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.

On January 25th, Yvonne will participate in a one-hour guest talk with the Winter School for Audiovisual Archiving hosted by The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. Yvonne will discuss the preservation strategies that WITNESS has implemented for its 25-year archive of human rights video.

The webinar will be livestreamed and registration is free. For more details and to register visit: http://bit.ly/2jp3879.

On February 8th, Yvonne will participate in the Council on Library and Information Services, Strategies for Advancing Hidden Collections (SAHC) Webinar: “Overcoming Project Hurdles: Approaches to Identifying and Managing Collection Red Flags”, where she will discuss challenges she faces in caring for her collection and evaluating and managing ethical issues.

Registration is currently full for this webinar however, you can listen to the recordings of the session, which will be made available a few days after, by visiting: http://bit.ly/2jS1dLv.

The grant comes at an important moment when basic rights are under increased threat in the U.S. and reports of hate-related incidents are up around the country.

WITNESS has a 25-year track record of supporting activists and marginalized communities to amplify their voices and use the power of visual media and technology more effectively in their campaigns for change. As more people than ever have access to communications technologies, WITNESS is working to ensure their videos make an impact.

The MacArthur Foundation grant will help us work with more partners, networks, and grassroots movements in the U.S. focused on issues including fair immigration policy, women’s and LGBTQ rights, and police accountability.

Additionally, it will allow us to ramp up our outreach during moments of escalated activity or tension, when many people are suddenly taking part in civic witnessing, for example, after a police shooting or during widespread protests such as those organized around the presidential inauguration. During these times, WITNESS will distribute timely resources that can help to improve documentation and sharing in real time, increasing the chances that more eyewitness videos will lead to more rights, justice, reform, and constructive dialogues.

The grant, disbursed over two years, will facilitate targeted in-person trainings, creation and distribution of tailored training resources, and sharing of lessons across interrelated movements both in the U.S. and in WITNESS’ work in other regions globally. Monies from the grant will also be allocated to hire a Program Coordinator who will build upon our existing relationships with networks and movements within the issue areas listed above.
Staff for the U.S. program include: Jackie Zammuto, U.S. Program Manager; Tanya Karanasios, Deputy Director, Programs, Sam Gregory, Program Director.

Here are some highlights from our latest video advocacy trainings led by WITNESS’ Asia-Pacific Program Manager, Arul Prakkash:

Workshop on Video as Evidence for Bersih 5 Rally
 Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

In solidarity with the Malaysian movement for clean and fair elections, WITNESS provided training for a group of videographers to document the Bersih 5 rally held on November 19th. To help mobilize members of the public and citizen journalists, Prakkash created the ‘10 Tips Penting Jika Merakam Video Di Bersih 5′ (Top 10 Tips for Filming Bersih 5) tip sheet, which was adapted from this WITNESS tip sheet (in English). Over 15,000 protesters took part in the Bersih 5 rally in the streets of Kuala Lumpur calling for institutional reforms for a new Malaysia. Bersih’s 5 demands include clean elections, a clean government, a strengthening of parliamentary democracy, the right to dissent, and the empowerment of the states of Sabah and Sarawak.

Workshop on Storytelling for Advocacy for Indigenous People
 Gua Musang, Malaysia

In November, Prakkash delivered a brief training on storytelling for video to a team of activists who are members of the Indigenous Peoples’ Network of Peninsular Malaysia (JKOASM). The workshop took place in Gua Musang in the state of Kelantan where indigenous people have been protesting illegal logging in their ancestral lands. Prakkash trained participants on how to safely and effectively use mobile phones and GoPro cameras to highlight their struggles. He emphasized the importance of the use of the first-person narrative for video for higher impact. This training workshop was conducted together with our partners, KOMAS.

Series of Workshops for Human Rights Defenders
Comoro, Timor-Leste

Activists, human rights defenders, and NGO staff from South Asia and Southeast Asia working on a range of human rights issues attended a one and a half day training by WITNESS on October 18th and 19th. The Diplomacy Training Program (DTP) is an independent Australian NGO committed to advancing human rights by empowering civil society through education and skills training. WITNESS and DTP strategized with participants on how to include video in their various advocacy initiatives and trained them on storytelling using video. Participants were able to produce short videos on a range of issues by the end of the workshop.

Within the same month, WITNESS and Asia Justice and Rights (AJAR) trained around 30 human rights activists and NGO staff on the use of video for advocacy work. Participants went through an intensive training process on video documentation of human rights abuses, storytelling for video and digital security. Through workshops such as these, we hope to inspire and support more activists working in Timor-Leste in their advocacy efforts.

An Encounter with Max Stahl

Prakkash also took some time out of his training schedule to meet with British film-maker Max Stahl, whose documentary In Cold Blood: the Massacre of East Timor contributed to changing the destiny of the nation of Timor-Leste. The Max Stahl Audiovisual Archive Center for Timor-Leste (CAMSTL) is home to a repository of documentary heritage comprising of over 5,000 hours of audiovisual material since November 1991. The Center today is a training ground for young filmmakers and activists who engage with struggles of resistance and who want to communicate their stories to the world.

To read more, check out this recent blog post by our Asia-Pacific Engagement Consultant, Meghana Bahar, about the Santa Cruz massacre which occurred 25 years ago.

To stay updated on all of our work in the Asia-Pacific region, follow WITNESS Asia on Twitter and Facebook!

Tara will be working on the Middle East and North Africa Jurisprudence Study, examining various jurisdictions in the region and how they consider video as evidence.

Tara Vassefi, WITNESS Video as Evidence Legal Fellow

Tara recently graduated from the American University Washington College of Law, where she was a recipient of the JD Distinguished Fellowship award. She specialized in International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law and worked as a Dean’s Fellow with the War Crimes Research Office advising institutional clients on specialized legal issues in the areas of international criminal and humanitarian law.

She also spent a year as a student attorney with the AU International Human Rights Law Clinic where her clients ranged from asylum-seekers to a Mexican collective of victims of the drug war filing a petition with the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights.

Prior to joining WITNESS and throughout law school, Tara worked as a research analyst and education specialist for a U.S. Department of Defense program that provides graduate level education for military and civilian leaders to establish a regional, geopolitical, and cultural framework for analyzing and understanding the challenges of conducting full spectrum operations in unique and rapidly changing environments.

She studied Arabic in Damascus and Cairo and received an M.A. in International Relations with Middle Eastern Studies from the University of St Andrews in Scotland.

The New Media Ventures Innovation Fund selects six innovative and changemaking startups from a pool of hundreds of applicants, all of whom are finding ways to use cutting-edge technology to advance social and environmental causes and to mobilize underrepresented communities.

Mobil-Eyes-Us aims to support frontline activists who are using live video in more meaningful ways, other than through the usual ‘likes’ and ‘hearts’ from those watching these feeds. We look at existing and new technology that can turn viewers of live video into active witnesses who can provide guidance, leverage, and solidarity in real time.

Most recently a small-scale pilot of the Mobil-Eyes-Us project launched during the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The pilot in Rio involved collaboration with frontline activists in communities affected by human rights violations to share a series of live-streams and provide ‘distant witnesses’ with the opportunity to witness directly what was happening, and move from being viewers to active witnesses taking action in support of frontline communities.

To learn more about our Mobil-Eyes-Us Project and Tech Advocacy, please click here.

To learn more about New Media Ventures, please click here.

The new video provides a brief overview on the importance of archiving in order to prevent your video evidence from potentially being lost or destroyed in the event that your account gets hacked, your hard drive dies, or your video is seized. Archive! and the Archive Guide show you what steps to take to preserve important video evidence that can help expose human rights abuses and support calls for justice. 

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.

First Draft News is a coalition formed in June 2015, which provides a platform for experts to share tips and tools to gather and verify eyewitness media. Its new partner network aims to expand “trust and truth in reporting information that emerges online.” The network bringing together major social network platforms as well as global newsrooms, and organizations to provide guidance, help shape policies, and provide resources and trainings to journalists and reporters using social media and the web.  

The partner network will work in conjunction with social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to find ways to streamline the verification of eyewitness media as well as increase news literacy amongst its users.

Alongside WITNESS, partners of the network include: The New York Times, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed News, CNN, ABC News (Australia), AJ+, ProPublica, European Journalism Centre, and Amnesty International and more.

To learn more about the network and for a full list of partners, visit firstdraftnews.com/partner-network.

To learn more about First Draft News, visit https://firstdraftnews.com/.