Global Witness: Allard Prize finalist

Global Witness has initiated trailblazing campaigns against natural resource-related conflict and corruption and associated environmental and human rights abuses.

On being nominated for the Allard Prize, Global Witness provided the following comment:

“At Global Witness we apply courage and a relentless approach in our efforts to tackle corruption and to promote transparency. Becoming a finalist for the Allard Prize will help endorse our standing amongst international policy makers, governments and academics, and in consequence help to ensure that our recommendations are listened to and bring about lasting change.”

Established in 1993 and headquartered in London and Washington, D.C., led by three inspirational founding directors – Patrick Alley, Charmian Gooch and Simon Taylor – the organization’s first campaign successfully stopped the trade in illegal timber which was funding the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, helping to bring about its eventual demise. Global Witness’ later work in Angola, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cote d’Ivoire brought the problem of blood diamonds to public attention and led to the creation of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme and a joint nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Global Witness

Global Witness

Global Witness has gone on to campaign internationally against natural resource-related corruption and conflict using a number of countries as case studies – including Burma, Indonesia, Liberia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Equatorial Guinea, Turkmenistan, and the Ukraine.

First-hand investigations of resource extraction and corruption attract certain risks. Global Witness’ staff members have worked in environments where armed conflicts pose serious risks to personal safety, have suffered physical intimidation in investigating Cambodia’s logging sector, and have even been imprisoned in Angola in the course of campaigning for increased transparency of oil revenues.

Global Witness has been pioneering in its campaigning on natural resource-related issues, which today occupy a prominent place on the international agenda. It has played an integral role in international campaigns to improve the transparency and accountability of natural resource extraction, including conceiving and co-launching the Publish What You Pay campaign, which is now a global movement consisting of more than 650 organisations.

Over the years the organization’s detailed investigative work and high-level advocacy have had significant impacts, such as the imposition of timber sanctions on Charles Taylor’s Liberia in 2003 resulting from its work with Liberian civil society in exposing this trade, and which was followed by the precedent-setting 2005 arrest of the arms trafficking timber baron Gus Kouwenhoven in the Netherlands. More recently, its work has been successful in shifting the international consensus on transparency in the extractives sector, securing ground-breaking revenue transparency legislation in the US and European Union which will help ensure that natural resource wealth is used to benefit citizens.

Learn more about the Allard Prize for International Integrity here.

Contact

Simmi Puri
Faculty of Law at Allard Hall
Phone: 604.822.4172
Email: puri@law.ubc.ca