The success of Martus is measured by the diversity of individuals and organizations around the world who use the tool to manage important social justice information.

Martus is currently used to support initiatives that monitor human rights, political rights and acts of violence. Applications of Martus include collecting information about political prisoners and the reporting of human rights abuses based on ethnicity or religious faith. The Martus software is sufficiently flexible to accommodate a broad range of information and can be customized for specific purposes.

Information about Martus is distributed through targeted outreach campaigns, media coverage and word of mouth among the NGO community. There are currently hundreds of Martus users and more than ten thousand human rights bulletins have been backed up to Martus servers.

Martus Evolution

The evolution of the Martus software is shaped by the needs of its users who submit suggestions for new features. Since its initial release in 2003, Martus has expanded to include greater opportunities for customization, improved data sharing between users and more advanced search tools. Requests for Martus software performance enhancement have also been addressed to accommodate the needs of organizations that create large numbers of human rights bulletins. The newest release of Martus in fall 2006 offers expanded reporting capability requested by Martus users.

The Martus development team will continue to refine the software to allow for easier transfer of data into Martus from non-secure databases or software tools. Martus software engineers are also working to improve data transfer between Martus and the Analyzer software developed by Benetech’s Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) to analyze information about large-scale human rights violations.

In the coming years, Benetech envisions building a version of Martus that would be web-based or which uses removable media such as USB bootable CDs. This would be useful for people who do not own a computer but have access to other computers.