By Shane Thacker

New York

For some in this holiday season, there isn't much to celebrate. Victims of human rights abuses and appalling conditions, their lives may not seem worth much to a global community that ignores them. The only chance they, and others like them, may have is for someone to tell their story in a way that will not be ignored.

For those victims, the thing to celebrate is a person with a video camera on the corner, recording their pain for the world to see.

In an effort to increase the possibility these messages of suffering will reach those who can help, the human rights group WITNESS has been supplying video equipment and training for its partners -- human rights activists around the world -- since its inception in 1992.

"There has been very little commitment to international human rights concerns on the part of major media outlets, unless there is some sort of U.S. angle to the story," says Gillian Caldwell, director of WITNESS. "We can't rely on mainstream media to cover these issues."

The organization, started by singer Peter Gabriel, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights and the Reebok Foundation, takes the videos made by its partners and makes them available to media outlets as news and human rights tribunals as evidence of atrocities.

"WITNESS works," says Gabriel, in a statement on the organization's Web site. "A camera in the right hands at the right time at the right place can be more powerful than tanks and guns. Let truth do the fighting."

WITNESS also makes videos available online, for the wired world to see. Using online audio and video, the organization has been putting up what its partners send it, without the filter of conventional media outlets, since 1998. By going to the WITNESS site, one can see videos showing testimony and evidence of human rights abuses from government-led massacres to economic exploitation, ready for viewing through freely available software.

The organization is using the power of the Internet to compile its case for human rights. By building an archive of videos documenting atrocities around the world, always available online, organizers hope to create an awareness of the scope of the problem, as well as save evidence for the day when the perpetrators might be held accountable.

WITNESS isn't just using its partners as reporters for this growing library, Caldwell says. Part of the organization's mission is to work with the groups that send in material to find ways that the videos can help their cause more directly.

The organization's staff also works hard to make sure they are presenting the truth to the world. While faking reality is done in movie studios every day, WITNESS does the footwork to make sure they are getting substantiated material, Caldwell says, building up networks of background and fact checks to strengthen the impact of its partner's videos.

A recent overhaul of the WITNESS Web site added the online archive, as well as other features designed to make it easier for those concerned with human rights to participate in the fight.

Currently, on the site, one can access online educational materials about human rights, send e-mail messages and faxes to members of the U.S. Congress and other government officials about human rights issues and participate in an emergency action network.

While an accomplished Web site with gripping content might make online video advocacy look easy, the people behind WITNESS know that any nonprofit considering using this strategy had better think about it seriously first.

"You've got to think about how you are going to maintain the site and the content," Caldwell says, pointing out that WITNESS' site is maintained on a volunteer basis.

Nonprofits have to decide how they are going to market the site and drive traffic to it, Caldwell says. They also need to examine their target audience. Do they have the capability of accessing the site and its content?

The future is now for WITNESS. The organization is supplying digital video cameras to its partners now and is in discussions with a large manufacturer of the equipment on new technology to allow the videos to be authenticated.

The organization also is partnering with Oddcast.com for its own Quicktime channel with weekly features to be broadcast online. Using streaming media, the organization is planning to transform the Web site into what Caldwell calls a "televisual experience," allowing viewers to take a narrated tour of the planet at the beginning of the new millennium.

Shane Thacker can be reached at
shanethack@mindspring.com