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	Citizen Video for Journalists…and Everyone Else by Madeleine Bair Human Rights Channel for WITNESS   May 2013   90 countries. 1,892 videos. 137 in-depth human rights playlists. 1 year of the Human Rights Channel on YouTube.   This marks the culmination of the Citizen Video for Journalists blog series, as well as the one-year anniversary of the Human Rights Channel. 12 months ago, WITNESS and our partners at Storyful launched the first dedicated space on YouTube for verified citizen video on human rights issues. 1,892 videos later—after 365 days of footage from Syrians living in wartime, 12 Gangnam style protests, one Webby nomination, and one memorable sunset—we’re pausing to share what we’ve learned.   No one knew precisely where the Channel would be on its first birthday. But discovery is part of the mission: discovery of human rights footage that could be lost in an ever-rising sea of content; discovery of human rights stories that have been hidden in the shadows; and amplification of these videos and their stories, so that news media, investigators, advocates, and other citizens can act on what they see.   The Human Rights Channel curates human rights video on under-covered human rights stories, as seen by citizen witnesses.   Today, ordinary citizens in nearly every corner of the world have the ability to film, upload, and share video from their communities. Through the Channel, we’ve discovered and shared their incredible stories, which range from northern Mali to southern California, from central Iran to rural Myanmar.   We’ve learned other things, too. Filming is only the first step. Exposing abuse is the first step to action, but it is not always enough. Sadly, the war in Syria offers an example. Brave citizens risk their lives every day to document the war, but the deluge of footage has not moved the wheels of diplomacy. In fact, one must wonder if it causes foreign eyes to glaze over, uncomfortable with horrific scenes that offer no easy solution.   By contextualizing videos in a way foreigners, human rights investigators, and diplomats alike can understand, the Human Rights Channel strives to create useful meaning out of the Syria videos, with playlists examining purported use of chemical weapons, or videos that document apparent war crimes.   Video evidence makes a difference. On the other hand, video can spark action where knowledge alone cannot. Even if a rights violation is known to occur, catching it on camera can be the spark needed for social change. When the police in South Africa fatally abused a man, the citizen video of the incident shocked the country and the world, even though police abuse has been well known and documented in the country. The officers involved in his death have been arrested and are awaiting trial.   Cameras may be everywhere, but so is repression.   Whether in the United States or in Sudan, professional and citizen journalists, as well as the people in their videos, face the risk of repression by the state or others. That’s why the Human Rights Channel is reaching out to the people behind the camera, sharing tips on how to assess their risk, how to blur the faces of the people in their videos, and, if they witness human rights violations, how to film video that can be utilized by news outlets and investigators.   Curation is only one element of the truly collaborative process of citizen journalism. Tweeters, reporters, verifiers, translators, and advocates are a critical part of this enterprise.   We encourage you to look back on the last year in human rights, through the Channel’s playlists. We also encourage you to revisit the blogs in this Citizen Video for Journalists series: Della Kilroy of Storyful offered tips on how to discern the authenticity of a video. NPR’s Andy Carvin explained how to engage the citizen reporter in the entire reporting process—to help contextualize videos, verify their authenticity, translate language, and analyze their meaning.   Liam Stack of the New York Times discussed what it is that citizen videos say, even when they leave us with more questions than answers. Syria Deeply’s founder Lara Setrakian shared ways news outlets can offer context and analysis to citizen media.   Finally, Yoav Gross from B’Tselem described how the organization’s community video project became a trusted source for Israeli reporters.   If there is one common denominator to all of their insight, it is their belief that citizen video is important, and that we can all play a role in ensuring that when a witness documents human rights abuse, the entire world takes notice.   * Madeleine Bair curates the Human Rights Channel for WITNESS, a collaboration with Storyful, hosted on YouTube. Visit the related web page
	Global Goods, Local Costs by Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting USA   The Pulitzer Center seeks to promote in-depth engagement with global affairs through sponsorship of quality international journalism across media platforms.   May 14, 2013   Reporting from East Congo: Consequences of a Conflict with No End, by Fiona Lloyd-Davies.   February in Eastern Congo—the rainy season. Heat, humidity and mud. The makeshift roads had a bone-shaking familiarity to them. It had been a year since I was last in Eastern Congo.   I’ve been working here for over 10 years now. Congo has a magnetic pull. The spectacular natural beauty coupled with the intense brutality keeps one in a perpetual state of anxiety and awe – how can one be in heaven and hell all at the same time? The people relate terrifying stories of violence and brutality but their resilience and, often, good humor makes them unforgettable. They compel you to tell their story and to return to keep telling their story.   In February 2013, people were still nervous after the rebellion led by the M23 movement a few months before. Although the rebels had officially withdrawn from Goma, the regional capital of North Kivu, they were only a few kilometers out of town. Rumors persisted that many were still in Goma but wearing civilian clothes, ready at any moment to don their uniforms and take up arms again. Lake Kivu was calm, the quiet before the storm.   Away from Goma, on the road heading west hugging the lake, Congolese soldiers were everywhere. They’d been forced to withdraw during the November fighting and had never returned to Goma. They were patrolling the makeshift roads and camped in villages. They were well-armed and seemed relaxed and unhurried.   Working—especially filming—in Eastern Congo is always challenging. The intensely beautiful landscape, verdant and lush, thrives off the intense heat and regular rainstorms. The lack of roads means perpetual dust or mud or both and the journeys are bone shaking. All enemies of the high-tech video cameras and computers we use today in the world of filmmaking. The locations are often inhospitable and the security situation is unpredictable and frequently dangerous.   I first came here in October 2001. As the world’s media rushed to the Pakistan/Afghan border in the hunt for Bin Laden I found myself blocked. I"d made a film about honor killing in Pakistan the previous year, and I was refused a visa. So I looked to other places. The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières told me, "You have to go to Eastern Congo—there"s terrible violence against women. Widespread rape, it’s like a virus and no one is reporting it."   I went to a town called Shabunda. It’s just over an hour’s flight from the regional capital of Goma. Only a small twin-engine plane can cope with the improvised runways in the villages and towns, so you fly low.   Climbing just high enough to pass over the smoldering Nyirangongo volcano, over the mountains and then seemingly, endless forest. Suddenly, a small fissure opens up in the jungle, a grass airstrip. I spent five days talking to women of all ages, young girls, young women, middle aged and even elderly women. They described what had happened openly because so many women were being raped.   Médecins Sans Frontières estimated that 70 percent of the women in Shabunda had been violated at that time. They were forced to make a terrible choice—stay at home and starve, or go to the fields for food and be raped. What I heard over those five days made a profound impression on me. It has brought me back to Eastern Congo ever since.   I was back once more to make several films – one looking at a new ‘conflict free’ pilot project in a tin mine, and another about rape. Both films reflect the current situation in eastern Congo so well. It’s long been identified that control of the vast mineral wealth of the region is a key driver of this conflict; and wherever there are soldiers and armed militias there is rape. This time the rape tragedy led directly to the Congolese army. They’d gone on the rampage and raped over 79 women and girls over a few nights in November last year, 2012 in a market town called Minova. From previous visits I knew where to find the survivors, who bravely retell their ordeal so we can ensure their voices are heard. But this time I wanted to find the men, perpetrators of rape.   It proved to be a convoluted journey—the prison governors who used to grant access to the prison were now with the rebels; the officials didn’t seem to know what was going on. Those they said were imprisoned, arrested on suspicion for raping in Minova, hadn’t even been there. Finally we established that no one had been arrested. We were going to have to find serving soldiers and get them to explain why they raped. When we did hear their stories it was to prove chilling.   http://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/africa-east-congo-minova-rape-war-violence-army-DRC   http://pulitzercenter.org/women-children-crisis http://pulitzercenter.org/untold-stories   Food Insecurity   The United Nations defines food security as "all people at all times having both physical and economic access to the basic food they need." For approximately 2 billion people throughout the world, this security is anything but guaranteed. Food security is a complicated issue that is susceptible to many forces.   Insecurity results from climate change, urban development, population growth and oil price shifts that are interconnected and rarely confined by borders. It"s an issue of global importance, and explored in-depth in the articles, videos and comments you"ll find on this site.   In Nigeria, Africa"s most populous country, a legacy of corrupted governance and an economy based primarily on oil exports has left the agriculture sector significantly weakened and millions of Nigerians hungry. And as poorer neighboring countries export more food to Nigeria in exchange for petrodollars, people there also go hungry. In 2005 thousands of children in neighboring Niger died of malnutrition not because the country had had a particularly bad harvest but because there was a food shortage in Nigeria and people in Niger could not afford the ensuing higher prices.   A different threat is set to face the continent"s second biggest crop: wheat. In 1999, 50 years since the last outbreak, a new and virulent strain of stem rust attacked Ugandan crops. Its spores then traveled to Ethiopia and Kenya before appearing in Iran last year. The FAO has since warned six other countries in Central and South Asia to watch for signs of the new strain while scientists in the U.S. are urgently working to find a resistant wheat variety. In India alone, more than 50 million small-scale farmers are at risk because they rely on wheat for their food and income.   In Tajikistan, the global financial crisis is forcing thousands of newly unemployed Tajiks to return from Russia. In a country already straining to accommodate Tajik refugees from Afghanistan, the government"s chronic mismanagement has amplified the power and food shortages that permeate the countryside.   In Guatemala, income inequality is amongst the worst in the world, with indigenous communities at a particular disadvantage. In some regions, an estimated 75 percent of the children from infants to the ages of 6 and 7 are chronically malnourished. It is a startling example of food scarcity in a country a mere four-hour flight away from the U.S.   Asia faced its own food crisis as the price of rice doubled last summer. Some agricultural economists are seeking out large-scale responses, including stepping up commercial agricultural techniques by introducing controversially genetically modified rice and related products into the region. Other more localized efforts by universities and organizations are providing training in sustainable techniques for traditional farming families and minority ethnic groups.   This Gateway seeks to explore the connected causes and effects of Food Insecurity including the efforts being made to secure the physical and economic access to food for countries needing it the most. The Gateway includes reporting from Nigeria, Kenya, Tajikistan, Gautemala, India and Vietnam.   http://pulitzercenter.org/food-insecurity   Lesson from a Famine: Markets Matter, by Roger Thurow.   Ten years after the Ethiopian famine of 2003, when international food aid rushed in to feed 14 million people, another World Food Program (WFP) tent has been erected on an open field. But this isn’t a scene of food distribution. It is a scene of food purchase.   The action happens on the grounds of the Sidama Elto Farmers’ Cooperative Union in Awassa, Ethiopia. Sidama Elto is one of 16 cooperative unions in Ethiopia that have signed forward contracts with the WFP for the purchase of more than 28,000 metric tons of maize grown by their smallholder farmer members. The maize, which is part of 112,000 tons of food the WFP purchased in Ethiopia last year, will be used for WFP relief distributions in the country. Ten years ago, many of those farmers and their families were receiving food aid from the WFP.   One of the lessons in agricultural development over the past decade is this: Markets Matter. The 2003 famine tragically, and incomprehensibly, followed two years of bumper harvests in Ethiopia. The surplus production overwhelmed the country’s weak and inefficient markets. There were no export channels; the domestic market’s ability to absorb the harvests was crippled by woeful infrastructure. The food piled up on farms and prices collapsed, upwards of 80 percent in some areas. Farmers lost incentive to plant the next year. Then the drought hit, and feast turned to famine. The markets had failed before the weather did.   That turnaround triggered a reversal of the neglect of agricultural development that had set in since the 1980s. In the past decade, science and research geared toward improving the work of smallholder farmers (who produce the majority of the food grown in the developing world) have been reinvigorated; so too have trade and business efforts accelerated to provide greater market incentives and opportunities for the farmers. Prior to 2003, boosting agricultural production – growing more food — was the primary focus and developing markets was considered to be a “second-generation problem.” Now, markets share top billing with production, as it should; markets provide incentive to produce more.   In Ethiopia, it started with the creation of the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange in the wake of the famine. Now, the mantra spreads, in radio dramas, government pronouncements, business negotiations: If you grow it, someone will buy it.   The WFP’s partnership with Sidama Elto is part of its Purchase for Progress (P4P) program, which uses the WFP’s purchasing power to create markets for smallholder farmers. Supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and implemented in collaboration with the government of Ethiopia through the Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA), P4P works with the farmers to improve the quality of their crops and the post-harvest handling.   Simiret Simeno, deputy manager of Sidama Elto, says that for the first time its 13,000 farmer members see that better quality can bring better prices. And they can also see their contribution to healthier communities, as one of the markets is an expanding network of school feeding programs supplied by locally grown crops rather than food being shipped in from abroad.   The ultimate goal of the WFP purchases is to demonstrate to commercial buyers that smallholder farmers can reliably produce high-quality food worthy of their business.   Sustainable success here could also bear witness to the potential impact of President Obama’s proposed food aid reform, which would allow for nearly half of the U.S. food aid budget to be used to buy food nearer to the hunger crises – providing markets for smallholder farmers — rather than shipping it all the way from American farms (as has been the U.S. policy for decades).   Working with local banks and donor governments, P4P has introduced forward contracts to participating cooperatives and smallholder farmers. The ATA has also been crafting links between farmers and commercial buyers of several crops, like teff, barley, sesame and chickpeas.   Above all, says Khalid Bomba, the chief executive officer of ATA, “Smallholder farmers need confidence that there will be buyers for what they grow.”   And confidence that the misery of 2003 – the misery of failed markets — won’t happen again.   http://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/africa-ethiopia-smallholding-farm-food-aid-famine-agribusiness-commodity-market-ATA-P4P-WFP   * The Food Insecurity Gateway is produced by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting in partnership with the Project for Under-Told Stories and Saint Mary"s University.   Waiting for Water   West Africa has some of the lowest rates of access to safe drinking water in the world. Governments, private contractors, UN agencies and international non-government organizations (NGOs) have spent billions of dollars to address the problem. But success is elusive, and the challenge is only becoming more severe. Populations are growing, people are moving from farms to cities, and city planning is chaotic.   The reasons cited for failure are varied and numerous, from inadequate funds and mismanagement to corruption, lack of spare parts, no local buy-in, and weak institutions. At same time, everyone claims to have the latest and most promising solution to the challenge.   Missing from the flood tide of PR and spin are local, objective voices with international reach that can distinguish high-level rhetoric from baseless posturing and good intentions from good results.   The Pulitzer Center is partnering with journalists from four countries in West Africa: Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Liberia. American journalists, Stephen Sapienza and Peter Sawyer, traveled to the region to report alongside them.   http://pulitzercenter.org/waiting-for-water   Global Goods, Local Costs   Behind almost every product we buy and the GDP numbers we worry over, there is a story whose trail crosses the globe. Every physical product starts as raw material somewhere, from the gold in our jewelry to the shrimp at our favorite restaurant and the minerals within our mobile phones and laptops.   The rapid industrialization of countries like India, China and Brazil and a voracious consumer culture in Europe, the United States and Japan mean ever greater demand for these raw materials--and ever greater pressures on the individuals, communities and environments that bear the cost of providing them.   These local costs too often remain hidden. They are obscured by companies and governments that put a premium on production and exports. They are little understood by consumers, whose concept of "price" and "value" doesn"t include damage done to people and places far away.   The Global Goods, Local Costs Gateway is an effort to make those connections plain, to show the true costs of producing the commodities that have become essential to our lifestyles but that mostly we take for granted. These reports touch on goods and challenges across the globe that share a common theme: the implications of a vision of endless prosperity set against the reality of a finite planet.   http://pulitzercenter.org/global-goods-local-costs   http://pulitzercenter.org/published-and-broadcast Visit the related web page
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