Moving Images: WITNESS and Human Rights Advocacy (Innovations Case Narrative: WITNESS)

Abstract

Back in 1988 I was part of Amnesty International’s “Human Rights Now!” Tour, which was to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We managed to persuade Bruce Springsteen, Tracy Chapman, Youssou N’Dour, and Sting to join us, and we toured over nineteen countries. During that time I met hundreds of survivors of human rights abuses and listened to their stories of suffering and frustration. These were people who had been brutally tortured, forced to flee their homes and countries, who watched their loved ones murdered, and suffered overwhelming forces of oppression. What all of these personal accounts had in common was that the perpetrators went unpunished for their crimes. These human rights abuses were being successfully denied, ignored, and forgotten, despite many written reports. But, it was clear that in those cases where photographic film or video evidence existed, it was almost impossible for the oppressors to get away with it. The Reebok Human Rights Foundation was set up after the Human Rights Now! Tour to give awards to extraordinary young people for courage, commitment, and compassion in human rights works. At our Reebok Human Rights Foundation annual meeting, I proposed that we begin an initiative to supply human rights activists with video cameras. It was in 1992, after the videotaping of the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles, that the Foundation realized the poten-