The Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria is among four other universities across the world working with Amnesty International on its cutting-edge volunteer project Digital Verification Corps (DVC). Coordinated by Sam Dubberley, the DVC was created to equip students to subsequently support the work of Amnesty International’s researchers, who are often confronted with overwhelming volumes of unverified social media content in connection with some form of human rights abuse.  

The students are tasked with the responsibility of using advanced tools to determine what a piece of video purports to say and if it is authentic, reliable and trustworthy. Amnesty International then uses the conclusion from the verification process to trigger further investigation and hold the relevant perpetrators of human rights violations to account.