Mapping the 'Blind Spots'

Clémence Beugnot. The maps highlight poor accessible data. Very few people are interested in digging into information from NGOs, so our job is to summarise data and make it accessible.
Death penalty is a good example. In order to count the number of people sentenced to death, researching the data was a long-term project carried out by the volunteer team of CartONG in close collaboration with Nordine Drici from Planète Réfugiés-Droits de l’Homme (PRDH). Nothing would be possible without the work of the organisations that research and compile data, such as PRDH, Amnesty International, Ensemble contre la peine de mort (Together Against the Death Penalty), Cornell University and many others. For each map, the first step is to identify usable sources. First a database must be built, and the collected data is gradually added to it, this data is then checked by PRDH.
Certain countries withhold information and do not share data on death sentences.

The absence of data is far from being neutral, therefore the team in charge of producing the maps chose to highlight this point by cross hatching the concerned countries. 

The map about women on death row was the most challenging – the data was very fragmented. It was also one of the most interesting because we immersed ourselves in the fascinating report Judged for More than Her Crime about gender dynamics in death sentences.
Maps show us different laws, help identify abolitionist nations and how executions are distributed country by country. There are far fewer visual materials concerning prisoners on death row. It’s a real blind spot. In some countries several thousands of people live in extremely difficult conditions of imprisonment.
The main challenge is to make it clear that the work carried out relates to current death row inmates, and not executions. The latter are much better documented than the imprisonment of death row inmates, and that is precisely why this project is innovative. It’s a question of broadening the vision of what constitutes the death penalty system – it is necessary to take into account the laws, the executions, but also the number of people sentenced to death and their conditions in prison.

CB. CartONG is an organisation that supports humanitarian, social and development organisations, both at headquarters and in the field. Our team offers its expertise and strategic advice in information management, with a particular focus on long-term capacity building, while taking into account the specifics of every structure and context. Doctors Without Borders and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees are among our biggest partners. We also have a network of volunteers who put their skills – in web development, in mapping – to use in various projects.

We have recently developed volunteer projects to support organisations dealing with the effects of the health crisis in France.

In Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, two volunteers produced a web map that links available aid workers to needy local organisations. Our volunteers also supported Action Against Hunger in Bordeaux by making paper maps which show places that were open during the health crisis (food distribution, health services, etc.). These maps were given to homeless people.

CB. Open data and open source tools are very important to CartONG. We try to use them as much as possible, including during volunteer projects. [^ 1] For example, we use the OpenStreetMap platform a lot, which is a free and collaborative geographic database. We organise mapathons – mapping marathons – where we invite the general public to contribute to the mapping of vulnerable areas, refugee camps for example, in order to optimise the response of NGOs on the ground in the event of emergencies. We are also working to educate our partners on the value of sharing data and tools with the rest of the humanitarian and development sectors – while keeping in mind that in some cases this is not possible due to a need to protect personal or sensitive data.

[^ 1]: The maps shown were produced using free QGIS software.