The Role of Information and Communications Technologies in Human Rights Monitoring and Advocacy - Information Communication Technologies for Human Services Education and Delivery - page 189

As in the case of Groundviews in Sri Lanka,
Shooting Back has empowered Palestinians
through citizen journalism and the use of ICTs.
The project demonstrates how the video camera
is not only a useful tool for documentation and
advocacy; it has also become a source of protection
for Palestinians (Goodman & Yakobovich, 2007),
as settlers often run away when one is produced.
Furthermore B'Tselem uses the video evidence
to support complaints filed with the army and the
police. Palestinian victims of abuse perpetrated
by settlers or soldiers are often discouraged from
lodging complaints by bureaucratic obstacles but
these videos help to promote accountability and to
seek legal redress for Palestinian complainants.
Video footage of human rights violations is
regularly used in courts, tribunals, legislative
bodies and human rights commissions, as well
as by the media, transnational organizations and
solidarity networks. It is a great way to create
public awareness about human rights violations,
while also empowering oppressed communities.
The Witness archive (http://www.witness.org) is a
good example of this in action. It consists of more
than 1000 hours of raw footage documenting a
vast range of human rights abuses, and features
first-hand testimonies, interviews and imagery
about rights violations and conflict sites around
the world. Witness donates video cameras to hu-
man rights organizations and trains and supports
their workers to integrate video into human rights
campaigns. They also have an online video com-
munity for human rights called The Hub (http://
hub.witness.org) where anyone can upload, watch
and share videos about human rights, as well as
take action to help end human rights abuses. Ac-
cording to Gillian Caldwell, executive director
of Witness, quoted in Weaver (2005), these tools
bestow the power to document events on the lo-
cal people who experience them - as opposed to
journalists visiting from other regions or countries.
This goes a long way towards opening the eyes
of the world to human rights violations and to
promoting public engagement and policy change.

It also serves as a launch pad for campaigns that
people around the world can get involved with,
and actions they can take to promote and protect
human rights.
ICTs also enhance the ability of NGOs to
draw other people into the organising efforts of a
group or movement and to create new connections
through which to collaborate (Weyker, 2002). The
Internet in particular has transformed the capacity
of social movements - including human rights
movements - to build coalitions and networks and
to advocate for causes, principles, and other people
(Hick & McNutt, 2002). It opens up opportunities
for local organizations by giving them national,
regional and even global reach, and it facilitates
the convergence of organizations with different
goals and strategies (Cammaerts & Van Auden-
hove, 2003). Transnational human rights networks
can influence state practice through information
exchanges, provided domestic human rights ac-
tivists can keep their cause on the international
agenda and supply good quality information to
their international allies (Burgerman, 1998).
There are pitfalls, however, in the use of ICTs
in human rights work. Firstly the proliferation
of voices demanding attention for their human
rights concerns can lead to a problem of too much
noise interfering with effective action (Weyker,
2002). ICTs enable more groups and individuals
in countries where human rights violations are
occurring to communicate with the outside world,
and since these do not always work through a
movement or organizational hierarchy there is a
risk that mixed messages may be presented. Even
worse is the possibility that false statements are
unknowingly or unwisely made, thereby calling
into question the credibility of reports from the
country in question.
Another pitfall identified by Weyker (2002)
is that some places are socially, economically or
legally unfavourable for the application of these
technologies to human rights work. In some cases
the communications infrastructure is inadequate;
in others the social organization and capacity to