By Yvette Alberdingk Thijm | January 23rd, 2012 Last month on Human Rights Day (December 10th) I wrote an opinion piece for the HuffingtonPost about the increasingly important role technology companies and platforms are playing in the human rights landscape. I’m sharing it again here along with some excerpts of a recent blog by the Bahrain activist and blogger Esra’a on MidEastYouth.com which eloquently summarizes why technology providers can and should serve better human rights activists and defenders. The quotes and placement of them below from Esra’a’s blog are of my choosing.
In 2011, tens of millions of people took to the streets in protest to defend their human rights. With the help of cell phones, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, we have been able to monitor and track violations taking place all across the world. Even in Syria, where no journalists are allowed, we have been able to “witness” events on the ground from the screens of [...]
Continue reading A Few Reasons Activsts Shouldn’t be Banned from the Internet
By Guest Blogger | November 29th, 2011 In commemoration of the global 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign, we are highlighting activists and organizations who are using the power of video in their campaigns to address gender-based violence through a series of guest posts. Read previous posts in this series.
By Mwelwa Kamanda Mwelwa is a founding member of the Samfya Women Filmmakers (SWFM), a collective which empowers rural Zambian women to use film as a tool for social change, with whom she has produced three films. She also works as a coordinator for Camfed‘s Community Health Program, a program that educates schoolchildren and rural communities about family planning, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS and other health issues. Mwelwa is also alumna of WITNESS’ 2008 Video Advocacy Institute.
Hidden Truth
When my fellow filmmakers in the Samfya Women Filmmakers collective and I decided to produce our third film, we were determined to focus on an issue that is present in so many communities [...]
Continue reading A Hidden Truth: Gender-Based Violence in Zambia
By Matisse Bustos Hawkes | November 17th, 2011 If you are like many WITNESS staff, you are tuned into the events of today’s global actions in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Despite the recent events in New York City, Oakland, CA, and other cities where “permanent” encampments were cleared away, protesters around the U.S. and the world are back in city centers protesting today.
One of the most amazing aspects of this year’s protests and revolutions across the globe has been the ubiquitous use of video to document events. Today, as in weeks past, the Occupy Wall Street movement and some of its supporters are livestreaming events.
Here is the livestream from GlobalRevolution who are streaming events from various cities. The streams are narrated by independent journalists who are doing the filming for the streams:
globalrevolution on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free
This livestream has been accessed over 250,000 times today alone.
There are [...]
Continue reading Occupy Wall Street: A Day of Global (Video) Action, Nov. 17, 2011
By Guest Blogger | November 9th, 2011 By Chris Rogy. Chris is the Tools and Tactics intern at WITNESS. He is a Master’s student focusing on Social Media and Social Change in the The New School’s Media Studies and Film Department. Current Projects include a new media documentary called Re-Fusing Refuge about the deportation of Cambodian American Refugees and a participatory research thesis that develops radio drama practices with community leaders in rural Cambodia.
We at witness are always excited to come across advocacy videos that educate and inspire audiences on human rights issues. When Annie Leonard’s Story of Stuff was released in December of 2007, probably no one imagined a 20-minute video would make front page of The New York Times and receive over 15 million views– but it did.
Yesterday, the Story of Stuff Project released a new 8-minute video that builds on the “dinosaur economy” concept, portrayed in Story of Stuff, by challenging Americans who [...]
Continue reading Leading By Example: Video Advocacy Storytelling and the Story of Broke
By Chris Michael | October 19th, 2011 For most of us, the epicenter of video for change work that we’ve seen throughout 2011 has been in the Middle East and North African region (MENA). The Arab Spring has illuminated the reality of what “Cameras Everywhere” looks like, and what the power of instant video capturing and sharing can yield to inform and mobilize for truly incredible social change. All of us trying to harness the power of video to create change have a lot to learn from our MENA allies working on the front lines recording, remixing, curating and sharing human rights video.
As part of our one-year focus on MENA, WITNESS will host a convening next week with 23 of the region’s most innovative and prominent video activists from six countries in transition: Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.
Most of our work at WITNESS is supporting and training human rights activists, groups and organizations [...]
Continue reading What Do You Want to Learn from Video Activists in the Middle East and North Africa?
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