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"WITNESSing Human Rights"

An Interview with Gillian Caldwell,
Executive Director of WITNESS

(First appeared in The Stanford Daily, 5/17/2005)

“See it. Film it. Change it.” This is the catchphrase of WITNESS, a human rights organization founded in 1992 by the musician Peter Gabriel. WITNESS helps front-line human rights organizations use video and other media in their advocacy work. Our social innovator this week is the Executive Director of WITNESS, Gillian Caldwell, a lawyer and film maker.

The Daily: What’s the “big idea” behind WITNESS?

Gillian Caldwell: WITNESS is the first and only organization at a global level to provide video cameras to human rights organizations. We also give them technical and tactical guidance to use video to create change.

The Daily: Why do human rights organizations need cameras? What need does WITNESS help fill?

Gillian Caldwell: I think the biggest problem in human rights advocacy is that small, under-resourced human rights organizations are having difficulty getting traction around the problems they face. WITNESS helps them make effective use of media in their advocacy work.

Bigger human rights organizations based in the West are getting more and more savvy in terms of integrating media into their campaign, and they should.

What worries me is what happens to the smaller, less well-funded organizations operating under repressive circumstances a long way from here. Those organizations are really the front-lines against the kind of oppression and abuse that we see happening around the world.

The Daily: Once an organizations collects footage of human rights abuses, how is it used to create change?

Gillian Caldwell: Sometimes it’s used for grass-roots education and mobilization. Sometimes it’s used for evidentiary submission for a court or tribunal. Sometimes it’s to work with the media. And sometimes it’s for a screening before a key decision-maker with the power to make a difference.

What is consistent in every campaign is that we have online calls to action each month, with new video broadcasts at our website (www.witness.org). One of the way that students and others can get involved in our work is to go online and sign up for a free membership. It’s a very simple way to get alerted and to commit to taking action on a variety of issues around the world.

The Daily: WITNESS is involved in a number of different human rights campaigns. What campaign are you most proud of?

Gillian Caldwell: Our project on the California Youth Authority is one we have high hopes for, and that is very pertinent to California.

We are working with the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights on a project called “Books Not Bars.” It is an effort to push for a complete overhaul the California Youth Authority. We’re trying to close the biggest penal juvenile facilities in the state, and to replace them with the community-based model along the lines of Missouri’s model.

The Daily: You created a film called “System Failure” for the California Youth Authority campaign. What kind of video footage did you collect?

Gillian Caldwell: The footage came from interviews with former wards and their parents. We also collected film from the California Youth Authority itself. It included surveillance footage of CYA prison guards beating an unarmed ward with twenty eight separate punches.

An eight minute version of the “System Failure” film is online at our homepage.

The Daily: Before joining WITNESS, you spent to two years with the Global Survival Network. What draws you to work on the issue of human rights?

Gillian Caldwell: I’ve been doing social justice as long as I can remember. I began actively when I was twelve, when I was coordinating my high school Amnesty chapter.

It never occurred to me to work in a private law firm. When I went to law school, my intention was to get the credibility and the degree I would need to be able to do systems-changing work at a policy level.

The Daily: What advice do you have for students interested in getting involved?

Gillian Caldwell: I think the best advice may unfortunately be too late for anybody enrolled at Stanford. One of the things that you need to pay the most attention to is what kind of debt you are accumulating.

If you don’t face the financial pressures of a student loan, my real plea to students is to get creative and get energetic. There are so many organizations that are fascinating places to work and to develop a skill set, but may just take a little bit more energy to identify.

The bottom line is that every individual has the capacity to make a difference. That is the belief WITNESS is built on and is organized around. We make it possible for people who care to make a difference.

Wow, great interview. How can I read them all?

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