The gathering drew over 30 delegates from 16 countries, African indigenous communities and the Video4Change network. Video practitioners learned and shared proven methodologies of Video4Change. An expansion of the Pan African Living Cultures Alliance (PALCA) was also resolved.

Our Africa Program Manager, Adebayo Okeowo, led the WITNESS team in a session on Video as Evidence and stressed the importance of a collection plan as a best practice when seeking to document evidence of violations against communities.

Click here to see highlights of the four-day event in pictures in addition to a livestream that we hosted on Twitter.

The weekend of January 20, 2017, is a unique opportunity to bolster support for marginalized groups, the fight against hate, and the demand for government accountability.

And your documentation and stories are pivotal to this cause.

WITNESS is proud to share our FILMING INAUGURATION PROTESTS AND WOMEN’S MARCHES tip sheet. We remain committed to helping individuals amplify personal narratives by using video safely, ethically, and effectively during the inauguration and beyond.

Before you march, we also encourage you to read ACLU’s Inauguration 2017: Know Your Rights – DC.

For more WITNESS resources, check out:

• Filming Protests in Teams
• Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video
• 4 Ways to Save Live Video Broadcasts
• Concealing Identity When Filming Interviews
• Filming Protests – 5 part video series
• Filming Hate

Download these tips here and learn more about filming safely and effectively at library.witness.org.

Feature image from Flickr – James Rae (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Session on “Access to Remedy” University of Pretoria, July 7th 2016. Photo: Isabelle Mbaye

The conference gathered more than 80 NGOs, community based organizations, civil society organizations and legal practitioners, all working in the field of human rights, extractive industry and environment.  Participants attended from all over Africa, including strong representation from  South Africa, DRC, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Nigeria. The attendees from countries such as Liberia, South Africa, DRC and Kenya, are facing land grabbing and forced evictions by big companies, environmental problems affecting local communities (Liberia, DRC), poor working conditions and sexual exploitation (Liberia, DRC).  

During this two day event, participants discussed the conference theme of access to remedy, the proposed treaty on business and human rights, development finance, and video advocacy.

A still from Rightful Place: Endorois’ Struggle for Justice.

WITNESS’ presentation covered the strategic use of video to change policies, practices, behaviors, and laws whilst acknowledging  the strengths and limitations of video for advocacy purposes.  The presentation included information on how to create a Video Advocacy Plan to clearly establish  the purpose of the video and how to determine the audience, all while considering safety and security.

Forced evictions were also part of the presentation through a case study on former WITNESS partners, CEMIRIDE and  the Endorois, an indigenous community in Kenya that was forcibly evicted from their land by the Kenyan government. This case was particularly topical since video from the advocacy campaign video was later used as evidence at the African Commission of Human and Peoples’ Rights.

Participants were very eager to learn more about video advocacy to understand  how it can be used effectively within existing advocacy campaigns.

“This session on the use of video was very beneficial for us because we have an idea of how we can do it now, we would like to deliver a message in our advocacy campaign using this medium and also we have learnt what key points should be delivered in a video for these few minutes would be calling out, heart touching to the audience to lead them to give us answers or actions.”

– Alexis Muhima Shinja from Observatoire de la Societe Civile Congolaise pour les Minerais de Paix (OSCMP)

“The use of video advocacy will be helpful, especially when it comes to land grabbing. In my country, Liberia, there are a lot of companies, mostly oil companies that are grabbing communities land so we need to use video to show evidence to the world on what the companies are doing that are not in the interest of local communities”

– Lawrence Moore, Green Advocates

The African Coalition for Corporate Accountability is growing and strengthening, the next General Assembly will be held in May 2017.

– Isabelle Mbaye

To learn more about WITNESS resources visit Library.witness.org. The access resources in French, visit Fr.WITNESS.org.

Disponible en français ici. 

In February 2016, WITNESS and FiSahara conducted a week-long intensive training on how to use video as a tool for human rights advocacy, in the Sahrawi refugee camps located in the Tindouf province of Algeria.

WITNESS has been working in partnership with the Western Sahara International Film Festival (FiSahara) for the past 3 years on training video activists and human rights defenders from Western Sahara occupied territories and the refugee camps to raise awareness on the human rights abuse regularly committed by the Moroccan Authority.

Western Sahara has been occupied by Morocco since 1975 after Spain renounced control of the territory. Morocco immediately annexed the area leading to a war between the Polisario Front, a Sahrawi national liberation movement, and the Moroccan Government. In 1991 a truce was reached. As part of the agreement the Moroccan government agreed to allow for an independence referendum in Western Sahara. 25 years later Saharawis are still waiting to vote.

Following the war, thousands of Saharawi fled to southwest Algeria and have been living since then in harsh conditions in refugee camps in the Sahara Desert. For those who stayed in Western Sahara, many continue to protest against Moroccan occupation, and can be subject to violent human right abuses such as beatings, torture, arbitrary arrests and imprisonment. Morocco heavily restricts the presence of journalists and international human rights monitors in the occupied territory, meaning many of these abuses go undocumented.

From February 15 to 22, 2016, this intensive workshop gathered 15 participants from different human rights organizations that use video to promote human rights and document abuses by the Moroccan authorities.

The aim of this training was to work with participants from refugee camps and from the occupied territories to improve their skills on video advocacy for human rights and to learn to train others on these skills. Some participants were already trainers and this workshop gave them the opportunity to strengthen their abilities.

Throughout the training WITNESS covered different areas in video advocacy. These areas included creating a video action plan for change, storytelling, ethical filming, and editing. Participants also discussed and provided input on the WITNESS Media Lab’s ongoing project verifying and curating eyewitness videos of abuse in Western Sahara.

The training served also as a platform to teach the future trainers to share the skills that they have learned to empower others in their communities who want to use video for social and political change. You can hear from the participants directly in the video below.

Interested in learning more about using video for change? WITNESS materials on video advocacy are available for free download here.

The conversation will run continuously throughout the week and is open to all. Learn more and join in on the action here!

Conversation description:

The use of video as a tool for creating social change is determined by the impact that video can have on individuals. Understanding the intended and unintended consequences, both positive and negative, of the use of video in advocacy efforts is critical to its implementation in successful social change.

This online conversation will evaluate how impact can be created and how individuals and organizations can measure, monitor, and evaluate the impact of their video for change efforts. Video for Change and Impact conversation leaders will also explore the stages at which impact can occur (research, training, production, filming, and screening); discuss how to design appropriate strategies; the importance of ethics in the video creation process; and the differences between the Global South and Global North and how these differences affect impact. 

For more on measuring the impact of video for change work, check out the video for change impact research facilitated by the Video for Change Network.

On Monday, September 14th, the WITNESS Media Lab hosted a panel on filming police violence at Civic Hall in Manhattan. From Baltimore to Rio, killings and brutality at the hands of police are at the center of public discussion. In case after case, videos eyewitnesses footage is exposing systemic abuse to wider audiences and resulting in increased media attention, public debate, and in some cases, a measure of justice.

So for victims and communities most affected by police abuse, is video the best hope for truth and accountability?

The event explored these questions bringing together leaders from the U.S. and Brazil who have used videos to expose police brutality, change the national conversation, and catalyze justice, often at great personal risk.

 The evening was moderated by Amy Goodman, journalist and host of Democracy Now!, and hosted by WITNESS Media Lab program manager Madeleine Bair.

Panelists included:

• Raull Santiago (@C_PapoReto) – Member of Papo Reto, a media collective from Rio de Janeiro
• Bina Ahmad (@BinaAhmadEsq) – Public defender and social justice attorney with the Legal Aid Society of NYC
• Kevin Moore (@WeCopWatch) – Baltimore WeCopWatch activist, filmed the arrest of Freddie Gray
• Thenjiwe McHarris (@ThenjiweTM) – Activist and co-founder of Blackbird

This panel was organized as part of the WITNESS Media Lab’s latest project on police violence and video in the United States. The full project can be found here.

In July 2015, Program Director Sam Gregory was interviewed by Mexican newspaper Prensa Reforma on documenting human rights abuses using video. The interviewed followed the second Video4Change convening in Mexico City. Sam also discussed the importance of the right to film, how to document protest situations, and how video can be used as evidence.

You can read the full story in Spanish here.

In August, WITNESS Latin America consultant Indira Cornelio appeared on RompeViento, an online television station, to discuss citizen journalism. Indira highlighted the recent Video4Change Latin America convening and how WITNESS engages with activists to help them maximize the use of video on their work.

Indira Cornelio (front right) on RompeViento.

The full video broadcast in Spanish is available here.

And finally, Madeleine Bair, Program Manager for the WITNESS Media Lab was featured in the “Buena Gente” (good people) section of El Diario-La Prensa in New York City. Bair highlighted WITNESS’ work on police violence in the United States and how bystander video can impact the justice process.

Read the full article in Spanish.

Featured image: Madeleine Bair at work via El Diario-La Prensa