Terms of Use

What's in these terms?

These terms tell you the rules for using our website www.globalwitness.org (our Site).

Who we are and how to contact us

www.globalwitness.org is a Site operated by Global Witness (we, us and our). We are a company limited by guarantee, registered in England.  Our registered company number is 2871809, and our registered office is at The Green House, 244-254 Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9DA, United Kingdom. Our main trading address is The Green House, 244-254 Cambridge Heath Road, London, E2 9DA.

To contact us, please email [email protected] or write to us at:

Global Witness, The Green House, 244-254 Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9DA

By using our Site, you confirm that you accept these terms of service and that you agree to comply with them.

If you do not agree to these terms, you must not use our Site.

Donations

If you wish to support us and our work, you may do so by making a donation to us via the Site. Please visit the 'Donate' page on the Site for details of where to send a cheque or to access our online donations portal.

We appreciate all offers of support, however the nature of our work means that we carefully screen proposed gifts against criteria designed to ensure that we do not take donations that might contradict or compromise our objectives and activities. We reserve the right to refuse or return donations where we believe this might be the case, but in all instances, we will seek to explain our reasons.

Please see the donations page on the Site for further detail on donations including information on how your donation will be used. If you have any questions about donations please email us at [email protected].

Donations processing

Donations made via the Site are made through our payment gateway provider, Stripe (as will be made clear at the point of donation). You will be providing credit or debit card information directly to Stripe which operate a secure server to process payment details, encrypting your credit/debit card information and authorising payment. Information which you supply to Stripe is not within our control and is subject to Stripe's own privacy policy and terms (as applicable) and which are available on their site.

There are other terms that may apply to you

These terms of use refer to the following additional terms, which also apply to your use of our Site:

• Our Privacy Policy which explains how we collect, use and store your personal data.
• Our Cookie Policy which sets out information about the cookies on our Site.

We may make changes to these terms

We amend these terms from time to time. Every time you wish to use our Site, please check these terms to ensure you understand the terms that apply at that time. If you no longer accept these terms, you must cease using the Site. Continued use of the Site indicates your acceptance of the terms.

These terms were most recently updated January 2025.

We may make changes to our Site

We may update and change our Site from time to time to reflect changes to our users' needs and our campaign priorities. We will try to give you reasonable notice of any major changes.

We may suspend or withdraw our Site

Our site is made available free of charge.

We do not guarantee that our Site, or any content on it, will always be available, error-free or uninterrupted. There may be times when certain features, parts or content of the Site, or the entire Site, become unavailable (whether on a scheduled or unscheduled basis) or are modified, suspended or withdrawn by us. We may suspend or withdraw or restrict the availability of all or any part of our Site in our sole discretion for business or operational reasons without notice to you. You agree that we will not be liable to you or to any third party for any unavailability, modification, suspension or withdrawal of the Site or any features, parts or content of the Site.

You are responsible for ensuring that all persons who access our Site through your internet connection are aware of these terms of service and other applicable terms of service, and that they comply with them.

If you have access to our Site from outside the UK, you agree to be bound by these Terms.

Access to the Site

It is your responsibility to ensure your equipment (computer, laptop, tablet or other mobile device) meets all the necessary technical specifications to enable you to access and use the Site and is compatible with the Site.

We may, from time to time, restrict access to certain features, parts of content of the Site or the entire Site, to certain users. Currently there is no requirement or option to register as a user of the Site. If that changes in the future, this section of the terms will be updated accordingly.

If you are provided with, a user identification code, password or any other piece of information as part of our security procedures, it is your responsibility to keep your account details safe and treat such information as confidential. You must not disclose it to any third party.

We will have the right to disable any user identification code or password, whether chosen by you or allocated by us, at any time, if in our reasonable opinion you have failed to comply with any of the provisions of these terms of service.

How you may use material on our site

We encourage the reproduction and amplification of content on our Site, including our name and logo, provided you do so for non-commercial use only and in line with the permissions set out in these terms.

You may print, copy and download extracts, of any content from our Site for your personal use and may draw the attention of others to content posted on our Site.

You must not modify the paper or digital copies of any materials you have printed or downloaded in any way, and you must not use any illustrations, photographs, video or audio sequences or any graphics separately from any accompanying text.

Our status (and that of any identified contributors) as the authors of content on our Site must always be acknowledged.

You must maintain and abide by any author attribution, copyright or trademark notice or restriction in any material that you copy, download or print.

You must not use any part of the content on our Site for commercial purposes.

If you are a news and/or media organisation, you may use written content on our Site for the purposes of public interest journalism, provided (i) we are fully acknowledged and (ii) such use does not infringe the intellectual property rights of anyone else.

The right to use written content from our Site for the purposes of public interest journalism does not extend to use of illustrations, photographs, video or audio sequences or any graphics or other images contained on the Site.

If you are a news and/or media organisation and wish to use illustrations, photographs, video or audio sequences or any graphics or other images from the Site you will first need to obtain the appropriate licence consents from the applicable rights holder.

If you print off, copy, download, share or repost any part of our Site in breach of these terms of use, your right to use our Site will cease immediately and we will require you to return or destroy any copies of the materials you have made (except that you are permitted to print off a copy of these terms of use).

What you are not allowed to do

You shall not conduct, facilitate, authorise or permit any text or data mining or web scraping in relation to our Site or any services provided via, or in relation to, our Site for any purpose, including the development, training, fine-tuning or validation of AI systems or models. This includes using (or permitting, authorising or attempting the use of):

• Any "robot", "bot", "spider", "scraper" or other automated device, program, tool, algorithm, code, process or methodology to access, obtain, copy, monitor or republish any portion of our Site or any data, content, information or services accessed via the same.
• Any automated analytical technique aimed at analysing text and data in digital form to generate information or develop, train, fine-tune or validate AI systems or models which includes but is not limited to patterns, trends and correlations.

The provisions in this section should be treated as an express reservation of our rights in this regard, including for the purposes of Article 4(3) of the Digital Copyright Directive ((EU) 2019/790).

You shall not use, and we do not consent to the use of, our Site, or any data published by, or contained in, or accessible via, our Site or any services provided via, or in relation to, our Site for the purposes of developing, training, fine-tuning or validating any AI system or model or for any other purposes not explicitly set out in these terms.

This section will not apply insofar as (but only to the extent that) we are unable to exclude or limit text or data mining or web scraping activity by contract under the laws which are applicable to us.

Rules about linking to our Site

You may link to our Site, provided you do so in a way that is fair and legal and does not damage our reputation or take advantage of it.

You must not establish a link in such a way as to suggest or to imply any form of association, approval or endorsement on our part of you or of any third party where none exists.

Our Site must not be framed on any other site.

You must not establish a link to our site in any website that is not owned by you.

You must not establish a link to our Site in any website that contains any content that is unlawful, illegal, threatening, abusive, defamatory, pornographic, obscene, vulgar, hateful, indecent, offensive or which infringes on the intellectual property rights or other rights of any third party.

You must only use our Site and any content and materials available from it for lawful purposes (complying with all applicable laws and regulations), in a responsible manner, and not in a way that might damage our name or reputation or that of any of our staff or affiliates.

We reserve the right to withdraw linking permission without notice.

All rights granted to you under these terms will terminate immediately if you are in breach of any of them.

Intellectual property rights 

As between Us and you, we are the sole owner or the licensee of all intellectual property rights in our Site, and in the material published on it including, without limitation, all applicable copyrights, trademarks, trade names, logos, and other intellectual property rights thereto, as well as text, images, graphics, logos, audio, video, URLs, metadata and other material appearing on the Site.

The Site and all content and material appearing on the Site are protected by the copyright laws and other intellectual property laws and treaties around the world. All such rights are reserved.

Except as expressly set out in these terms, nothing gives you any rights in respect of any intellectual property owned by us or our licensors and you acknowledge that you do not acquire any ownership rights by copying, downloading or otherwise using content or materials from the Site.

You must ensure that any copyright, trademark or other intellectual property right notices and acknowledgments are contained in any content from the Site which is reproduced by you as permitted by these terms.

You may not use any trademark, name and/or logo or any other Global Witness designation in any way that indicates or creates the impression that we endorse, approve, sponsor or are affiliated with any products, services or goods available on your own website.

Any trademark, name and/or logo or any other Global Witness designation may not appear more prominently than your personal website name.

Content on this Site

We may change the format and content of the Site from time to time. You agree that your use of the Site is on an 'as is' and 'as available' basis and at your sole risk.

Whilst we try to make sure that all information contained on the Site is correct, it is not intended to amount to authority or advice on which reliance should be placed.  You should check with us or the relevant information source before acting on any such information.

We make or give no representation or warranty as to the accuracy, completeness, currency, correctness, reliability, integrity, quality, fitness for purpose or originality of any content of the Site and, to the fullest extent permitted by law, all implied warranties, conditions or other terms of any kind are hereby excluded and we accept no liability for any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of you or anyone else using the Site or relying on any of its content.

We are not responsible for websites we link to

Where our Site contains links to other sites and resources provided by third parties, these are provided for your information only. We include these to provide you with access to information, products or services that you may find useful or interesting.  We are not responsible for the content of these sites or for anything provided by them and do not guarantee that they will be continuously available.  Such links should not be interpreted as approval or endorsement by us of those linked websites or information you may obtain from them, or association with their content, operators or promoters.

We have no control over the contents of those sites or resources.

We are not responsible for viruses

We do not guarantee that our Site will be secure or free from bugs or viruses.

You are responsible for configuring your information technology, computer programs and platform to access our Site. You should use your own virus protection software and it is your responsibility to implement appropriate information technology security safeguards (including anti-virus and other security checks) to satisfy your requirements as to the safety and reliability of content on the Site.

You must not introduce viruses

You must not misuse our Site by knowingly introducing viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or other material that is malicious or technologically harmful, or otherwise harmfully interacting with our Site or any part of it. You must not attempt to gain unauthorised access to our Site, the server on which our Site is stored or any server, computer or database connected to our Site or any other equipment or network connected with our Site. You must not interfere with, damage or disrupt any software used in the provision of our Site or any equipment or network or software owned or used by any third party on which our Site relies in any way. You must not attack our Site via a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of-service attack.

By breaching this provision, you would commit a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. We will report any such breach to the relevant law enforcement authorities and we will co-operate with those authorities by disclosing your identity to them. In the event of such a breach, your right to use our Site will cease immediately.

Our Disclaimer of liability

You agree not to use our Site for any commercial or business purposes.

To the extent permitted at law, we do not accept any responsibility for loss or damage suffered by you or responsibility for any statement in any materials or content on the Site. Nothing on the Site is provided for any specific purpose. We will not be liable for any loss caused because of your doing, or not doing, anything as a result of viewing, reading or listening to any material or content on the Site.

You can access other sites via links from the Site. These sites are not under our control and we are not responsible in any way for any of their contents.

We give no warranties of any kind concerning the Site or any content or materials on the Site. We do not warrant that the Site or any of its contents is virus free. You must take your own precautions in this respect as we accept no responsibility for any infection by virus or other contamination or by anything which has destructive properties.

We exclude all implied conditions, warranties, representations or other terms that may apply to our Site or any content or materials on it.

How we may use your personal information

We will only use your personal information submitted to or via our Site as set out in our Privacy Policy.

Which country's laws apply to any disputes?

These terms, their subject matter and their formation, are governed by English law and the courts of England and Wales will have exclusive jurisdiction.

Nothing shall prevent us from bringing proceedings to protect our intellectual property rights before any competent court.