $1,000,000 of FY 2018 funds available to support approximately one successful application submitted in response to this opportunity, subject to the availability of funding. The proposal may span multiple years as appropriate, but should begin as soon as possible.