Stop the trade and use of tools of torture

We’re pleased to be continuing our fundraising efforts with GlobalGiving and we greatly appreciate any and all donations we receive.

Thank you for the previous donation you made to the Omega Research Foundation. We used the money you donated to help us share our research about the trade and use of equipment used to commit human rights violations, including rubber bullets, handcuffs, electric shock weapons, and tear gas. Sharing this information will help activists more effectively lobby to control the trade and use of tools of torture and allow legal professionals to better evaluate the legality of use of force incidents. We also use our data to help journalists and human rights defenders more easily identify equipment used in torture, which can help survivors seek redress.

We are continuing to update our ‘Arms Fair Repository’, published in collaboration with Campaign Against Arms Trade. The repository contains information about hundreds of arms and security trade fairs. We use this data to monitor the activity of arms companies, identify the launch of new and potentially abusive products, and to expose gaps in existing laws and regulations. We also know that this data is useful for researchers, journalists, human rights activists, and others interested in exploring and challenging the global arms trade, which is why it is so important that we make it accessible. If you would like to learn more, please get in touch. We recently collaborated with Amnesty International France to investigate the Milipol fair, held in Paris in November. You can read the press release here.

Thanks to your donation, Omega’s arms fair data can now be freely accessed by anyone, either directly via our repository hosted on Github or through our online data browser, which provides a simple and interactive way to explore the insights that the data provides. More information about Omega’s arms fair data is available via our website.

We are currently working to upgrade our website, and hope to be able to share the new site with you in our next update.

Six months ago, we joined with five other leading anti-torture organisations in the United Against Torture Consortium, funded by the EU for an initial three years, which will further allow us to develop and share our work in partnership. Learn more about the Consortium here.

Along with colleagues at Amnesty International, Center for Victims of Torture, and the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic, Omega is at the centre of the global campaign calling for international human rights-based controls on the trade in goods used for torture (such as batons, pepper spray, and electric shock weapons). We are calling for the United Nations to agree a Torture-Free Trade Treaty and recently conducted successful advocacy at the UN in New York with representatives from NGOs around the world as part of the Torture-Free Trade Network. We regularly update our website with information on the ongoing process towards international controls on the trade in tools of torture. Learn more here.

Omega staff continue to research the manufacture, trade, and use of law enforcement and security equipment and we are always exploring how other aspects of our data can also be made more accessible.

Please see the GlobalGiving website, Omega’s own website, or get in touch with us (at info@omegaresearchfoundation.org) to learn more about our plans for the future. We will continue to share details of our progress through these short reports, but we’re always happy to answer questions.

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