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Peter Gabriel and other allies created WITNESS nearly 20 years ago – shortly after the Rodney King incident in Los Angeles. 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’. Yet now an increasing number of people worldwide have cameras. Participants, witnesses and perpetrators are all filming. 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. 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. Issues around consent, representation and re-victimization and retaliation have emerged even more clearly in an open and networked online environment. Video is being reworked, remixed and recirculated by many more people. New possibilities for action by a global citizenry have arisen, but these carry with them real dangers. The human rights and technology communities can help lead the way in confronting these challenges. 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 [...]

What kinds of politics are (re)produced when a transitional justice expert seeks out the victim, elects to rescue him from his marginality, categorizes him and represents him on the world stage? More specifically, given the fact that transitional justice experts legitimize their existence on the basis of speaking about and for victims, is it ever possible for the expert to exercise ‘responsibility’ to the victim’s story in ways that contribute to the genuine empowerment of the victim? The main aim of this contribution is to make some tentative remarks on how, and what kind of, victims are ‘produced’ by the transitional justice industry. In the first section I make some generalized observations regarding the political subjectivity of victims produced when transitional justice experts speak about and for victims. In the second section I then look at how Khulumani Support Group, a South African-based social movement of over 55,000 members, has negotiated the contradictions brought about by the transitional justice industry and its representations – in a sense of speaking both about and for victims. I conclude that since ‘the story’ is the main point of encounter between the authoritative expert and the marginalized victim, ‘responsibility to the story’ should mean more than being nice to victims or adhering to rigorous scientific and ethical standards; it should also, if not principally, be about redistribution of resources and power. In exercising responsibility to the story experts need to dismantle trusteeship and reproduction of colonial [...]

The article discusses the challenges and opportunities faced when integrating participatory methods into human rights-based research. It describes the development of a participatory action research approach designed to fulfil the aim of undertaking advocacy-focused research grounded in human rights and community participation. It reflects the principles of anti-oppressive social work and the ethics of undertaking research with vulnerable populations. In line with other contributions to this special issue, the article explores questions such as: ‘Where does knowledge about the story come from and how is it passed on?’; ‘What spurs ethical thinking at an individual and organizational level?’; and ‘How can ethical sensitivity and strategic effectiveness be [...]

This article argues that detached, impersonal and ‘objective’ social science research is inadequate to investigate complex social phenomena such as poverty and development. ‘Engaged’ research into the subjective realities of people’s experience leads to a more nuanced and complete understanding of not only those elements which can be objectively measured, such as income and consumption, but the full complexity of poverty. Listening to the stories and ‘words from the heart’ of people who, as partners in the research, reconstruct their own lived experiences, and their analysis, knowledge and aspirations, democratizes knowledge, and leads to a more complete and nuanced understanding of elements such as hunger, discrimination, social exclusion, stigma, and disempowerment. Such research, done with empathy and respect, ethical concern and personal accountability, and without compromising the search for the truth, is both legitimate and has academic and practical value. The knowledge and insights derived from it can be invaluable in efforts to secure the human rights of disadvantaged and oppressed people, and in the design and evaluation of public [...]

This review provides a contextual and critical account of World Refugee Day as it is staged by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Through a process of homogenizing and de-politicizing experiences, UNHCR’s World Refugee Day celebrations recast refugee agency as an extension of the organization’s humanitarian efforts. At the same time, these celebrations reflect UNHCR’s struggle to navigate the tension between the ideal of global community and its own role in governing the increasingly strict spatial divisions between regions, nations and [...]

Increasingly, the categories of professionalism are being employed to describe human rights work. Within the broader category of ‘human rights professionals’, a significant sub-group, that of field-based human rights staff of intergovernmental organizations, has been subject to particular scrutiny. This article explores issues of the professionalization of this group, while drawing implications for all human rights field workers. Following a brief overview of the history of human rights field operations, the question is raised: what is at stake in a process of professionalization? Next, it is asked whether those components identified as central to the development of a profession – shared values, a body of scientific knowledge, and procedures and systems to apply that knowledge – exist in a reasonably well-defined form with reference to human rights work. We then take stock of the extent to which these components have come together in generating an actual sense of professional identity and a culture of professionalism. In conclusion, some remaining challenges are identified and suggestions are made for measures that may contribute to reinforcing the existing momentum and further consolidating the [...]

The increasing presence of UN human rights staff across the globe, the detailed information that they collect, and the expanding number of human rights venues that their information is being fed into is rapidly changing the profession and perceptions of UN Human Rights Officers. One outcome of these changes is that Human Rights Officers, who report to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, are gaining greater potential for influencing how governments and non-governmental organizations respond to human rights abuses. Yet, at the same time, Human Rights Officers are not provided with a pre-deployment training program that prepares them for what they are about to experience when they start working in some of the most dangerous areas of the world. This article explains not only why pre-deployment monitoring training should be put in place as soon as possible, but it sketches out a training program that corresponds to the changing roles, responsibilities, and influence of Human Rights Officers and the implications that these changes have on their work. More specifically, this article proposes that training should focus on providing simulated real-life scenarios that aim to professionalize and, in some instances, standardize monitoring and advocacy methodologies and [...]