UNICEF recently featured Sanjana Hattotuwa, Special Advisor at the ICT4Peace Foundation, in a podcast that looked at how technology was helping strengthen peacebuilding.
Talking about how technology has changed the way we monitor peace, Mr. Hattotuwa says that internet, social media platforms and mobile phones are providing the opportunity for billions of citizens around the world not just to consume information but also to produce it.
Moreover, technology is allowing us to bear witness regardless of where and who we are.
“Bearing witness is an active process, because it takes courage to do it. It is not a passive scene – it is observing; it is an act that you chose to do,” Mr. Hattotuwa says. “You are also adding to a body of knowledge, and, in the future, that can be very useful in helping understand why something happened around that time. So the technology is not only changing the way we see the world, but also how we engage, respond to and recover from violent conflict.”
The podcast also features Christopher Tuckwood, executive director and co-founder of the Sentinel Project for Genocide Prevention, a Toronto-based organization dedicated to predicting and preventing mass atrocities through the innovative use of technology and cooperation with threatened communities.
Listen to the full programme and read the complete article around it here.