- Why Do We Need Community-based Approaches to Visual Verification? WITNESS' new Community-based Guide to Visual Verification supports activists and journalists in verifying important human rights documentation such as videos and photos.
- The Growing Role of Image Verification in Venezuela’s Protests A new mobile app addresses the challenge of verifying citizen footage. Plus, a politician brings citizen video of abuse to the Organization of American States.
- Human Rights Video Weekly: Venezuela & The Verification Challenge Just as citizen reporting and social media can illuminate human rights abuse, they can also facilitate the spread of misinformation, as we're seeing in videos circulated from Venezuela's protests recently.
- Four Ways InformaCam Powers Mobile Media Verification Our partners at the Guardian Project posted today about how our joint project InformaCam provides mobile media (photos/video) verification. We share the overview here.
- Citizen Video for Journalists: Verification Citizen video is becoming a powerful new reporting tool. But faked footage threatens to break the trust that's so critical to newsrooms and audiences. Storyful reporter Della Kilroy demystifies the verification process, sharing important lessons for reporters and human rights researchers alike.
- Is This For Real? How InformaCam Improves Verification of Mobile Media Files There is currently a deluge of media coming from the world’s mobile devices for potential use as evidence or trusted sources for journalists. WITNESS and the Guardian Project are working to provide a mechanism, InformaCam, to verify and authenticate this footage.
- IFRC World Disasters Report 2026: Truth, Trust and Humanitarian Action in an Age of Harmful Information The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has launched the World Disasters Report 2026, which frames harmful information as a de facto humanitarian crisis — one that can undermine access to aid, erode trust, and destabilize social cohesion, ultimately affecting safety and principled humanitarian action. The report also includes contributions from […]
- It’s getting harder, but not impossible, to film, verify, and preserve a trustworthy record In Minneapolis, United States, videos recorded by bystanders and independent observers played a decisive role in exposing the violence of federal immigration agents and dismantling false narratives constructed against the victims earlier this year. The footage documented confrontations, executions, and abuses, directly contradicting official statements and forcing political and institutional responses. In this case, video […]
- Archiving as a Form of Resistance in Asia-Pacific When repression silences voices, how do communities make sure their stories survive? When protests erupt, who decides what gets remembered and what is erased? These were the urgent questions shaping our conversations at DRAPAC25, the Digital Rights Assembly in Asia-Pacific, organized by EngageMedia. Archiving is never a neutral exercise, it is an act of resistance […]
- Filming The Uprising: Revisiting How Bangladeshi Youth Used the Right to Record to Overthrow an Authoritarian Regime This blog was written by our partner, Shoeb Abdullah, with contributions from the WITNESS team. বাংলা সংস্করণটি এখানে পড়ুন। On August 5, 2024, a monumental shift occurred in Bangladesh’s political landscape when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who had ruled the country for over 15 years, was forced to flee with her sister, Sheikh Rehana, […]
- Defending Democracy: Human Rights Implications of Generative AI and Deepfakes in the 2025 Philippine Elections This blog is a report from a workshop held in the Philippines on 12th April 2025, which explored the human rights risks posed by generative AI and deepfakes in the lead-up to the 2025 elections. Participants examined how these technologies are weaponized for disinformation and political repression and shared strategies to defend truth and democracy. […]
- 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.
- 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
- Toward Equitable and Effective AI Detection Tools: A Call for Standards That Serve All Communities Written by shirin anlen As generative AI technology evolves, so do the tools designed to detect it. Yet, in the race to develop high-performing detection systems, a critical element risks being overlooked. Effectiveness is often measured through technical benchmarks: accuracy, speed, scalability, and versatility. While these metrics are important, they fail to capture the full […]
- Fortifying the Truth Through Collaboration and Community-led Documentation WITNESS hosted a global convening to promote the exchange of skills and knowledge within community-led initiatives working on pathways to justice and to promote greater democratized access to emerging OSINT tools and skills, and a transformation of the existing communities of practice.
