- AI, Disinformation and the Battle for Truth: How Ghana’s 2024 elections exposed the new age of political deception Disinformation and deepfakes in Ghana’s elections exposed a new age of political deception, WITNESS responded by connecting local journalists with our Deepfakes Rapid Response Force and developing tactics for fortifying community truth.
- Deepfakes and Digital Abuse: Dismantling Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence To address the pressing problem of TFGBV, WITNESS has submitted recommendations to the United Nations Human Rights Council Advisory Committee as part of its study on TFGBV.
- French AI Action Summit: Critical Information Actors Must Be Centered in Public Interest AI The 2024 election year began by highlighting fears of AI’s profound societal impact on information ecosystems and ended with post-election narratives downplaying concerns about AI as exaggerated. This ignored a key truth: those most affected by AI shortcomings and harms—particularly in underserved regions and among critical frontline information actors —were overlooked, and opportunities for them […]
- Video sebagai Bukti: Pedang Bermata Dua dan Kekuatan Suara Komunitas di Papua Read the English version here. Blog ini ditulis oleh Yerry Niko Borang, dengan kontribusi dari tim WITNESS Asia-Pasifik. Pada 17 Oktober 2024, sekelompok pembuat film, dan aktivis pembela hak asasi manusia, mayoritas dari Papua, yang beragam berkumpul secara daring untuk mengikuti webinar yang diselenggarakan oleh WITNESS berjudul “Pengarsipan Video Hak Asasi Manusia: Paradoks Bukti dan […]
- Video as Evidence in West Papua: A Double-Edged Sword and Why Community Voices Matter On October 17, 2024, WITNESS hosted a webinar, "Human Rights Video Archiving: Paradox and Impunity in West Papua" exploring the challenges of using video evidence in the fight for human rights justice in Papua. The discussion covered how video documentation, despite its powerful potential, often faces manipulation, impunity, and digital security risks. Featuring activists like Bernard Koten and Raka Sudisman, the webinar highlighted the importance of community-led documentation, secure archiving, and ongoing solidarity for justice
- From Oral Traditions to Digital Archives Archiving in Africa has become crucial in both preserving the past and empowering the future in many different ways and regions. Video stands as one of the most potent tools for storytelling and documenting human rights violations, as it captures the voices and images of affected communities, vividly telling the story of their pain, struggles, and enduring hopes in the face of injustice.
- Cataloging Tools for Human Rights Video Archiving Written by Ines Aisengart Menezes and Yvonne Ng At WITNESS, one common question we hear from partners and community-based human rights video practitioners that we support on archiving is “What database tool should I use to manage my videos?”. It’s a tricky question, because there isn’t one single correct answer. Usually, our reply is, “It […]
- Findings from our global survey of archiving needs and practices Written by Ines Aisengart Menezes and Yvonne Ng A key part of WITNESS’s work is to help activists archive and preserve their videos so that they can be used to advance human rights, now and in the future. Over the years, we have consistently heard from partners and peers that archiving is a major gap […]
- Fortifying the Truth in the Age of Synthetic Media and Generative AI Written by Raquel Vazquez Llorente, Jacobo Castellanos, and Nkem Agunwa. In March 2023, WITNESS hosted in Nairobi, Kenya, over 20 journalists, fact-checkers, technologists, policy advocates, creators, human rights defenders and community activists from six African countries: Uganda, Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria and Zambia. In our two-day workshop, we discussed threats and opportunities that generative AI […]
- Use Video in the Fight for Earth Justice Written by Dalila Mujagic and Meghana Bahar. This post is dedicated to our ancestors, human and other-than-human, who remind us that to constantly re-root ourselves into the soil is to decolonize justice. We honor the wildness of Mother Earth whom the ancients strove to eternally water. In their memory, we continue the fight for Earth […]
- Stop Violence Against Defenders of Indigenous People Those of us who subscribe to and are members of various community media collectives in Abya Yala, gathered in the network CORAL (Colectivxs Reunidos de América Latina), express our concern and outrage over the recent acts of violence that occurred in the sister Republic of Ecuador and the null protection of the State for those who […]
- Supporting Survivors of Gender-Based Violence: Documenting Evidence Join us on International Women’s Day 2022 as we continue to spotlight our newest Video as Evidence guide ‘Using Video to Support Justice and Accountability for Survivors of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence’, along with many other resources that will assist you to safely and ethically document evidence of SGBV crimes for deeper justice and accountability. […]
- فهم “المصدر” في التحقيقات مفتوحة المصدر نشرت لأول مرة في Open Global Rights بالإنجليزية، والإسبانية، والعربية في ٢١ يناير ٢٠٢١ كتبت : Libby McAvoy عندما يظهر مقطع فيديو به درجة صادمة من العنف وينتشر على نطاق واسع على الإنترنت، مثل مقاطع فيديو قوات الأمن في العراق وهي تطلق “عبوات غاز مسيل للدموع تصيب رؤوس” المتظاهرين، فإن المحققين مفتوحي المصدر يمشطون المقطع باستخدام تقنيات مثل بحوث السوشيال ميديا […]
- The Power of Video in 2020: Police Brutality in Africa Author: Loui Mainga In 2020, debate on increased visibility of police abuse gathered momentum in Africa following their heavy-handedness under the guise of enforcing COVID-19-related restrictions and much later, the #EndSARS protest movement in Nigeria. Given the pivotal role social media is playing in exposing and bringing heightened awareness to police abuse, a number of […]
- Centering the “source” in open source investigation Author: Libby McAvoy This article first appeared on Open Global Rights in English, Spanish, and Arabic on January 21, 2021. When a viral video of shocking violence crops up online—such as videos of security forces in Iraq firing “head-splitting tear gas grenades” at protestors—open source investigators comb through the footage with techniques like sophisticated social media research and geolocation to verify […]
