This past year has been a game changer for women all around the world. On January 21, 2017, the Women’s March on Washington, D.C, drew a historic public display of support for women’s rights in a global mass protest, estimated to be the largest mass demonstration in U.S. history, which inspired women all around the world to march as well. Last fall, millions of women took to social media to share their experiences with sexual harassment in the workplace. The #MeToo campaign inspired women to share personal accounts of sexual harassment in 85 countries and counting. A Hindu woman from a lower caste has been elected to the Senate for the first time in Pakistan, a Muslim-majority country where religious minorities have long suffered intimidation and violence. In Mexico, a project by the name of Voces de Mujeres continues to highlight women’s stories of struggle and social transformation through visual mediums. 

This year, WITNESS teamed up with the multitalented Agunda Okeyo to produce a video on five things to never do when interviewing survivors of sexual violence. When conducting these interviews, it is important to get it right from the start. For more tips, click here.

Okeyo is a writer, producer, filmmaker and activist who was born in Nairobi and raised between New York and the Kenyan capital. Okeyo has been featured as a rising producer and activist in Time Out New York, The New Yorker, Essence, The Root, Black Enterprise, Forbes, Huffington Post and NBC. In 2016 she was named a Progressive Women’s Voices fellow with Women’s Media Center and joined the NYC board of Women, Action and the Media (WAM!NYC).

Read more about how WITNESS’ program teams from each region have been inspired by women and organizations across the world here.

We’re joining forces with

Hollaback! is a global network of grassroots activists using tried and true organizing tactics and new technologies to open conversations and strategies to end harassment and ensure equal access to public spaces. WITNESS is excited to collaborate with Hollaback! on resources around safely, ethically and effectively documenting and reporting incidents of hate and harassment.

It’s time to end harassment in public space. RSVP today and invite your friends and family!

https://www.facebook.com/events/1168505523248809/

WITNESS encourages everyone to continue the fight and to strengthen support systems by using the power of video to safely and ethically empower survivors.  Our new tipsheet on Interviewing Survivors of Gender-Based Violence, adapted from a more comprehensive guide, offers guidance on preparing for an interview, filming tips, and more resources.

Let us know your thoughts! Comments, questions and feedback can be sent to feedback@witness.org. 

The film focuses on the plight of children born of wartime sexual violence in Northern Uganda and their struggle for redress.

Panelists include:

• Abigail Disney, documentary filmmaker and producer of the Women, War and Peace series
• Lauren Wolfe, Director, WMC Women Under Siege
• Tanya Karanasios, deputy program director of WITNESS
• Sarah Kasande, the head of ICTJ’s office in Uganda
• Moderator: Virginie Ladisch, director of ICTJ’s Children and Youth Program.

The screening and discussion will be held on Thursday, February 2, at the Open Society Foundations building at 224 West 57th Street, in New York City, starting at 6pm.

For more details and to rsvp, please visit http://bit.ly/2koTYIA.

By sourcing, indexing and analyzing videos of violence against transgender and gender-nonconforming people that are taken and shared as entertainment, Capturing Hate looks to expose these patterns of discrimination and abuse and aims to equip advocacy groups and the media with the tools to more effectively and ethically use eyewitness videos to document and report on violence affecting the LGBTQ community.

To read more about the project, please click here.

To read the full Capturing Hate report, please click here.

WITNESS’ Senior Program Manager, Bukeni Waruzi, organized a panel, Women and Technology: Effective documentation of sexual violence and empowering survivors, which showcased the various ways technology is being used to protect and advocate for women’s rights.

Bukeni, who has led WITNESS’ work around Gender-Based Violence (GBV) including the development of our guide on how to interview survivors of GBV, moderated the panel that included:

Esther Wambui Kimbani, Young Women’s Leadership Institute, Kenya

Mandivavarira Mudarikwa, a lawyer with Legal Resources Center, South Africa

Dafne Sabanes Plou, The Association for Progressive Communication, Argentina

Prominently featured in their Knowledge Center is our guide on How to Interview Survivors of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence.

This collaboration is a result of WITNESS’ ongoing work with UN Women around issues of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence. We are excited by the opportunity to reach more people with our tip sheets, filming guides, and many other resources as a result of this partnership.

Learn more about WITNESS’ work on Sexual and Gender-Based Violence here.

As part of a larger, international effort to secure more support for female Syrian and Palestinian refugees— populations that are highly vulnerable to sexual violence— WITNESS partnered with Oxfam and ABAAD on a three-day training in Beirut that focused on Gender-Based Violence (GBV) advocacy and education.

The training was led by WITNESS’ Senior Program Manager for the Middle East/North Africa, Bukeni Waruzi. The 20 participants learned more about the laws surrounding GBV in Lebanon, and how to safely and ethically document sexual violence on camera in order to advocate for support, systemic change, and justice when those laws are violated.

“Thanks to the great coordination of ABAAD, the training went very well,” said Bukeni of his time in Beirut. “Participants were able to identify practices of sexual violence including forced marriage, sexual harassment… Some of these practices are the result of war-driven poverty in the refugee settlements, and other practices have exponentially increased, such as forced marriage”.

Throughout the training Bukeni used WITNESS’ resources, including our guide to “Conducting Safe, Effective and Ethical Interviews with Survivors of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence.” This helped provide a comprehensive understanding of how to ethically and effectively document GBV, and enabled discussion around how these resources could be used according to the specific needs of the participants. The trainees will take the skills and knowledge acquired at this training back to their respective communities in order to train others on GBV advocacy.

“I feel like I’ve gained a lot in these few days of the training. I know many things now and how I could use my own story to advocate for peace and to address the situation” —Syrian trainee.

Bukeni leads WITNESS’ global effort to combat Sexual and Gender-Based Violence, supporting activists to create effective strategies to fight for gender justice through video and other technologies. More about WITNESS’ work on GBV and our advocacy resources can be found here, and in our recently launched digital library.

Sara Federlein, WITNESS’ Associate Director, Foundations, participated in the training and writes on The WITNESS Blog that while South Africa has strong legal protections for sexual minorities, activists still need to focus on public perceptions of these issues in order to create change.

“I’ve learned, for instance, that South Africa today has the world’s most progressive Constitution (it was in fact the first country to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation) – but paradoxically, there remains a culture of deep hostility toward sexual minorities and victims of sex crimes. Many of the filmmakers in the room say their goal is less about passing favorable legislation, since they already have that on their side.”

The training covered a variety of issues and techniques, such as:

• The legal frameworks for gender-based violence in a South African and an international context;
• Conducting safe and ethical on-camera interviews;
• Learning how to film interviews using a cellphone;
• And story development and storytelling tips.

Specific topics included the treatment and rights of individuals in South Africa; the use of “corrective rape,” a disturbing phenomenon where LGBTQ individuals are raped in an attempt to “turn them straight;” the use of rape against older women who are believed to be “witches;” child marriage; and the frequent instances of sexual violence perpetrated against women and girls in communities where people must travel far distances to access basic sanitation.

Participants included representatives from STEPS, an organization working on documenting stories of HIV and AIDS; SONKE, an organization focusing on male survivors of gender-based violence; StreetTalk TV, a community television and documentary production group; and participants from Equal Education, LiveSA and BigFish Film School.

WITNESS is excited to see how the participants share lessons learned in the training within their networks.

For example, Big Fish School’s Buhle Ndamese will be using the the training and its resources to train 150 youth activists in November who are part of a government task force to reduce violence amongst youth in Port Elizabeth, Umtata and East London (Eastern Cape Province).

“I am fortunate to have this type of training,” reflected trainee Banele Poni from Equal Education. “It opened my mind and eyes and I can see that we need to change many things in the films we are making on sexual violence as part of our campaign on gender-based violence.”

For more information on our work on gender-based violence, visit gbv.witness.org.

Bukeni Waruzi, WITNESS’ Senior Program Manager for Africa and the Middle East at the United Nations, Sept. 25 2014.

Bukeni Waruzi, WITNESS’ Senior Program Manager for Africa and the Middle East, took part in a UN panel last week on ending sexual and gender-based violence in conflict zones.

The panel was held to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the launch of the Declaration of Commitment to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, which was authored by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (UK FCO) and UN Special Representative of the Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict. Upon its publication, the Declaration was signed by 133 countries, a number which has now risen to 155. In addition, the UN and UK FCO have recently released the International Protocol on the Documentation and Investigation of Sexual Violence in Conflict, a guide for anyone working to document gender-based violence.

Bukeni was joined on the panel by Zaineb Hawa Bangura, UN Special Representative of the Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict; James Duddridge, Minister for Conflict Issues for the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office; and Kate Gilmore, the Deputy Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

WITNESS, along with the UNFPA were invited to present on what civil society organizations are doing to help end gender-based violence in conflict.

Bukeni spoke about WITNESS’ work training activists on how to document sexual violence through our guide on Interviewing Survivor’s of Gender-Based Violence and highlighted some of the benefits and challenges of working in the current technological landscape. He explained:

“Now everyone can be a documenter. The question thus becomes, how can we make sure that everyone is documenting in an ethical manner and using standards so that the documentation can be used by international justice or transitional justice mechanisms?”

While Bukeni commended the protocol for helping to improve documentation and ethical standards, he also challenged leaders to consider how we can work to ensure that sharing stories of gender-based violence brings about long-term change.

“What do we do with the stories that we hear? In the end, what do these women get from telling these stories? We need to make sure they bring about change and justice.”

Bukeni concluded his remarks with a call for governments, the UN, and civil society organizations to help strengthen ties amongst themselves and work together to end sexual violence in conflict by making sure that stories motivate substantial action on the part of those in power.

These speeches were echoed by short remarks by government representatives from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Finland, The United States, Croatia and Liberia on their commitment towards ending gender-based violence around the globe.

This event followed the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, hosted by the UK FCO and actress Angelina Jolie, which Bukeni also attended. WITNESS would like to thank the UK FCO and the United Nations for the opportunity to participate in this important conversation.

Images: Photos by WITNESS’ Sarah Kerr.