If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways: Get help with access Institutional accessĪccess to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. The article concludes with suggestions for approaches based on norms, technology solutions, and other ideas that could be deployed to begin to address these emerging issues. The human rights and technology communities can help lead the way in confronting these challenges. New possibilities for action by a global citizenry have arisen, but these carry with them real dangers. Video is being reworked, remixed and recirculated by many more people. Issues around consent, representation and re-victimization and retaliation have emerged even more clearly in an open and networked online environment.

However, despite the growing online circulation of images of human rights violations, of victims and survivors, there is limited discussion of crucial safety, consent and ethical concerns – particularly for people who are filmed. Videos (particularly mobile video) make it possible to document and publicize human rights struggles – from monks marching for freedom in Rangoon and the election protestors in Tehran, to individual voices speaking out against injustice on YouTube. Participants, witnesses and perpetrators are all filming. Yet now an increasing number of people worldwide have cameras. At the time, our founders asked: ‘What if every human rights worker had a camera in their hands? What would they be able to document? What would they be able to change?’ Since 1992 WITNESS has engaged with the risks, opportunities and possibilities for action that emerge from the power of moving images – training and supporting human rights activists worldwide to create real change through our methodology of ‘video advocacy’. Peter Gabriel and other allies created WITNESS nearly 20 years ago – shortly after the Rodney King incident in Los Angeles.

The sufferer and the witness wallpaper