RightsCon is online again this year and will be taking place from Monday, June 6th to Friday, June 10th 2022. Registration is open until June 3rd with both free and paid tickets options available to everyone: www.rightscon.org/register-2022 

You can catch our team leading sessions alongside long-term partners and allies, offering workshops, community labs, and panels on a range of topics. These topics are priority areas for many of the communities we work with closest across the world. The guidance we will be sharing is sourced from 30 years of working with community defenders on matters at the intersection of video, technology, and human rights. 

RightsCon is one of the many spaces where our guidance is strengthened through the sharing and exchanging of the wisdom of experience in community with other activists.

Here’s where you can find us (and note that you will have to create and account and login to see full details of most sessions):

Monday, June 6th

Getting it right: tackling misinformation with authenticity and provenance infrastructure that works for all

WITNESS Team: Jacobo Castellanos, Raquel Vazquez, Sam Gregory

Time: 1:15 – 2:15pm EDT

To promote participation from a diverse range of people in this session but also in broader discussions around provenance and authenticity infrastructure, our team members will first offer a brief introduction of key provenance and authenticity initiatives and scenarios, and then host an open discussion on stakeholder-centric concerns and opportunities (e.g. content provenance and authenticity in social media and its impact on community, civic and/or independent media). More information here.

Filling in the gaps: activist-led approaches to accessible documentation methods

WITNESS Team: Dalila Mujagic

Time: 2:30 – 3:30pm EDT

To fill the gaps that exist in comprehensive, accessible, and community-led documentation guidance—WITNESS’ Video as Evidence team’s Legal Lead, Dalila Mujagic, joined other facilitators and the Totem Project to create a free, online course on getting started with human rights documentation. The next step is to have activists and their communities lead the conversation on which aspects of the course they want expanded. The goal is to identify remaining gaps in knowledge that are important to participants’ communities to address and have access to. More information here.

Just Joking! Deepfakes, Satire, and the Politics of Synthetic Media

WITNESS Team: Sam Gregory

Time: 2:30 – 3:30 EDT

Around the world, deepfakes are becoming a powerful tool for artists, satirists and activists. But what happens when vulnerable people are not “in on the joke,” or when malign intentions are disguised as humor? This session focuses on the fast-growing intersections between deepfakes and satire, including examples of activism and well as those that attack marginalized communities. Sam Gregory, WITNESS’ Program Director will help participants explore current and potential uses of deepfakes and probe the ethical challenges of democratizing synthetic media production, including how to label these videos as they circulate online, and who is responsible for creating and enforcing best practices, protocols, and laws. More information here. 

Learn more: wit.to/JustJoking.

Wednesday, June 8th

Media Investigation and Documentation of Human Rights Abuses in Nigeria Using Technology 

WITNESS Team: Nkem Agunwa

Time: 5 – 6am EDT

Nigeria is the most populous Black nation on Earth. Many perpetrators of human rights abuses in Nigeria are never held accountable or brought to justice and this had led to further violence contributing to conflicts that are out of control. These abuses include unlawful and arbitrary killings, forced disappearances, torture, degrading treatment or punishment, life-threatening prison conditions, political prisoners, privacy violations, and restrictions on free expression. This session will explore media investigations and documentation of human rights abuses in Nigeria within the last decade that have leveraged technology and social media. More information here.  

How do NGOs ensure a strong, supportive organization culture for teams? Let’s share it out!

WITNESS Team: Sharon Harrison

Time: 7:30 – 8:30 am EDT

Driving strong organizational culture is Job #1 for Human Resources/People Teams in today’s NGOs. WITNESS’ HR Lead Sharon Harrison will join HR/People Team Members from Access Now in a session focused squarely on how NGOs and civil society entities can, and must, drive organizational culture to ensure long-term stability. Spanning employee support strategies, parity, inclusion and equity, and work/life balance, participants from around the globe will have the opportunity to share and inspire. More information here.

Thursday, June 9th

Learnings on tackling internet shutdowns in the MENA region

WITNESS Team: Raja Althaibani, Mahmoud Elmasry

Time: 8:15 – 9:15am EDT

In this session, our team members will shed light on the learnings and expertise from on-the-ground activists in the Middle East and North Africa who document human rights violations during internet shutdowns. This session will examine the different kinds of shutdowns across the Middle East and North Africa used by authoritarian regimes to repress, or help in suppressing protests or uprisings. Furthermore, the learnings shared here can strengthen the available strategies and tools for addressing the human rights impacts of shutdowns. More information here.

Get related resources from our #EyesOnShutdowns campaign site: wit.to/Internet-Shutdowns 

Inclusive AI governance: the role of civil society organizations in standards development

WITNESS Team: Jacobo Castellanos

Time: 8:15 – 9:15am EDT

This workshop will empower civil society organizations to play a crucial role in European AI governance through participation in technical standards development. While the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act features an array of protections for fundamental rights and public interests, it depends heavily on technical standards development to operationalize these protections for industry. Yet limited civil society involvement in standards development, along with the predominance of industry technologists, leaves a gap in necessary legal and policy expertise.

Workshop attendees, who will mainly represent European civil society organizations with expertise relevant to the AI Act’s “high-risk” categories and fundamental rights, can help to fill this gap. 

The aim of the session is to enable direct participation in standards development, and in the long term through contributions to policy work aimed at expanding their role. Jacobo Castellanos, Program Associate of our Technology Threats and Opportunities program, will be drawing from the feedback and experience of communities across the world who we have worked closely with in identifying priorities for content authentication infrastructures that center human rights. More information on this session here.

Calling on documenters, investigators, and lawyers: let’s talk “solidarity” across the digital evidence labor pipeline

WITNESS Team: Raja Althaibani

Time: 1:30 – 2:30pm EDT

Calling on documenters, investigators, and lawyers: let’s talk ‘solidarity’ across the digital evidence labor pipeline. Across the globe, documenters create and upload content depicting grave harms and violations of fundamental rights. Open source investigators probe, archive, and report on this material. Legal advocates carry a select few forward into case-building initiatives. Open source tools make it technically possible, and, arguably, easier than ever before to conduct a form of rigorous investigation without a clear, methodological need to foster personal relationships among the people involved.

WITNESS and Mnemonic are considering ways to counter such siloed workflows while writing and teaching the upcoming video as evidence guide, “Airstrikes: Visual Documentation and Analysis.” We want to know: how are you doing this in your own work? How do you wish others in our field would approach or work with you?

This community lab will seek to provide helpful tools for articulating good practices, challenges, and possible solutions. More information here. 

Many people know us as a partner and force for change around the world. On November 9, we’ll focus our attention on the work we’re doing across the United States to provide guidance to immigrant communities and their advocates around filming ICE raids and agent activity; create and distribute tips for filming and safely sharing documentation of acts of hate like those committed in Charlottesville and ongoing attacks on members of the transgender community; partner with cop watching groups on a prototype database that better organizes citizen footage of police misconduct, increasing the possibility of accountability and justice; and address the spread of “fake news” through innovative tools like ProofMode, and continued pressure and collaboration with tech companies to develop better platform policies to curb the spread of misinformation.

At this critical moment in the U.S., you can help put powerful stories to work for human rights. Come together with WITNESS on November 9 to learn how!

Ready to buy tickets? Click here.

WITNESS will demo the latest version of Proof Mode, an app we created in partnership with The Guardian Project, for verifying and sharing photos and video shot on smartphones.

Proceeds from this event will benefit WITNESS, Center for Media Justice, Interference Archive, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and The Guardian Project.

Share the open invite and RSVP today!

DATE: April 13th, 2017

LOCATION: Industry City Distillery | 33 35th St | 6th Floor | Brooklyn, NY

TIME: 7PM

P.S. – Can’t make it? Donate to WITNESS instead!

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.

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.

While most of New York rolled over in bed and snuggled up under their covers, twelve dedicated bikers refused to be daunted by cold, wind, or rain. Instead, they took on five bridges, 40 miles, and – you guessed it – five boroughs in the 2016 TD Five Boro Bike Tour. And they did it all in the name of human rights defenders around the world.

As you might expect, this year’s team was an impressive bunch. We had four returning biker’s from last year’s event, two WITNESS Board members, and our fearless Executive Director leading the charge. We had eight proud New Yorkers biking their hometown, two San Franciscans in for a whirlwind tour of New York, and two Irish invaders to laugh in the face of this ‘light rain’. And of course we can’t forget the three young people taking their parents out for a spin, all the while taking an impressive stand for human rights.

Admit it. You’re impressed…and you wish you were out biking with the cool kids. Check out these awesome pictures from race day, and show your support by helping our bikers smash their fundraising goals!

WITNESS couldn’t be prouder of our amazing team for their hard work, dedication, and commitment to human rights. On a gloomy gray day, Team WITNESS brought the sunshine with their smiles and irrepressible good cheer. We hope you’ll join us in celebrating their accomplishments…and wishing them a well earned week of relaxation!

The event is free, but registration is required. Register here.

Speakers

Newseum – 555 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest. Documentary Theater, Concourse Level. Washington, DC 20001

The panel is hosted by the Visual Arts Department at Mason Gross School of the Arts and is free and open to the public.

Time: 

Tuesday November 17, 2015 at 5:00 PM

Location:

Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University

Civic Square Auditorium

33 Livingston Ave, New Brunswick, New Jersey

More information is available here.

This year we’re proposing the panel, Live! Camera! Action!: Livestreaming That Matters, to discuss questions surrounding the use of livestreaming for good. More about the panel:

Sound interesting? Want to hear from WITNESS in Austin? Then please cast your vote for Live! Camera! Action!: Livestreaming That Matters here: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/48906