WITNESS, Author at WITNESS Blog

Filming for the Rights of the Papuan People and Land Since a takeover in the 1960s, West Papua has faced relentless human rights abuse and environmental damage as Indonesia plunders its resource-rich land. The region is host to the American and British-owned Freeport mine, the largest gold mine in the world, which has effectively poisoned the local river system and reduced a sacred mountain to […] April 21, 2022
Documenting SGBV Crimes during Conflict: Community Healing for Rohingya Women and Girls This blog post is part 2 of 2 posts. Read part 1 here. Content warning/trigger warning: sexual violence. Rohingya lawyer and educator Razia Sultana is a strong advocate for the rights of her people, and since 2014, has worked with some of the 900,000 Rohingya refugees now in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. She has been working […] March 31, 2022
ကော့ဘဇား မှ -ပဋိပက္ခအတွင်း SGBV ရာဇ၀တ်မှုများကို မှတ်တမ်းတင်ခြင်း ဤဘလော့ဂ်ပို့စ်သည် ပို့စ် ၂ ခု၏ အပိုင်း ၁ ဖြစ်သည်။ ဒီစာကို အင်္ဂလိပ်လို ဖတ်ပါ။ အကြောင်းအရာသတိပေးချက်/အစပျိုး သတိပေးချက်- လိင်ပိုင်းဆိုင်ရာ အကြမ်းဖက်မှု။ နိဒါန်း Razia Sultana သည် ရိုဟင်ဂျာရှေ့နေ၊ တက်ကြွလှုပ်ရှားသူနှင့် ပညာပေးသူ ဖြစ်ပြီး ရိုဟင်ဂျာ အရေး တက်ကြွလှုပ်ရှားသူဖြစ်သည်။ ၂၀၁၄ ခုနှစ်ကတည်းက သူမသည် ရိုဟင်ဂျာဒုက္ခသည် ၉၀၀,၀၀၀နှင့် အတူ ဘင်္ဂလားဒေ့ရှ်နိုင်ငံ၊ ကော့ဘဇာ တွင် အလုပ်လုပ်ကိုင်လျှက်ရှိသည်။ သူမသည် လိင်နှင့် ကျားမအခြေခံအကြမ်းဖက်မှုမှ လွတ်မြောက်လာသူများဖြစ်ကြသည့် ရိုဟင်ဂျာအမျိုးသမီးများနှင့် အနီးကပ်လုပ်ဆောင်နေပြီး မြန်မာနိုင်ငံမှ လူမျိုးတုံးသတ်ဖြတ်မှုမှလွတ်မြောက်ရန် မကြောက်မရွံ့ ထွက်ပြေးလာခဲ့သည့် အမျိုးသမီးများနှင့် မိန်းကလေးငယ်များ၏ ဇာတ်လမ်းများကို မှတ်တမ်းတင်ခဲ့သည်။ Razia သည် မြန်မာစစ်တပ်မှ ရိုဟင်ဂျာများအပေါ် လိင်ပိုင်းဆိုင်ရာ အကြမ်းဖက်မှုများကို […] March 18, 2022
Documenting SGBV Crimes during Conflict: The View from Cox’s Bazar This blog post is part 1 of 2 posts. This blogpost is also available in Burmese. Content warning/trigger warning: sexual violence. Introduction Rohingya lawyer, activist, and educator Razia Sultana is a strong advocate for the rights of her people. Since 2014, she has worked with some of the 900,000 Rohingya refugees now in Cox’s Bazar, […] March 7, 2022
WITNESS at RightsCon 2021 Online For the last decade, RightsCon has served as a forum for activists, civil society, and international stakeholders to gather around critical issues, questions, and possibilities that lay at the intersection of technology and human rights. As a global organization committed to supporting communities to use video and technology for justice, WITNESS aligns with the central […] June 2, 2021
#FreeThemAll: A Video Case Study for Immigrant Justice Our partners at the Rio Grande Valley Equal Voice Network recently released two videos that we are proud to have collaborated on. Check out the other video case study here. Check out our collective learnings and more behind-the-scenes information here. The video is a vehicle for people in detention to share their experiences and voice […] May 25, 2021
#NoBorderWall: A Video Advocacy Case Study for Immigrant Justice Our partners at the Rio Grande Valley Equal Voice Network recently released two videos that we are proud to have collaborated on. Check out the other video case study here. Check out our collective learnings and more behind-the-scenes information here. VISION: #NoBorderWall The storytelling reflects the values of the RGV-EVN because it is family focused. […] May 25, 2021
Behind The Scenes: Visions for Immigrant Justice Our partners at the Rio Grande Valley Equal Voice Network recently released two videos that we are proud to have collaborated on. These videos paint a vision for a more just world for the immigrants and southern border communities in the U.S. that RGV Equal Voice represents and supports. This vision is one that prioritizes […] May 25, 2021
Storytelling Strategies for Immigrant Justice in the U.S. We've compiled examples of videos that illustrate responsible, community-centered and effective storytelling for immigrants' rights. Strategic storytelling can be an antidote to the dehumanization of migrants that stems from the racism and xenophobia embedded in U.S. federal policies, violent enforcement practices, and dominant discourses about immigrants. May 11, 2021
Turn to Video, Not Police In Addressing Anti-Asian Violence Bystander and surveillance footage has helped expose the rising (and undercounted) violence against Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPI) in the U.S. As we contend with the grief and rage spurred by these horrific incidents, we join those seeking answer to the urgent question: How do we keep each other safe? We know that police are […] March 19, 2021
International Women’s Day 2021: Visions of Change How can video and technology fight patriarchy and misogyny? Today, there are more answers to this question than ever before. Feminists have the ability to adapt the wisdoms of historical political struggles to central organizing tools of our time: camera phones, internet, and social media networks. Feminist stories told through video help nuance understandings of […] March 8, 2021
Honoring the 75th Anniversary of Nuremberg On November 29, 1945, only a week into the trial, the . . . prosecution introduced an hour-long film titled ‘The Nazi Concentration Camps.’ When the lights came up in the Palace of Justice all assembled sat in silence. The human impact of this visual evidence was a turning point in the Nuremberg Trial. It […] December 21, 2020
The Role of Video and the Right to Record in Exposing Systemic Racism WITNESS has responded to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights’ call for submissions to inform her report on systemic racism and violations of the international human rights of Africans and people of African descent by law enforcement. WITNESS’ submission emphasizes how video has played an essential role in exposing institutional discrimination around the […] December 16, 2020
How Can U.S. Activists Confront Deepfakes and Disinformation? –December 2020 In the US, the 2020 presidential campaign has been called the “misinformation election.” But however significant the results may be, the problem of misinformation is much larger and more persistent than a single event. Recently WITNESS hosted a workshop on deepfakes and visual misinformation for activists and researchers based in the US, where […] December 3, 2020
Making the [In]Visible Powerful: Leveraging Climate Visuals in Courts This article first appeared on Open Global Rights in English and Spanish on October 30, 2020. Climate Change in the Courtroom Human rights researcher Alexa Koenig said, “Visuals are often the bridge between lived experiences on the ground and some of the greatest seats of power,” but that was not what Ashley Funk thought would happen when she received her […] November 13, 2020