New research led by Dr Ursula Gazeley reveals the hidden toll of violent deaths during pregnancy and postpartum in Mexico. Including suicides & homicides would have raised Mexico’s 2024 maternal mortality ratio by ~31%. www.demography.ox.ac.uk/news/reveali...

Today, we honor the lives lost in Sri Lanka. This week marks the 17th anniversary of the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka. So many questions remain. We still don’t know to the nearest ten thousand how many people perished. But we will continue to work with our partners to seek truth.

Focusing on Mexico, they found that counting both self-inflicted and external violent deaths would increase the maternal mortality rate by 31%. See the open access full text 👇 bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/4/2/...

📢 New publication from PSG members Maria Gargiulo (@thegargiulian.bsky.social) and Anushé Hassan (@anushe.bsky.social), and alumna Ursula Gazeley is out in BMJ Public Health! The study shows how violent deaths during pregnancy and postpartum are an overlooked cause of maternal mortality.

Not all victims are counted in the data. Some are never recorded at all. In our latest Structural Zero newsletter, Maria Gargiulo explains how statisticians work to account for these missing lives—and why it matters. hrdag.org/2026/05/03/a...

What does accountability look like when discovery includes 6,500 police body-worn camera videos? HRDAG partnered with @aclu-norcal.bsky.social to process footage at scale, helping identify traffic stops for investigation and uncover racial profiling. hrdag.org/2026/05/01/s...

Hidden toll of violent deaths during pregnancy and the postpartum period: a nationwide analysis of Mexican death records doi.org/10.1136/bmjp... Paper in @bmj.com Public Health co-auth by Non-Stipendiary Research Fellow Ursula Gazeley, @nuffieldcollege.bsky.social Alumna @thegargiulian.bsky.social

Watch now: New interview with Maria Gargiulo of HRDAG about human rights data, under-reporting, and the hidden victims inside conflict statistics. www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFYi...

“If we wait for data to be perfect, we’ll be waiting forever.” Statistician Maria Gargiulo explains how researchers use multiple systems estimation to measure hidden victims of armed conflict and political violence. www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFYi...

Bias in human rights data isn’t a flaw—it’s a reality. The question is what we do about it. In this issue, we pull back the curtain on Multiple Systems Estimation, an statistical technique that helps us estimate missing and incomplete data. hrdag.substack.com/p/all-is-not...

What do statisticians mean with the term "structural zero"? Read our most recent newsletter to find out. hrdag.substack.com/p/all-is-not...

Behind every dataset are people who took risks to document the truth. One way we honor that work is by using methods that acknowledge limitations and reduce bias. hrdag.substack.com/p/all-is-not...

What do statisticians mean with the term "structural zero"? Read our most recent newsletter to find out. hrdag.substack.com/p/all-is-not...

Remember: one-third of all Americans killed by strangers in the United States are killed by the police. hrdag.org/violence-in-...

A new study in Population & Development Review uses statistical analysis to show how bereavement persists in Colombia even decades after the armed conflict ended. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

We bump into sampling bias a lot in our work at HRDAG. So we know: Systems of data collection shape knowledge. Every dataset is produced by a set of choices—about technology, language, geography, incentives, and risk.

“Measurements count, because if it’s not counted, it’s assumed to be unimportant” – Joni Seager A little preview of some ongoing work on violent maternal deaths in Mexico. These deaths are not currently captured by relevant health indicators, but they’re still important!

Data doesn’t just reflect reality. It reflects who was able or willing to be counted. Fear, distrust, and access all shape the dataset before analysis even begins. hrdag.substack.com/p/who-is-mis...

Every dataset carries the imprint of how it was collected: incentives, geography, language, and risk. Understanding that is the first step toward truth. hrdag.substack.com/p/who-is-mis...

Every dataset carries the imprint of how it was collected: incentives, geography, language, and risk. Understanding that is the first step toward truth. hrdag.org/2026/04/02/w...

Incredible multi-media report from our friends at @uwchr.bsky.social telling the story of Efraín Arévalo Ibarra: a teacher, father, and union member who was “disappeared” by the Salvadoran government in November 1977. unfinishedsentences.org/reports/efra...

Statisticians love to have perfectly-designed, random samples to study. But reality is messy and many datasets have some inherent bias. That doesn't mean we can't use them. It means we need to acknowledge and account for bias. hrdag.substack.com/p/yes-your-d...

También escribimos un resumen corto (en castellano) en La Silla Vacía 👉 www.lasillavacia.com/red-de-exper...

Out now in Population and Development Review: "Weaponizing Kinship: A Demographic Analysis of Bereavement in the Colombian Conflict" showing that nearly 40% of Colombians lost at least one family member to conflict-related killings or disappearances. 🔗 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/1728...

In @prpr-journal.bsky.social: "Changes in Fertility Trends and Women's Fertility Desires in the Wake of the Homicide Surge in Mexico" finds fertility outcomes remained largely unchanged despite the dramatic rise in homicides in Mexico. 🔗 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

In a year when truth felt fragile, @hrdag.org doubled down on a simple idea: evidence matters. Our newly published annual review shows how we bring statistical rigor and scientific values to the defense of human rights—including here in the United States. hrdag.org/2026/03/03/h...

Today we mourn the assassination of feminist and human rights defender Yanar Mohammed, killed in her own home March 2 in Baghdad. We join the human rights community in calling for justice and an independent investigation. www.gc4hr.org/assassinatio...

On International Women's Day, we join our partners around the world in decrying the assassination of Iraqi human rights defender Yanar Mohammed. Her death is part of a broader pattern of attacks targeting activists, journalists, and human rights defenders in Iraq. www.gc4hr.org/assassinatio...

Paper by E Acosta, @demography.bsky.social, @thegargiulian.bsky.social & C Torres first from PDR special issue I guest edited w/ L Andriano & M Ebbinghaus, Social and Demographic Consequences of Political Conflict and Violence, to be available on early view onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Weaponizing Kinship: Four out of ten Colombians have lost a family member in the conflict 🇨🇴 Enrique Acosta, Diego Alburez, Maria Gargiulo, & Catalina Torres quantified how many Colombians have ever lost at least a family member to conflict-related violence. www.demogr.mpg.de/go/weaponkinship

What happens when the patterns we’ve studied in other countries start showing up closer to home? HRDAG’s 2025 review reflects on how the rise of tyranny in the United States is changing our work and our threat model. Read it here: hrdag.org/2026/03/03/h...

blog post: sampling to assess data quality @bhedtgauthier.bsky.social et al. (2012) used sampling to assess and improve data quality in Malawi

Congratulations to Ayyub Ibrahim, recipient of the Electronic Access award from the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California! spjnorcal.org/2026/02/14/s...

👉 Read why bias in data is nearly everywhere (and what it means for truth in data): hrdag.substack.com/p/yes-your-d...

Understanding the relationship between the data we have and the world we are researching is at the heart of statistics. hrdag.substack.com/p/yes-your-d...

Among the many ways HRDAG contributed in post-conflict Guatemala: we trained Guatemalan NGOs in methods for securing their data using open source information management tools. hrdag.org/guatemala/

HRDAG hosted a data retreat in our office last week. We're grateful to be part of a community of statisticians and scientists using data to advance human rights.

🎉 ¡Abrió el nuevo llamado al Programa de Campeones de rOpenSci! Durante las próximas semanas vamos a compartir una serie de videos con testimonios de participantes de ediciones anteriores. En primera persona, cuentan cómo fue su experiencia y qué impacto tuvo el programa en sus proyectos y […]

This work is better with friends. Here are some moments from our recent data retreat with HRDAG scientists and our partners at @datacivica.bsky.social Kilómetro 0, & @invisible.institute

PSG seminars continue 📈 Up next on Jan 28 at 12:45, Research Fellow @jacalazans.bsky.social will give a talk on how tobacco control policies influenced adult mortality patterns in Brazil. Join us in person (LG24, Keppel Street) or online. Find more details 👇 www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/e...

More data doesn’t automatically mean more knowledge. That's because raw data is inherently biased and often misrepresents reality. Statistical models help reveal those biases and uncover the truth. www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7U9...

blog post: Total Margin of Error margin of error = 2 x (reported margin of error) and how much of this error is "bias" vs "variance" ?

The ICC is a powerful tool against impunity. That's why HRDAG adds our voice to the community of human rights organizations demanding that the Trump Administration respect international law and the ICC’s essential independence. hrdag.org/2026/01/05/t...

blog posts: should we adjust for a mismeasured X ? You know the population distribution for X (e.g. vote choice in 2024). But you only have a reported X* in your survey. Should you adjust for it ? Later today: exploring toy examples to see.

From the archives: learn about the statistical concepts of "capture-recapture," also known as "multiple systems estimation." hrdag.org/tech-notes/b...

Accompaniment - acting as a witness and support to human rights advocates in conflict zones - is core to HRDAG's history and origin story. Today, those principles still guide our work in data and statistical reasoning. hrdag.substack.com/p/all-of-the...

blog post: 3rd helpings of the logit shift You have multiple outcomes, but only some have aggregate truth to shift to. How can we calibrate our estimates of p(y_1, y_2 | X) to aggregate data about E[y_1] ? @wpmarble.bsky.social and Josh Clinton have ideas !

HRDAG is part of a global community of human rights partners, and collaboration is key to everything we do. Today we celebrate one of our long-time partners, Valentina Rozo Angel, joining the Global Rights Innovation Lab Clinic at @ucberkeleylaw.bsky.social www.law.berkeley.edu/article/expa...

Join HRDAG's Maria Gargiulo at RightsX Summit to explore how citizens and human rights groups use data to seek justice. Registration here: rightsx.ohchr.org

Today and every day, we offer gratitude to our donors and funders. Thanks to your support, we use science to defend truth and human rights.