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WITNESS empowers human rights organizations around the world to incorporate video as an advocacy tool in their work. Rooted in the power of personal testimonies and in the principle that a picture is worth a thousand words, WITNESS and its partners’ videos have been used.

WITNESS empowers human rights organizations around the world to incorporate video as an advocacy tool in their work. Rooted in the power of personal testimonies and in the principle that a picture is worth a thousand words, WITNESS and its partners’ videos have been used

• as evidence in legal proceedings;
• to corroborate allegations of human rights violations;
• to complement written reports to international/regional organizations that provide a counterweight to official versions of a country’s human rights performance;
• to stimulate grassroots education and mobilization;
• to provide information for news broadcasts;
• to promote human rights via the internet; and
• to produce documentaries for broadcast on television worldwide, among others uses.

Founded in 1992, WITNESS has created partnerships with more than 150 groups in 50 countries on a variety of issues, ranging from the “social cleansing” of street children in Central America and sexual abuse of women/girls during Sierra Leone’s civil war to sweatshops in the United States and the plight of people displaced in Burma.

WITNESS chooses partners who seek to build a long-term capacity to use video effectively and also seeks specific campaign opportunities where video can tip the balance between success and failure. Once a partnership is established, WITNESS provides the group with video equipment and training, then follows up with workshops in camera techniques, intensive instruction in using video for human rights work, systemic evaluation of video footage, post-production assistance and constructive feedback to create powerful documentaries.

WITNESS and its partners then create video advocacy campaigns around these videos. These campaigns are built around strategies with many components, including broadcast and distribution platforms, collaboration with other organizations and networks, targeted screenings before key audiences and opportunities for individual viewers to take action. These campaigns may be as targeted as using video to influence a small group of key decision-makers or as broad as trying to mobilize youth around a particular issue. Footage is also kept in the WITNESS Archive, where it is available as a unique resource of human rights information to the global community.

WITNESS’s recognizes that depending on the local context, a human rights advocate may be protected or endangered by using a camera.. WITNESS uses the experience of its staff and partners to help others create policies that are safe and appropriate for their situations. They also stress the importance of the relationship of trust between the person filming and the person being filmed, including a clear explanation of the risks and benefits of speaking to a camera.

One example of a strategic and savvy use of video advocacy is WITNESS's work with Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) to document the deplorable conditions in a Paraguayan psychiatric hospital.

“Julio and Jorge were two adolescent boys being kept in the hospital along with 458 other people – naked, in bare cells without access to bathrooms. The cells reeked of urine and excrement and the walls were smeared with feces. The boys spent approximately four hours every other day in an outdoor pen, littered with garbage and broken glass.

In December 2003, MDRI filed an emergency petition before the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR) at the Organization of American States (OAS), asking the IACHR to intervene on behalf of the boys, as well as the others in the hospital.

Along with a legal brief, MDRI submitted a video that they had shot and edited with WITNESS. The video was structured according to the specific articles set forth in several international human rights instruments to which Paraguay is bound. Using images that clearly demonstrate how Paraguay had failed to fulfill its obligations, the video put a human face on the issue. The video was specifically presented within a human rights framework to argue that these patients are legally entitled to a minimum standard of living. This led the IACHR to establish jurisprudence on the rights of those in mental health facilities, a legal precedent that can now be used in other countries in the region.

In December 2003, for the first time, the IACHR approved urgent measures to protect the lives and physical integrity of those in psychiatric institutions. MDRI and WITNESS subsequently brought the issue to the general public by streaming the video over their web sites and by collaborating with CNN en Espanol on a follow-up story. The president of Paraguay and the minister of health personally visited the hospital, after which the hospital director was fired and a commission was formed to investigate the issue.

By reaching a broader group of people, MDRI and WITNESS garnered further support for change By exposing these conditions to a broader public, they called attention to the situation of mental health facilities in Paraguay, and the press played a pivotal role in the unfolding of events that brought about significant changes.

Although Julio and Jorge’s ward is still in the process of being renovated as this book goes to press, they have access to showers and clothes, as well as 24-hour nurses. The Paraguayan Health Ministry is working with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) to bring conditions up to the most basic standards of human rights.

The collaboration between WITNESS and MDRI has now produced system-changing results, but the challenge lies ahead, in ensuring that human rights advocates pick up the momentum created by the video and follow up on the case to ensure that conditions are improved for all psychiatric facilities in Paraguay. While this case has relied upon strong visual evidence of a violation, it is also important to note that WITNESS partners have successfully used video without relying upon filming such graphic images. For instance, many have created powerful videos by collecting testimonies and telling the stories of those most directly affected, which can have just as a powerful impact within a human rights campaign”