Key points
- Monash University is using AI to better identify and prevent the risk of human rights abuse
- The project will feature at this week's international RightsX conference
A project pioneering the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to identify and prevent human rights abuses, to be developed at Monash University in collaboration with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, will be showcased at an international human rights conference this week.
Professor Simon Angus, from the Monash Business School's SoDa Laboratory, will speak about the project at the RightsX Summit in Geneva.
RightsX will see United Nations agencies, governments, civil society and companies discuss new approaches to monitoring and preventing human rights abuses.
At the Day 1 Solutions Roundtable, Professor Angus will discuss his work establishing ways of using AI to move from a reactive to a proactive approach.
Professor Angus said the project arose following meetings with senior UN officials with whom he already worked closely. His team at the Monash IP Observatory have been providing the UN with daily reports of around 1.6 million observations about global internet anomalies for several years.
"You might think that AI and the latest tech is undermining human rights," Professor Angus said. "I don't disagree. But can AI actually be repurposed as a technology for the protection of human rights - to drive accountability, prevention and justice? I hope it can."
Moving from reactive to proactive action requires the development of accurate forecasting tools.
Professor Angus said the UN had invited his team to pioneer this approach with them, leveraging SoDa Lab's capabilities across machine-learning, modern AI tooling, data-science, time-series analysis, internet measurement and anomaly detection.
"Together, our hope is to provide a credible, few-week ahead view of likely human rights risk spikes in a given location, so that the UN Human Rights Office can coordinate proactive responses to reduce risks of harm and de-escalate," he said.
"This could have significant benefits for the support of human rights around the world and, we hope, avoid harms and support freedoms in some of the most challenging settings."
The project has two key parts:
- Enhancing human rights violation data. Human rights risks and violations are collated via various reports tabled at the UN Human Rights Office and the Human Rights Council. They are key to the UN's information basis for human rights violations, but until now, they have not been analysed with modern machine learning and AI methodologies to analyse human rights risk and drive prevention efforts. The project will use advanced Large Language Model (LLM) AI tools to extract specific violations against each of the UN Declaration of Human Rights' 30 Articles to build a more detailed picture of human rights violations on the ground.
- Forecasting. Using these enhanced events as a target, the project will combine existing data streams of economic, social and media-based event information to develop forecasting predictors for HR violation risk on a one-week, or four-week look-ahead.
Monash University's The Incubator program has provided AUD$75,000 in 'boost' funding to support the program's 2026 international engagement and translational research impact.
Professor Angus will lead the project alongside Monash University senior criminology lecturer Dr Zarina Vakhitova, whose expertise in advanced statistical methods, applied to interpersonal violence, will be key to the project. It will advance human rights protection through predictive analytics, building upon the United Nations partnership.
"This new initiative develops a comprehensive Human Rights Risk Forecasting Model," they said. "The project will create predictive capabilities to anticipate human rights violations before they occur, enabling proactive rather than reactive interventions.
"Integrating machine learning with satellite imagery and socio-political indicators, the model will enable early identification of emerging risks and support proactive UN prevention efforts."
Due to heavy time commitments at this time, Professor Angus is not available
