August 2007

In the past year, Martus use has continued to grow around the world. Over 70,000 bulletins have been backed up to dedicated Martus servers from over 1,000 users.

By establishing partnerships with individuals and groups, and building more advanced features onto the software’s secure base, we are succeeding in our efforts to spread Martus technology to social justice projects across the globe.

Website visitors from over seventy countries have downloaded the Martus software to date, including individuals and groups from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, North America, South America, and the Middle East.

Our project partner in Iraq, the Iraq History Project of DePaul University's International Human Rights Law Institute (IHRLI), continues to use Martus in their efforts to document political violence and repression under Saddam Hussein. Martus also continues to facilitate the work and collaboration of the Network for Human Rights Documentation – Burma (ND-Burma), a network of Thailand-based NGOs from Burma.

We have continued to build relationships with new partners, including the Guatemalan Procuraduría de Derechos Humanos (PDH), which is using Martus to secure and back up information from the recently discovered National Police Archive as part of a quantitative analysis project. The Archive contains over 80 million pages of official documents on police procedures during Guatemala's 36 year-long internal armed conflict.

The Martus team has also begun to develop partnerships and projects with Human Rights in China (HRIC), and Darfur Peace and Development (DPADO).

In addition to these projects, the Martus team has continued to provide support to users who discover Martus on their own and contact us with questions, and has maintained relationships with field consultants and trainers who spread the word about Martus through training and outreach sessions.

Ongoing translations of the Martus software and user documentation are in progress to support these activities. The current 3.1 release is available in English, Spanish, Arabic, French, Russian, and Thai. Earlier versions are also available in Nepali and Persian.

In 2007, Alternatives, a leading Canada-based non-profit organization, agreed to host a new Martus server in Canada. To provide optimal security and reliability, the Canada Alternatives server is located in a specialized server hosting facility in Vancouver.

Over the past year, we released Martus version 3.0 and 3.1, with significant enhancements to features and flexibility. The 3.0 release included a new reporting feature, the ability to customize the private section of bulletins, as well as import, search, and speed enhancements. The 3.1 release includes a feature to notify HQs when there are new field desk bulletins to retrieve, the ability to sort the retrieve screen, and continued speed enhancements focused on accounts with large numbers of bulletins. All of these contribute to making information within Martus as manageable as possible.

Our partners find that the security built into Martus has benefits beyond securing the data at hand – it can also help organizations build trust as a foundation for future collaboration. As the Transitional Justice Program Director of the Human Rights Education Institute of Burma (HREIB) notes:

"I am helping facilitate a network of human rights groups from Burma, based on the country's borders.  All of the network members collect data using various methods and in varying formats.  After a review of possible formats that would allow the groups to maintain their autonomy and also have a way to share a common format, we chose Martus and have now posted over 600 bulletins using this tool.  One of the major obstacles to a united voice on Burma is that military rule has fostered a nearly insurmountable distrust among the various communities and organization promoting democracy.  The strong security features, combined with the flexibility of Martus, have allowed these Burmese groups to bring their information together, to prepare the data for analysis for future joint advocacy.  The confidence the network members have in Martus' security has opened a space for us, ironically, to build the trust that will have a long-term impact on the development of civil society in the future."

In the past year, the Martus project has reached a wider audience through media coverage of the tool and our project partners. The IDG News Service, the San Francisco Chronicle, and National Public Radio have all highlighted the Guatemalan National Police Archive project and the PDH's use of Martus to preserve sensitive information. Independent Online Technology, a South African webzine, also featured Martus and companion software Analyzer in its article, "Open Source used in fight for human rights."

We plan to continue introducing Martus to new potential projects and partners in order to continue to expand the use and benefits of secure and information management technology to human rights advocates worldwide.

Thank you for your interest in Benetech and Martus. For more information, please email info@martus.org.