Our website uses cookies, as almost all websites do, to help provide you with the best experience we can.
Cookies are a standard feature in browser software to enhance your experience on the site. These are small text files that your web browser places on your computer or mobile phone.
This Cookie Policy applies to all websites operated by Global Witness (a Private Limited Company by guarantee) with our registered address at Global Witness, 2nd Floor, 55 Ludgate Hill, London EC4M 7JW ("Global Witness", “GW”, "we", "our" or "us") and the cookies used on our website www.globalwitness.org ('Site').
1. Global Witness uses cookies to:
- Compile statistical data on the use of our website and its functioning.
- Make it easier for users to navigate through the Site.
- Allow you to share our web pages through social media platforms.
2. Our cookies help us:
- Make our Site work as you would expect.
- Remember your settings during and between visits.
- Improve the speed and security of the Site.
- Allow you to share pages on social networks like Facebook.
- Continuously improve our Site for you.
- Make our marketing more efficient by tailoring and measuring ads.
3. Categories of cookies used on this Site and purposes
Cookies are small text files that may be stored on your computer (or other internet enabled devices, such as a smartphone or tablet) when you visit a website. They help websites remember information about your visit, like your country, language and other settings. They can also help make your next visit easier.
We use cookies and other similar technologies such as marketing tags for several purposes as described more fully below, including collecting information about the number of visitors to our Site and customer demographics, which we use to improve the customer experience of our Site.
We use the following cookies:
Strictly necessary cookies
These are cookies that are required for the operation of our Site. They include, for example, setting your preferred language and protecting the Site’s security (CSRF). If you wish to do so, you may be able to block some of these cookies on your device/browser, but restricting these cookies is likely to mean that our Site will not work as you would expect and certain functions may be inoperable.
Non-essential cookies
Analytical/performance cookies
These allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors to our Site and to see how visitors move around our Site when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our Site works, for example, by ensuring that it is easy for users to find what they are looking for. We also use cookies to compile visitor statistics such as how many people have visited our Site, how they reached our Site, what type of technology they are using (e.g. Mac or Windows) which helps to identify when our Site isn't working as it should for particular technologies, how long they spend on our Site and what page they look at etc. This helps us to continuously improve our website.
We use Google Analytics to collect information about how users interact with our Site. These tools use cookies to collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to our Site, from where visitors have come to our Site and the pages they visited. We use the information generated by these tools to prepare reports and improve the customer experience of our Site.
We have enabled Google Analytics on our Site to allow us to review information about users of our Site, including identifiers such as age and, location. This information enables us to make decisions about what information to include on our Site and how to present it.
You may opt-out of tracking from Google Analytics by refusing the use of cookies (see below or by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on).
Functionality cookies
These are used to recognise you when you return to our Site. This enables us to remember your preferences such as your of choice of language.
Social media website cookies
So you can easily "like" or share our content, we have included sharing buttons on our Site for certain social media sites such as Facebook and X/Twitter. These cookies are set by the third party social media sites to which they relate, including:
- Facebook, for the social share buttons.
- X/Twitter, for social sharing.
- YouTube, for embedding videos.
The privacy implications vary from social media site to social media site and will be dependent on the privacy settings you have chosen on these sites. Please refer to the relevant social media site's privacy and cookies policy for more information.
You can find more information about the individual cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them below:
4. Cookies preferences
When you first visit our Site you will see a banner asking you to either accept or manage cookies.
You can change your cookie settings at any time by visiting the cookies management page. You can also access the cookies management page at any time via the ‘Cookie Policy’ tab at the bottom right of the screen.
You have the option not to accept analytics and/or third party cookies. If you don’t accept cookies, you won’t receive the benefits that cookies provide to users of our Site.
You will not be able to change the setting of any cookies which are strictly necessary as they are essential to the stable and correct functioning of the Site. These include cookies for site administrators, and for showing you content in the correct language. You can choose to block these via your browser settings, but this may negatively impact your use of our Site.
The following sites have some useful information about cookies and how to configure settings for different browsers: www.allaboutcookies.org and www.youronlinechoices.eu.
5. Disabling cookies
Most browsers have cookies enabled by default. If you don't want to enable cookies, you'll still be able to browse our Site.
If you wish to disable all cookies, you can usually opt-out by setting your browser to remove or reject browser cookies.
To disable specific cookies, you can opt-out using the opt-out mechanisms and links provided above. You can also delete cookies that have already been set through your browser settings.
Please note that if you choose to disable some categories of cookies that we use, you may experience reduced functionality or be prevented from using our Site altogether.
Please also be aware that third parties (including, for example, advertising networks and providers of external services like web traffic analysis services) may also use cookies, over which we have no control. These cookies are likely to be analytical/performance cookies or targeting cookies.
To learn more on how to disable cookies on your browser, please consult your browser "help" section or go to www.aboutcookies.org.
If you would like more information about how Global Witness uses personal data (information which is capable of identifying a living individual) please see our Policy Notice. If you have any further questions, comments or requests regarding our Cookie Policy or how we use cookies, you can contact us by email at [email protected].
6. Changes to this Cookie Policy
Any changes to this Cookie Policy in the future will be posted on this page and we will take all measures necessary to communicate any changes to this Cookie Policy to you. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to this Cookie Policy. We will also bring your attention to such changes by updating our cookie banner/pop-up.
This policy was last reviewed and updated: February 2024