Nathaniel Raymond researches how information technologies affect human rights and security at Yale University's Jackson Institute of Global Affairs in New Haven, Connecticut.
"The changes taking place in that country that affect human rights and rights in general are nothing short of astounding.
There has been tremendous concern over the ways climate change will affect human rights, but little attention to how human rights abuse affects our global climate.
This goes beyond academia and directly affects human rights and lives through protecting the region's cultural heritage.
For the past four years she has helped illuminate national legal frameworks for digital rights in the Arab world through the Arab Digital Rights Datasets, a collection of laws from Arab League countries that affect human rights in digitally networked spaces.
CYRILLA, an open legal database, organizes and makes accessible legislation and case law that affects human rights in digital environments so that a wide range of actors can confidently assess legal trends and their impacts in digitally networked spaces.
In 2012, the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, which investigates how computer security affects human rights, found that Hacking Team software had been used by the United Arab Emirates government to infect the PC of a political dissident and by the Ethiopian government to break into the computers of journalists working in the United States.
And it's just the latest sign that ethical consumption -- the idea that consumers can positively affect human rights and the environment with more informed purchasing decisions -- is now a permanent part of today's marketplace.
Back in 2006 for instance, MTV released the subtly-titled Darfur Is Dying, a browser-based game where you play a refugee trying to get water, and Creator Peter Lee collaborated on Ayiti: The Cost of Life which demonstrates how poverty affects human rights.
"Two extremely committed public servants will be assuming two of the most important positions with an ability to affect human rights and peace around the world," John Prendergast, Co-founder of the Enough Project –- an organization working to end genocide -- said in a statement on Wednesday of Obama's nominations of Samantha Power and Susan Rice.
