Patrick Ball is a scientist, technologist, computer programmer, and an important figure in the global human rights movement. According to the New York Times Magazine, he is "one of the most admired figures in the field." He leads the Human Rights Program at Benetech

Benetech

Benetech was founded in 1989 by high technology entrepreneur Jim Fruchterman in Palo Alto, California. Benetech is a not-for-profit social enterprise organization: it creates technology social ventures, such as Bookshare , the Route 66 Literacy Project, the Miradi environmental project management...

, the Silicon Valley nonprofit tech company. He is best known for his work with truth and reconciliation commission

Truth and Reconciliation Commission

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a court-like restorative justice body assembled in South Africa after the abolition of apartheid. Witnesses who were identified as victims of gross human rights violations were invited to give statements about their experiences, and some were selected...

s, and for being the lead-off expert witness in testimony at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

The International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991, more commonly referred to as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia or ICTY, is a...

 against Slobodan Milosevic, the former President of Serbia

Serbia

Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...

. He was also an expert witness for the Prosecution at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

The International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991, more commonly referred to as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia or ICTY, is a...

 in Milutinović et al. (IT-05-87).
Ball received his B.A. degree from Columbia University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

Awards

Dr. Ball received the Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2005. He received the Eugene L. Lawler Award for Humanitarian Contributions within Computer Science from the Association for Computing Machinery

Association for Computing Machinery

The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...

(ACM) in June 2004.

Publications

• Silva, Romesh and Patrick Ball, "The Profile of Human Rights Violations in Timor-Leste, 1974-1999", a Report by the Benetech Human Rights Data Analysis Group to the Commission on Reception, Truth and Reconciliation. 9 February 2006. Available online at http://www.hrdag.org/timor.
• Silva, Romesh, and Patrick Ball. "The Demography of Large-Scale Human Rights Atrocities: Integrating demographic and statistical analysis into post-conflict historical clarification in Timor-Leste." Paper presented at the 2006 meetings of the Population Association of America.
• Silva, Romesh and Patrick Ball. "The Demography of Conflict-Related Mortality in Timor-Leste (1974-1999): Empirical Quantitative Measurement of Civilian Killings, Disappearances & Famine-Related Deaths" In Papers on Human Rights and Statistics, D. Banks, J. Asher and F. Scheuren, eds., ASA/SIAM Monograph Series, Philadelphia, PA (USA), pp. 42–57.
• Ball, Patrick. "On the Quantification of Horror: Field Notes on Statistical Analysis of Human Rights Violations." in Repression and Mobilization, ed. by Christian Davenport, Hank Johnston, and Carol Mueller. Minneapolis: U Minnesota P. 2005.
• Ball, Patrick. 2005. "Free Software," in The Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics. ed. by Carl Mitcham. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale.
• Ball, Patrick. 2004. "Statistics," in Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. ed. by Dinah L. Shelton, Howard Adelman, Frank Chalk, Alexandre Kiss & William A. Schabas. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale.
• Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Perú, Final Report - General Conclusions
• Davenport, Christian, and Patrick Ball. "Views to a Kill: Exploring the Implications of Source Selection in the Case of Guatemalan State Terror, 1977-1996." Journal of Conflict Resolution 46(3): 427-450. 2002.
• Killings and Refugee Flow in Kosovo, March - June, 1999
• Ball, Patrick. "Making the Case: The Role of Statistics in Human Rights Reporting." Statistical Journal of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. 18(2-3):163-174. 2001.
• Chapman, Audrey R. and Patrick Ball. "The Truth of Truth Commissions: Comparative Lessons from Haiti, South Africa, and Guatemala." Human Rights Quarterly. 23(4):1-42. 2001
• Justice Unknown, Justice Unsatisfied?
• Kosovo Migration Study
• Policy or Panic? The Flight of Ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, March-May 1999
• Political Killings in Kosovo
• Making the Case: Investigating Large Scale Human Rights Violations Using Information Systems and Data Analysis. (ed. with Herbert F. Spirer and Louise Spirer). Washington, DC: AAAS, 2000.
• State Violence in Guatemala, 1960-1996: a Quantitative Reflection. (with Paul Kobrak and Herbert F. Spirer) Washington DC: AAAS, 1999.
• Who Did What to Whom?

External links

• Benetech (employer) bio
• PBS interview on Guatemala work