• Strengthening Collective Capacity to Respond to the War on Gaza Read WITNESS’ Statement. This post is also available in Arabic. A communications blackout plunged millions of Gazans, including civilians, journalists, paramedic teams and aid agencies, in an information vacuum from October 27 to midday October 29 when connectivity was partially restored. Today, we stand in a moment fraught with the gravest of risks for further […] WITNESS November 3, 2023
  • 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
  • Sudan in the Dark: Lessons from the Frontlines It has been more than a year since the Sudanese armed forces arrested a number of civilian officials in the government and the Transitional Council, including Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdok and his wife in September 2021 before realizing him after a month. Demonstrations erupted soon after, demanding a return to the democratic path and the […] Mahmoud Elmasry March 13, 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
  • Video Mitigation: How Public Defenders Are Finding New Ways to Advocate Update June 2023: Our project was featured in the New York Times! Read here: “Lights, Camera, Criminal Defense: Lawyers Pick Up Cameras to Aid Clients” “Before the video, we had no opportunity. We had no guidance. We had no way of telling our story. Neil had no way of telling his story. All he had […] Jackie Zammuto November 2, 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
  • 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 […] WITNESS April 21, 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
  • အင်တာနက်ဖြတ်တောက်ချိန်တွင်မှတ်တမ်းတင်ခြင်း ရေးသားသူ –  Yvonne Ng  ပံ့ပိုးသူ –  Arul Prakkash နောက်ဆုံးပြန်လည်သုံးသပ်သည့်ရက်စွဲ – ဇန်နဝါရီ ၃၀ ရက် ၂၀၂၀ ခုနှစ်   ၂၀၁၉ဇွန်လမှစ၍မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင်လူ့အခွင့်အရေးချိုးဖောက်မှုနှင့်လူသားချင်းစာနာမှုဆိုင်ရာအကြပ်အတည်းပြဿနာများဆက်တိုက်ဖြစ်ပွားလျက်ရှိရာနိုင်ငံ့ပို့ဆောင်ရေးနှင့်ဆက်သွယ်ရေးဝန်ကြီးဌာန၏ ညွှန်ကြားတယ်လီဖုန်းကုမ္ပဏီများ သည် ယင်းတို့၏ မိုဘိုင်းအင်တာနက်ဝန်ဆောင်မှုများကို ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ်နှင့် အိမ်နီးချင်း ချင်းပြည်နယ်တို့တွင် ဖြတ်တောက်ထားခဲ့သည်။ ‘ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေး၏အနှောင့်အယှက်များ’နှင့်တရားမဝင်လှုပ်ရှားမှုများ’ဟူ၍ကိုးကားပြီး  လူများ၏အကျိုးအတွက် အင်တာနက်ဖြတ်တောက်ခြင်းကို ဥပဒေပြဌာန်းသည်ဟု မြန်မာအစိုးရက ပြောဆိုခဲ့သည်။ အဖြစ်မှန်မှာ အင်တာနက်ဖြတ်တောက်ခြင်းကြောင့် လူသန်းပေါင်းများစွာအား မရှိမဖြစ်သော သတင်းအချက်အလက်နှင့် ဆက်သွယ်ရေးကိုအသုံးပြုခွင့်၊လူသားချင်းစာနာမှုဆိုင်ရာကြိုးပမ်းမှုများကိုရပ်တန့်စေခဲ့သည်။ “ထိုကဲ့သို့အင်တာနက်ဖြတ်တောက်ခြင်းသည်ဆက်လက်ဖြစ်ပွားနေသောရိုဟင်ဂျာလူမျိုးတုံးသတ်ဖြတ်မှုနှင့် ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ်ရှိစစ်ပြစ်မှုကျူးလွန်းခြင်းများအတွက်စစ်သွေးကြွများကိုပစ်မှတ်ထားစေကာမူ အချိုးအစားမညီမျှသော ဖြတ်တောက်ခြင်းသာ ဖြစ်သည်” ဟု Fortify Rights အဖွဲ့မှ Matthew Smith က ဖော်ပြခဲ့သည်။ အင်တာနက်ဖြတ်တောက်ခြင်းအား၂၀၁၉စက်တင်ဘာလတွင်မြို့နယ်၅မြို့နယ်၌တစိတ်တပိုင်းရုပ်သိမ်းပေးခဲ့သော်လည်းဆက်လက်ဖြစ်ပွားနေဆဲဖြစ်သည်။ထိုတစ်လတည်းမှာပင်ရိုဟင်ဂျာလူများစုထွက်ပြေးခဲ့သောအိမ်နီးချင်းဘဂ်လားဒေ့ရှ်နိုင်ငံတွင်လည်းသက်ဆိုင်ရာအာဏာပိုင်များက3G/4Gservicesများကိုပိတ်ဆို့တားဆီးရန် တယ်လီဖုန်းအော်ပရေတာများကို ညွှန်ကြားခဲ့ပြီး ရိုဟင်ဂျာဒုက္ခသည်စခန်းများတွင် တယ်လီဖုန်း […] Yvonne Ng December 9, 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
  • Response Tactics to Internet Shutdowns in Latin America Read the original post in Spanish by Indira Cornelio. Translated by Natalia Guerrero. This blog is part of WITNESS’ global campaign ‘Eyes on Internet Shutdowns: Documenting for Human Rights’. As we face a rising number of internet shutdowns across the globe, this post highlights tactics employed by our friends and allies across Latin America. Internet […] Indira Cornelio November 23, 2021
  • Prioritize Non-Technological Methods for Combating Misinformation and Disinformation Detecting mis/disinfo Technology platforms are facing their biggest hurdle yet as they race to beat the fast-evolving forms of misinformation and disinformation perpetuated online. More pressing is the sophisticated technology deployed by mis/disinformation actors that make it increasingly difficult to detect and counter.  To address this, tech platforms have introduced a number of technological solutions […] Nkemakonam Agunwa October 14, 2021
  • Eyes on Internet Shutdowns: Documenting for Human Rights This is the first of a series of posts to mark the official launch of WITNESS’ global campaign on internet shutdowns, that highlights community strategies for documenting human rights abuses during a shutdown. Visit the campaign homepage to stay updated about new resources. This blog post is available in Spanish, Arabic and Farsi. In an impassioned […] Meghana Bahar September 1, 2021