Map-Based Memorial Captures a History of Iran’s Extrajudicial Violence

Abdorrahman Boroumand Center (ABC) for Human Rights in Iran / 2024 / Human Rights, Politics & Government

Overview

The Abdorrahman Boroumand Center (ABC) preserves vital, hard-to-find records of extrajudicial crimes carried out by Iran’s state agents and proxies. Graphicacy helped ABC bring new eyes and fresh energy to their bold activism with data visualizations that spotlight human rights violations while memorializing the victims.

Launch Project
  • Services
  • CMS Integration
  • Data Management Solutions
  • Data Visualization
  • Engineering
  • Geospatial Mapping
  • Interactive Web Applications
  • UX/UI Design

Background and Challenge:

ABC carries on the legacy of Dr. Abdorrahman Boroumand, a leader of a pro-democracy group formed in exile after the 1979 Iranian revolution—and a victim of assassination by the Iranian state. Founded and led by his daughters Roya and Ladan, ABC raises awareness of human rights abuses at the hands of the Islamic Republic and strives to restore the dignity of its victims. 

To this end, ABC created a vast human rights database documenting the lives, actions, and punishments of victims of Iranian extrajudicial violence. Roya and her team brought Graphicacy in to transform their database into a powerful visualization—one that created new opportunities for at-a-glance learning, exploration, research, memorialization, and advocacy. 

Among the project’s ambitious goals: capture the geographic spread, the historical scope, and the emotional impact of the recorded attacks and killings, all in a seamless interface that worked intuitively for speakers of both English and Farsi.

Opportunity and Solution:

Working together, the ABC and Graphicacy teams opted for two interlinked visualizations: a historical view featuring a timeline bar chart and a geospatial view using a world map. 

The project’s landing page defaults to the timeline view, accompanied by a story contextualizing the tool and its aims. Over 900 extrajudicial killings and crimes appear in the timeline, dating back to 1979, with more being added as new research is unearthed.. Bars for each year appear as stacks of dashes—each representing another victim or attempted crime. Clicking on a dash brings up the victim’s biographical card and, where available, corroborating documentation. Users have the option to submit additions or corrections. 

Timeline chart of Extrajudicial Killings by Iran

Transitioning to the map view, users see markers for real and attempted killings across the globe. Dots on the map cluster instances by number in each locale, separating out to show individual attacks as the user zooms in further. Hovering over a dot displays more information about the event, including a link to the victim’s database entry.

The easy-to-browse interface also supports intensive, systematic research—and has already succeeded in drawing attention and eliciting new information from the families of more victims.

"When people see these tools, their first impression is ‘wow’. Not only is this better than anything we’ve had for sharing our data, but it also gives us what we need to better engage the public."

Roya Boroumand, Executive Director and Co-Founder, Abdorrahman Boroumand Center (ABC) for Human Rights in Iran

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