WITNESS

Overview

WITNESS is an international human rights organization that provides training and support to local groups to use video in their human rights advocacy campaigns. WITNESS is committed to facilitating exposure for our partners' issues on a global scale. We help broker relationships with international media outlets, government officials, policymakers, activists, and the general public so that once a video is made, it can be used as a tool to advocate for change.

Mission

WITNESS uses the power of video to open the eyes of the world to human rights abuses. By partnering with local organizations around the globe, WITNESS empowers human rights defenders to use video as a tool.

Program

The WITNESS program is designed to maximize the impact of our collaborations, diffuse best practices as effectively as possible, and encourage greater use of video in documentation and advocacy by human rights organizations globally:

Core Partners Program: Campaign-specific relationships of 1-3 years in length, supporting 12-15 human rights organizations worldwide to create high impact using video advocacy.

Seeding Video Advocacy Program: Short-term trainings, workshops, and presentations to human rights and social justice networks, and development of training materials and methods to ‘seed’ best practices in using video in advocacy as broadly as possible.

WITNESS Media Archive: A repository of over 2000 hours of original human rights-related footage and documentary productions from grassroots organizations and other media-makers, available on a sliding scale from free to market rates for broadcasters.

Impact

In the DRC, Thomas Dyilo was arrested by the ICC for alleged war crimes. The arrest warrant follows a major advocacy drive by partner AJEDI-Ka/PES including video distribution and screenings to key officials.

The State Senate Majority Leader in California introduced legislation to overhaul the State’s juvenile prison system five days after “System Failure" by partner Books Not Bars revealing abuses in the system was screened at the Capitol.

WITNESS partners have achieved other successes, most notably in Senegal(funding for Women landmines victims), Paraguay (health system reform), Mexico (release of a wrongfully convicted prisoner).

Countries of Operation

Bulgaria, Myanmar, Croatia, Congo, the Democratic Republic of the, Mexico, Paraguay, Senegal, Sierra Leone