We’ve made some changes to the Global Witness website

A refreshed website for a new direction

As our CEO Mike Davis wrote recently, the world has changed since Global Witness was founded over 25 years ago. As we head in a new strategic direction, stepping up to play our part in the climate movement and to protect threatened civic freedoms, we’ve overhauled our online presence to clearly outline the change we want to see and how we’re going to get there. 

The land and environmental defenders and forests campaign pages better showcase our wealth of investigations, policy and advocacy work, the experiences of those on the frontline and resources like our all-new explainer films which unpick the issues, such as the financing of deforestation, behind our campaigns. 

We’ve created a home for our new and evolving campaigns on fossil gas, corporate accountability, digital threats and natural resource governance and anti-corruption norms. You’ll also find new pages for countries such as the Philippines, a key focus of our work to protect and amplify land and environmental defenders. 

Easier to find what you’re looking for

There’s a simpler navigation focussed on the campaigns and countries we’re actively working on, plus a more expansive ‘hamburger’ menu on the top left with quick links to key pages across the site. If you’re looking to reference our older investigations and policy briefings, don’t worry. You can find historic work in a campaign archive, a list of all countries which will take you to a page with everything we’ve published on that country. By popular demand, we also improved the search function and grouped all our investigations - whether a digital-first article or a more traditional report - together in one place. 

Over the coming months we’ll strive to add more content on the impacts of these investigations, along with our advocacy and communications for change. In what has been a difficult year for many, it’s important to remember the impact we can and do achieve in collaboration with partners and communities. 

You’ll also see that we’ve introduced new ways of exploring our expert analysis and reporting around the most important topics of the day including, unavoidably, the Covid-19 crisis which has had ramifications across all our campaigns - and our digital communications too.  

A better experience, in all languages

During the months of lockdown for many, though by no means all of us, more activities - from collaborating to sharing information - have moved online. At Global Witness, we have been running more online events and workshops, and finding creative ways to keep telling stories effectively such as through zoom vox pops and by embracing the power of illustration. 

This website is on track to have its highest number of visitors ever in 2020 - no doubt in part due to these unique circumstances, but also our work to better use social media, email, outreach and other digital channels to reach our target audiences online. People are spending longer on the site, and we hope to see this engagement - visitors reading and doing more once on the site - continue to rise thanks to the changes detailed here. 

Importantly, as we strive to make our work more accessible for global audiences, we’ve seen a bigger increase in languages other than our core language of English (did you know this site supports 14 languages including Arabic, Dari and Khmer?). To keep improving the experience for all users, we have created more user-friendly homepages in French, Spanish and Chinese and we’re committed to making more core content available in translation. 

Finally, a big thank you to Andy, Gem, Tayo and Ana at our digital agency, Hactar for their work on the refreshed site, all at Global Witness who helped us get ready for this relaunch, and all those whose work, stories and activism is shared on this platform.