Harnessing the Power of Video to Support Legal Campaigns

PROJECT OUTCOMES:

• CCR used the video as the centerpiece of its advocacy calling for the release of Fahd and the closure of Guantánamo, and have shown the video to several key government officials.

• The film provided a platform for Fahd to speak directly to viewers, writing personally to thank them for being, "willing to view me as a human being…a man who is loved and who loves."

• As a result of increased interest in Fahd due to the film, he made an accompanying personal appeal that was subsequently translated into four languages and shared worldwide.

• Scores of supporters attended CCR’s public screenings (including five screenings in New York and Washington D.C. and one in New Orleans), which led to increased public awareness and pressure to release Fahd.

• The film has been tweeted to more than one million people, including directly at U.S. Senators voting to ban prisoner releases from Guantánamo. News outlets, including Newsweek, The Huffington Post and others, picked up the video. People also supported the accompanying social media campaign and tweeted and shared pictures and messages with the hashtag #FreeFahd.

As a result of the broader campaign, Fahd was released in early 2016 after spending 14 years imprisoned.

The success of the project led to a new collaboration between NMAP and CCR to draw attention to the issue of solitary confinement. This focused on a case brought on behalf of prisoners who had spent a decade or longer in solitary confinement at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison. CCR was successful: the case settled, ending indeterminate solitary confinement in California and dramatically reducing the number of people in isolation. You can watch the video here.

PROJECT OUTCOMES:

• The process of producing the video engaged legal community leaders - judges, prosecutor and Bar leaders - in efforts to remove structural obstacles to justice for rape victims.

• The video features René Magloire, who is leading the reform of Haiti’s penal code. His appearance in the video helped build his own personal investment around the issue and also led to investment from his peers.

• The video serves as an effective training tool for BAI in their legal training program.

• The Haitian Bar Association incorporates the video in their training curriculum for apprentice lawyers, so that the next generation of lawyers will be aware of the need for expert witnesses.

• Each year, BAI lawyers screen the video at state medical school training sessions they lead, which helps to stimulate conversations between legal and medical professionals and students. This is a crucial first step in the paradigm shift necessary for the just treatment of rape victims.

• Other legal organizations have requested use of the video and expressed interest in using the film in trainings.

PROJECT OUTCOMES:

• NMAP provided Equal Education with a comprehensive social media kit including sample messaging, photos, short teaser clips and DVD covers to aid with the online launch of the video.

• The video was used by EE staff and local “Equalizers” (EE learner members) in school and community meetings throughout the Eastern Cape to inform parents, students, teachers and principals about the Norms and Standards law.

• The video was screened with Equal Education members in order to foster more momentum to push the government to implement basic Norms and Standards.

• This project has served as a successful capacity building exercise for EE as they learned about production planning and played an active role in the shoot in South Africa in March 2015. Local staff were interviewed for the piece, asked questions of interview subjects, helped identify places to shoot and engaged critically with the process of developing a piece of media for advocacy.

• NMAP also worked with Amazwi Wethu, EE’s film training program, to select and mentor a young filmmaker during their shoot in Eastern Cape in March 2015.

• In addition to the piece NMAP produced, video shot by NMAP is now being used by EE's Gauteng office, which is working with a local creative partner to produce a separate video that supports a province-wide sanitation campaign.

PROJECT OUTCOMES:

Trainings

• NMAP conducted a one-day multimedia training with frontline community leaders (“project facilitators”) from CAJAR’s advocacy training program. This program was established to enable CAJAR to teach community activists about legal advocacy techniques. NMAP worked with CAJAR to tailor the workshop to the needs and requests of Colombia’s community activists.

• NMAP led a half-day social media training for CAJAR’s lawyers and administrative staff. This training improved their ability to share their work and messaging more effectively on social platforms. This was crucial given the government-controlled traditional media environment in Colombia.

• NMAP solicited feedback from the participants of the trainings and all respondents found the topics covered in the workshops to be relevant and useful to their work, said they would strongly recommend the workshop to others, and said they were interested in pursuing more training on the topics covered.

Videos

• NMAP worked with CAJAR to produce a series of five videos entitled Words That Kill—an introduction followed by four case studies of defenders who have been stigmatized for their work. To support this work and to help build their capacity to effectively use social media, NMAP created a suite of social media materials including sample messaging, short teasers and promotional images. They created a boost post which included the introduction video and released it on Colombia’s National Day of Solidarity with Victims.  The post reached nearly 42,000 people and the video received nearly 13,000 views.
• CAJAR has successfully used the videos created in their legal advocacy work, both publicly and in one-on-one advocacy meetings:

- Reynaldo Villalba, one of CAJAR’s lawyers featured, shared the video at the at the 2017 Bertha Justice Convening as part of a discussion about the protection and security of human rights defenders. CAJAR will continue to screen the videos at conferences within Colombia and around the world to build international solidarity with other defenders.

- CAJAR’s communications team is currently in the process of ensuring that all of their lawyers have the videos on their phones so that they can share the videos with prosecutors, as well as with magistrates, via WhatsApp. Since WhatsApp is reasonably secure, free and works over a 3G signal, these videos can be shared with clients in more rural areas of Colombia.

• David Ravelo, the subject of one of the videos, was finally released from prison last month after serving seven years for a crime he didn't commit. CAJAR shared David’s #WordsThatKill campaign video again to help create support of Colombian human rights defenders at key moments throughout the year.

• CAJAR won a libel suit against a former politician who was forced to retract past statements where he had accused them of creating false witnesses. NMAP quickly edited the video focused on that case to include the politician’s retracted statements and news of the ruling. CAJAR then published and promoted the edited version across their social media platforms to inform people about the retraction and why it mattered.

• CAJAR collaborated with Tom Laffay, the videographer for the Words That Kill series, to produce photo essays of defenders conducting human rights work in rural areas of Colombia. This project, which premiered in Bogota on 12 September 2017, shows the work that these defenders are doing, while also creating visibility in order to deter threats of violence against them.

• The collaboration with NMAP has helped create a foundation for CAJAR and other human rights defenders in Colombia to band together around a common message and strategy. CAJAR can take the materials developed by NMAP and use them in policy meetings, at conferences, in the press and on social media so that they can move from a reactionary stance to a proactive one.