Posted on August 8, 2007

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WITNESS to Receive 2007 American Express Building Leadership Award

Independent Sector has announced that it will honor WITNESS, an international human rights organization, with the 2007 American Express Building Leadership Award.

Founded in 1992 by musician and activist Peter Gabriel, the Reebok Human Rights Foundation, and Human Rights First (formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights), WITNESS trains grassroots human rights organizations in the United States and around the world in the use of video and online technologies to increase awareness of human rights violations.

In California, for example, the state's senate majority leader introduced sweeping legislation to overhaul the state's juvenile prison system five days after the screening of System Failure, a film by Books Not Bars, a WITNESS partner, that revealed rampant abuses in the system. Similarly, in the Casamance region of Senegal, the minister of women's and family affairs pledged funding for female landmine victims following the release of a video made by the African Assembly for the Defense of Human Rights, a WITNESS partner. And from 2002 to 2006, WITNESS worked with Burma Issues to document the systematic repression of civilians by Burma's military government and to present that footage to activists and government officials worldwide.

"We applaud WITNESS for its commitment to building the capacity of locally based organizations that work to galvanize public support for human rights reforms in this country and abroad," said Diana Aviv, president and CEO of Independent Sector. "WITNESS embodies the ideals of this award by helping other organizations become leaders and by developing policies and practices that promote leadership within the organization."