About
Our mission is to preserve, enhance and memorialise documentation of human rights violations and other crimes committed by all parties to conflict in Yemen for use in advocacy, justice and accountability.
Yemeni Archive is a project of Mnemonic, a non-profit organisation made up of human rights advocates, archivists, technologists, and open source investigators dedicated to preserving, memorialising and adding value to publicly available information related to human rights violations. To see more about its work and other archives visit Mnemonic.
What we do
We archive
Since 2018, Yemeni Archive has archived disappearing and precarious content posted on social media platforms. The archive has grown to house half a million million videos and social media posts of the Yemeni conflict. We have verified and published 8,000 of these videos on an online, searchable database in order to support other investigators and journalists.
We train
Alongside other members of the Mnemonic team, Yemeni Archive has trained over 250 activists, journalists, lawyers and human rights defenders on using our tools and methodologies for their own investigative work.
We host a training programme for students of journalism and law from Yemeni universities. Through our programme, students get hands-on experience in open source investigation methods, use of media as evidence, campaigning and advocacy, photography journalism and digital security.
We report
By verifying evidence and working alongside Yemeni journalists on the ground, we help tell stories from Yemen that need to be heard worldwide.
We build tools
We collaborate with technologists to build open-source tools to automatically download material through the development of Diwan and to automatically find objects within the videos through the development of VFRAME. To learn more about our work with VFRAME see this talk from 2018.
How we do it
Where possible, Yemeni Archive works in the open. We develop and use open-source technology and methodologies and document our work so that others can replicate and reuse the approaches we have developed.
We work in collaboration with other archival groups, lawyers and journalists to develop our methodology, and with other technologists to develop the open source tools we are using
Why we do it
Yemeni Archive began in 2018 as a sister project to Syrian Archive and under the umbrella of Mnemonic. We archive content quickly and methodically before it is removed from the online platforms it is being posted to . Yemeni Archive is dedicated to preserving this important data as digital memory and increasing public access to this essential knowledge. Through archiving, verifying and investigating documentation of human rights violations in Yemen, we preserve data as digital memory, and act as a resource for those working on advocacy and accountability. Though it has led to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis according to the UN, the conflict in Yemen has often been described as a “forgotten war”. We believe that continued investigation and reporting of human rights violations is imperative to pressuring perpetrators to protect Yemeni civilians.
We believe that visual documentation of human rights violations that is transparent, detailed, and reliable is critical towards providing accountability and can positively contribute to post-conflict reconstruction and stability. Such documentation can humanise victims, reduce the space for dispute over numbers killed, help societies understand the true human costs of war, and support truth and reconciliation efforts.
Archiving and preservation of digital materials providing information about human rights abuses and war crimes is increasingly recognised as critical for legally implementing justice and accountability. The sheer amount of content created and removed from public platforms means we are in a race against time; content we have preserved and verified might offer the only evidence indicating a human rights violations had happened, implicating potential perpetrators and aiding in long-term transitional justice efforts.
Research methodology
Collect
Content identification, acquisition and standardisation
preserve
Secure long term preservation
process
Cataloging and metadata enrichment
verify
Verification
Investigate
Accessibility and raising awareness
Funding
The Yemeni Archive is fully independent and accepts no money from governments directly involved in the Yemeni conflict. We are seeking individual donations to carry out our work. Please consider supporting our work through our Patreon page.
Partners
Snackwave enim cillum helvetica tumblr hell of direct trade. Trust fund commodo hashtag, lo-fi cardigan magna seitan.
Funders
Our work would not be possible without the following funders: