• 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 […] WITNESS April 21, 2023
  • Building Human Rights Oriented Guidelines for Synthetic Media Takeaways/TLDR:  Partnership on AI, in collaboration with WITNESS and other key allies, has published the Responsible Practices for Synthetic Media Framework, which offers guidelines for developing, creating, sharing, and publishing synthetic media ethically and responsibly.  The Framework is directed towards those building technology and infrastructure for synthetic media, those creating synthetic media, and those distributing […] Jacobo Castellanos February 28, 2023
  • Le droit de filmer en Afrique: La loi et la réalité La police nigériane affectionne une phrase populaire que l’on voit affichée dans la majorité des commissariats du pays : La police est votre amie. Mais la réalité est toute autre pour le Nigérian moyen. Les niveaux élevés de violences policières et l’impunité qui les accompagne ont déclenché l’émergence de mouvements sociaux tels que #EndSARS, dans […] Adebayo Okeowo December 13, 2022
  • Protest. Resist. Exist. #RightToRecord, A Sacred Covenant to Protect. For an optimal reading experience via your mobile phone, rotate your screen horizontally, to landscape mode. This blog post marks the official launch of WITNESS’s global campaign ‘Right to Record: Protest. Resist. Exist’. Read in Arabic, Portuguese and Spanish. Watch our recently concluded live huddle with members of our partner network, V4C, and WITNESS staff […] Meghana Bahar November 23, 2022
  • Understanding the Dangers of Gendered Disinformation in African Elections Co-authored by Temiloluwa Alalade One of the targets of SDG 5 is to “ensure women’s full and effective participation, and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life.” Over the years, there has been a steady increase in the percentage of women’s leadership and participation in politics and […] Nkemakonam Agunwa August 5, 2022
  • Fact from Fiction: Curbing Mis/disinformation in African Elections Co-authored by Temiloluwa Alalade During election season, voters are inundated with campaign materials intended to sway their votes. To engage with information meaningfully voters should have a basic understanding of digital and media literacy as well as critical thinking skills. Experts in Kenya warn that disinformation in elections may increase electoral violence globally. Election–related misinformation […] Nkemakonam Agunwa July 29, 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 […] WITNESS March 18, 2022
  • 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. […] WITNESS March 8, 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, […] WITNESS March 7, 2022
  • How Gendered Disinformation in Nigeria Precludes Justice for Survivors of SGBV This blogpost is part two of a two part series. Part one here. Co-authored by Oluwaseun Ayodeji Osowobi The rise of technology, currently in its fourth revolution, has precipitated image-based abuse and online violence against women and girls. When misinformation and disinformation infiltrate the digital space, it spreads with horrifying speed in the absence of […] Nkemakonam Agunwa December 20, 2021
  • The Role of Disinformation in Perpetuating Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in Africa This blog post is part one of a two-part series. Co-authored by Oluwaseun Ayodeji Osowobi Media responses to SGBV The proliferation of misinformation and disinformation has introduced new forms  of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) such as online bullying, sexual harassment, image based sexual violence among others. This amplifies the problem and further impedes access […] Nkemakonam Agunwa December 6, 2021
  • Pre-Empting a Crisis: Deepfake Detection Skills + Global Access to Media Forensics Tools In a recent WIRED Op-ed I share the story of a recent deepfake panic in Myanmar.  Spoiler: It probably wasn’t a deepfake… but it has important implications for how we think about access to deepfake detection technology and what skills, capacities and escalation options are needed. You can read more about the story here. “RECENTLY […] Sam Gregory July 14, 2021
  • Truth, lies and social media accountability in 2021 In 2021, critical issues at the intersection of social media, accountability, and human rights are finally at the center of global public discussion. It took the attempted insurrection at the US Capitol to lead to social media platforms finally suspending former President Donald Trump’s accounts and forcing a discussion about online content, hate and violence. […] Sam Gregory January 25, 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 […] WITNESS December 21, 2020
  • Archivists’ Victory over Overbroad Copyright Claim A joint statement from Human Rights Watch, Mnemonic, and WITNESS, with lead authoring by Deborah Brown, Senior Researcher and Advocate on Digital Rights, and Gabriela Ivens, Head of Open Source Research, at Human Rights Watch.  November 25, 2020 A decision by GitHub, a leading software development platform, to reinstate a popular free software tool for downloading videos, […] WITNESS November 25, 2020