Global Witness is a twenty-year-old NGO with offices in Washington, D.C. and London, England, whose objective is to combat the corruption, exploitation and violence that is manifest in the resource extraction industry worldwide.
The group carries out investigations to learn who are the corporations and individuals engaging in practices that in considers illegal, immoral and unsustainable. A decade ago, GW was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Once it compiles its evidence, Global Witness publishes its findings in reports, and ensures that they are distributed widely. This information figures into the group’s advocacy campaigns, in which they urge for changes in global policies that facilitate the continued illegal, immoral or unsustainable actions that they oppose.
The group monitors the diamond trade and was instrumental in the establishment of the Kimberley Process, but also covers other mining industries, such as forestry, cocoa, oil and gas. In December 2011, however, the group left the KP, saying that the scheme had major flaws and member state showed no interest in fixing them.
Some of the countries Global Witness has focused its efforts on include Angola, Burma, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Kazakhstan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Turkmenistan and Zimbabwe. The first of the group’s campaigns was aimed at the illegal timber trade between Cambodia and Thailand.
