How the United Nations and affiliated NGOs employ Artificial Intelligence in monitoring human rights violations: current practices, providers, risks, and governance gaps.

The exponential growth of data sources (satellite imagery, social media, mobile communications) poses both an opportunity and a challenge for organisations monitoring human rights. While the United Nations and its affiliated NGOs have begun to experiment with AI and OSINT tools to gather, verify, and analyse information about human rights violations, there is little comprehensive mapping of who is doing what, what tools are used, how they are governed, and what risks are involved. This thesis seeks to fill that gap. It investigates current uses of AI by UN bodies and NGOs in human rights monitoring, identifies technology providers and collaborators, assesses procedural and governance arrangements, analyses ethical, legal, and technical risks, and provides recommendations for how the UN system can responsibly integrate AI tools. Through document review and selected case studies, the thesis will answer: (1) Which practices currently exist and which are emerging? (2) What governance frameworks and supports are in place, and where are the gaps? (3) How can risks be mitigated, and what best practices should guide future deployment? The study aims to contribute to scholarly understanding of AI in international human rights monitoring.