Our history

For over 30 years, we have pioneered an approach that merges bold investigations with determined campaigning to secure better protections for people and our planet.

We’ve gone undercover to unmask the violence and secretive deals that underpin the “blood diamond” industry. Our data-driven analysis has tracked the flow of commodities across the globe. And we’ve sought out powerful testimonies that tell the story of environmental harm and repression first-hand.

As the climate emergency has accelerated over the decades, our work has gained new focus. Our sights are now set on the overlap between today’s greatest existential threat, the climate crisis, and people – exposing those whose own interests are helping to prolong the climate emergency, and the communities who keep standing up to them, no matter the cost.

Global Witness’s beginnings and the Khmer Rouge

Global Witness was the brainchild of founders Charmian Gooch, Patrick Alley and Simon Taylor, three investigators who together resolved to address the neglected relationship between environmental and human rights abuses.

Disrupting that link between violent conflict, finance and nature depletion would be a crucial piece of the puzzle to preserve our environment and the people who depend on it – though it would require great resourcefulness and grit in those early years. The three salvaged a discarded computer and shook buckets outside London King’s Cross to finance their first investigation.

That initial venture took them to Cambodia, where a government-imposed ban on timber exports had been so enfeebled by delays and loopholes that the Khmer Rouge movement was able to keep trading wood for financial gain.

Borrowing a cover story from a James Bond film (and fitting themselves out with hidden cameras), our founders posed as timber buyers to gather evidence of corrupt Cambodian and Thai officials who were helping the Khmer Rouge to flout the embargo. This kept Cambodian hardwood flowing into Thailand while sending millions of dollars back to the Khmer Rouge’s coffers every month.

That first Global Witness report and the advocacy it inspired led to a definitive closure of the border, depriving the Khmer Rouge of $10-20 million a month (and helping to initiate its demise).

Blood diamonds

In 1998, we alerted the world to how conflict diamonds (also called “blood diamonds”) were helping to fund devastating a war in Angola.

That Angola’s UNITA rebels were using diamond profits to finance their role in the civil war, which by the mid-1990s had killed hundreds of thousands, was a well-established fact.

But how those blood diamonds were managing to leave the country and emerge on the legitimate market, in spite of UN sanctions, remained a mystery.

In search of answers, we travelled to the region, where we uncovered a global diamond industry operating “like a family business”, cloaked in opaque business practices and obscured trade routes.

Our findings led to the creation of the Kimberley Process, a scheme that was meant to prohibit diamonds mined in uncertified countries from being traded – and so prevent diamond profits from financing conflict and human rights abuses.

We were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for our work on conflict diamonds in 2003. Our investigation also became the premise for the Oscar Award-nominated 2006 film, Blood Diamond, which we advised on.

But after nine years of operation – and following major failings to close loopholes and address blatant rule breaches in the Côte d’Ivoire, Zimbabwe and Venezuela – we withdrew from the Kimberley Process, branding it a “failure”.

Violence against land and environmental defenders

Since 2012, we have tracked the killings, abductions and arrests of land and environmental defenders around the world.

Over 2,000 have been killed for defending the environment – or simply the land their homes are built on – from exploitation since we started documenting the violence that terrorises defenders globally.

The first murder that prompted this vital work was that of our friend and colleague Chut Wutty. In April 2012, a military police officer shot Wutty dead while he was showing journalists an illegal logging operation in southern Cambodia.

Wutty was one of Cambodia’s most vocal environmental activists, who had previously worked with Global Witness to expose the violence and corruption that underpinned the country’s logging industry.

Like many defenders, Wutty received multiple death threats for his activism. An investigation into his murder was dropped within a few days, with no convictions.

The peril that defenders face daily cannot be overstated. In the years since Wutty’s death, the global picture has evolved to include new threats, like forced disappearances, abductions by the military, and a global wave of criminalisation as lawmakers move to tighten laws and crack down on protest.

Corruption

We continued to shed light on the overlap between natural resource exploitation and corruption, using our investigative rigour to expose the businesses, governments and individuals getting rich at the expense of people and planet.

In 2002, we conceived the Publish What You Pay (PWYP) scheme, which we co-launched with George Soros, Transparency International and other leading NGOs.

PWYP became the world’s first international anti-corruption mechanism in the extractives sector, with the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) documenting $2.4 trillion of oil, gas and mining revenues entering the public domain since its inception.

Our work to tackle corporate corruption was recognised in 2014, when our founder Charmian was awarded the TED Prize for her public call to end the use of anonymous companies (and so prevent businesses, corrupt politicians and criminals from acting against the public interest in secrecy).

We also received the Skoll Award for our founders’ work as social entrepreneurs “driving transparency to lift the ‘resource curse’ of conflict and human rights abuses.”

People not polluters

With nearly three decades of campaigning for a fair and just planet under our belt, we reframed our focus in 2020 to address humanity’s greatest challenge: the climate crisis.

We have shared the stories of Indigenous Peoples and defenders, whose livelihoods have been irreparably shaken by agribusiness, mining and extreme weather events aggravated by fossil fuel emissions.

We’re campaigning for those same Indigenous and defender voices to be granted a seat at the table in key decision-making spaces (both on a national and international level), where their expertise can help to shape meaningful and equitable climate action.

As part of the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition, we are using pioneering data-driven techniques to count the fossil fuel lobbyists flooding COP every year.

We’re tracing how money continues to flow into destructive industries, be it Western banks’ investments that fund deforestation or convoluted shipping routes that keep Russian oil profits in play despite UN sanctions.

We’re lending our voice to calls for a just energy transition, lobbying hard to secure strong protections for the environment and communities that are impacted by critical mineral mining – an essential industry for the green energy transition, but one that must not be allowed to repeat historic harms.

And we’re monitoring the growing scourge of climate disinformation, while calling for digital platforms to enshrine an online space that serves democracy.

In everything we do, we remain committed to challenging the power imbalances at the heart of the climate crisis. As we embark on a new era of investigations and campaigning, we will take pride in championing a just future for people and planet.