MENU

About the Organization

 

WITNESS was founded over two decades ago after a bystander, George Holliday, recorded the brutal beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers. In response, musician and activist Peter Gabriel co-founded WITNESS with the vision that video technology could be used as a tool for the advancement of human rights. Today, WITNESS is fostering a new ecosystem where vulnerable and marginalized communities turning to video and technology to create change can do so safely, ethically, and effectively – providing the foundation for a free, equal, informed, and just society. WITNESS does this via two interconnected programmatic pillars:

1) Fostering mass participation in human rights by increasing the skills and capacity of at risk and marginalized communities, human rights defenders, media activists, journalists, and lawyers to use video and technology safely, ethically, and effectively – strengthening the ecosystem for human rights at the local, regional and international levels.

2) Making technology systems safer and more inclusive and effective for human rights activism by at-risk and marginalized communities and billions of other people throughout the world. WITNESS does this through targeted advocacy and strategic partnerships with leading technology companies as well as through developing proactive, collaborative solutions to counter the threats of emerging technologies.

https://s12982.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/witness-sl1.jpg

Despite advances in human rights protections, abuses are still common.

https://s12982.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/witness-sl2.jpg

WITNESS works with and trains partners to put compelling films in the hands of influential media, and operates the world’s first human rights media sharing website.

https://s12982.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/witness-sl3.jpg

Musician and activist Peter Gabriel recruited filmmaker Gillian Caldwell to help WITNESS connect compelling testimony to audiences where it could have an impact.

https://s12982.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/witness-sl4.jpg

WITNESS has partnered with more than 300 human rights groups in 86 countries, and trained more than 5,000 human rights defenders.

Ambition for Change

A world where anyone, anywhere can use video and technology to protect and defend human rights.

Path to Scale

To disrupt the current equilibrium via a “bottom-up” approach to democratizing who participates in human rights as well as a “top-down” approach to influence how technology systems impact billions.

Skoll Awardee
Gillian Caldwell

Chief Climate Officer and Deputy Assistant Administrator, USAID, United States Agency for International Development

Peter Gabriel had already made a mark on the human rights movement with his music and his activism when he co-founded WITNESS in 1992 to put video cameras into the hands of human-rights activists. One of those activists was Gillian Caldwell, who was using undercover cameras to investigate Russian mafia involved in trafficking women into forced prostitution. She was recruited as WITNESS’s executive director in 1998. She realized WITNESS partners needed training on how to film a compelling story, get their films before decision makers who could make a difference, and get their films shown by major media outlets. She built the organization into a major international resource for the media and the human-rights field during her decade at the helm. 

Yvette Alberdingk Thijm, an attorney with extensive experience in media and technology, became executive director in 2008.

Impact & Accomplishments
  • WITNESS has trained 11,500 human rights defenders and engaged with 4,500,000 people globally through its digital resources, enabling more people to participate in global movements for human rights.
  • WITNESS has supported partners using video to expose war crimes, protect indigenous land rights, stop police violence, defend immigrants, fight hate speech, and many other issues.
  • When YouTube deleted hundreds of thousands of evidentiary videos with a new machine-learning algorithm in 2017, WITNESS successfully advocated with partner Syrian Archive for YouTube to restore them.
  • WITNESS has led proactive responses with civil society, companies, researchers, and technologists to how AI systems are increasingly able to create convincing simulations of authentic media, including sophisticated audio and video manipulations called “deepfakes.” These media forms have the potential to amplify, expand, and alter existing problems around trust in information, verification of media, and weaponization of online spaces.
Affiliated
Shantha Rau Barriga
Deputy Executive Director, WITNESS
Raquel Vazquez Llorente
Head of Law and Policy, Technology Threats & Opportunities, WITNESS
Nkem Agunwa
Africa Program Manager, WITNESS
Yvonne Ng
Program Manager, Archives, WITNESS
Sara Federlein
Associate Director - Philanthropy, WITNESS
Jessie Roth
Instutional Support Manager, WITNESS
Peter Gabriel
Co-founder & Board of Directors, Chair, WITNESS
Yvette J Alberdingkthijm
Consultant/Advisor/Collaborator, WITNESS
Adebayo Okeowo
Program Manager, Africa, WITNESS
In the News
Related Content

Police Violence, Video, and Truth Telling at WITNESS

It’s been 55 years since police violence sparked the Watts rebellion. It’s been 28 years since the Rodney King arrest, beating, filming, and subsequent uprising in South Los Angeles. Today,…

See All Awardees