Thursday, February 16, 2017
6:00pm – 7:30pm
Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College
47-49 East 65th Street (between Park and Madison Avenues)
New York City

For 40 years the Saharawi people have been caught between two harsh realities: life in desert refugee camps and life under Moroccan occupation. These realities go largely unreported, and the voices of those living in Western Sahara go unheard. Moroccan authorities deny entry to foreign journalists and strictly prohibit press freedoms in the territory. Despite the media blackout, courageous Saharawi media activists document life under occupation. Watching Western Sahara curates and shares videos from Saharawi media activists. These videos provide a rare window into the day-to-day life of Saharawi people who take risks to expose human rights abuses in Western Sahara.

Please join us for a viewing of these videos and a panel discussion which will contextualize the footage, providing insights into the realities of the often silenced Saharawi and the human rights implications in what a UN commission considers the last colony in Africa.

PANELISTS INCLUDE:

• Amy Goodman, Host of Democracy Now!
• Madeleine Bair, Managing Editor, Watching Western Sahara
• Sandra Lynn Babcock, Clinical Professor of Law, Cornell University
• Mohammed Ali Arkoukoum, President of the Saharawi Association in New York
• Katlyn Thomas, former Chair of the United Nations Committee of the New York City Bar Association 
• Eric Goldstein, Deputy Director, Middle East and North Africa Division, Human Rights Watch(Moderator) 

Click here to RSVP

WITNESS is proud to cosponsor this event together with the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, the Hunter College Human Rights Program, and FiSahara.

Since late 2015, WITNESS and FiSahara have together leveraged online videos to support more effective reporting on Western Sahara – a territory that is nearly invisible to the outside world. The two organizations have trained at-risk Sahrawi media activists and human rights defenders on safe and effective documentation, and utilized the curation platform Checkdesk to curate, verify, and contextualize online reports.

Watching Western Sahara Silk compiles nearly 100 online videos recorded between December 2015 and June 2016, and allows users to view them within the context of larger stories of human rights in Western Sahara. In addition to other issues, these videos collectively expose a pattern of police intervention of peaceful protests, a large social movement calling for economic opportunities, ongoing demands for self-determination, and women-led demonstrations addressing the treatment of political prisoners. Click here to explore interactive reports and find videos based on location, time of recording, and other data points.   

The United Nations considers Western Sahara one of the world’s last “non-self-governing territories.” The Sahrawi population has lived under Moroccan rule for more than 40 years, despite a 1991 UN-brokered agreement to hold a referendum for self-determination. Due to strict limitations on the press, foreigners, and international human rights monitors, very rarely does footage or other reporting from the territory come to the attention of the international community.

More on this project and media activism in Western Sahara can be found here.

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.

Western Sahara is one of the world’s last remaining colonies, included in the UN’s list of 17 “non-self-governing territories.” Human rights violations are routinely committed by the occupying country, Morocco, against its indigenous Sahrawi population. Yet, due to the strict limitations imposed on the press, foreigners, and human rights monitors, very rarely do reports, footage, testimony or other evidence of abuse emerge and come  to the attention of the international community.

Watching Western Sahara aims to ensure that these videos are seen and used to monitor human rights in Western Sahara–something traditional institutions of human rights investigators and international correspondents have thus far been prevented from doing.

The project launch comes just weeks before the annual United Nations Security Council vote on whether to continue the peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara, known as MINURSO. The April 28 vote will mark the 25th anniversary of the ceasefire and the creation of MINURSO   which, as many advocates have pointed out, is the only modern UN peacekeeping mission that does not include a human rights monitoring mandate. It also comes weeks after Morocco expelled a large part of MINURSO staff from the territory, sparking the most serious diplomatic and military crisis since the 1991 ceasefire. This year also marks the 40th anniversary of Morocco’s occupation.

More about this project and Western Sahara can be found here: https://lab.witness.org/launching-watching-western-sahara/ and https://lab.witness.org/projects/citizen-video-in-western-sahara/

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FiSahara uses film to entertain, convey knowledge and empower refugees from the Western Sahara, who have lived in exile in remote camps in Southwestern Algeria since 1975. @FiSahara

Meedan (creators of Checkdesk platform) builds digital tools for global journalism and translation with a focus on open source investigation of digital media and crowdsourced translation of social media. With commercial, media and university partners, we support research, curriculum development, and new forms of digital storytelling. Other Checkdesk projects include Bellingcat. @Checkdesk

The WITNESS Media Lab is dedicated to addressing the challenges of finding, verifying, and contextualizing eyewitness videos to advance its use as a powerful tool for human rights documentation and advocacy. It is a project of WITNESS and collaboration with the News Lab at Google. @WITNESS_Lab

Top still from an Equipe Media video of a protest in Laayoune in response to the death of political prisoner Brahim Saika on April 15, 2016.