KEY POINT DIFFERENTIATING VIDEO ADVOCACY FROM VIDEO EVIDENCE Video Advocacy is the use of video to draw attention to a human rights issue and pressure targeted audiences to take action, in order to create change in human rights practice, policy, or law. The primary goals of filming a person’s testimony for advocacy are to: • • tell a compelling story; empower the interviewee to tell their own story; honor the basic human rights of freedom of expression and participation in governmental decision-making; amplify voices that aren’t often heard and include these voices in the call for change; and preserve a historical record for generations to come. Video Evidence, loosely defined, is the use of video documentation in human rights justice processes to hold states or individuals civilly or criminally accountable for violations of human rights. Video can be used at every stage of the justice process, starting with the call for an investigation and ending in the courtroom. The primary aim is to secure a judgment from a court that requires that a state act, that damages be paid, that a perpetrator be sent to prison, or that an individual who has been wrongly accused to be set free. The primary goals of documenting a person’s testimony for evidentiary use are: • • • • to objectively obtain factual information about the incident (who, what, when, where, etc.); to identify other witnesses and evidence; to provide a sufficient amount of information to professional investigators, in case they want to follow up with the interviewee at a later date; and to eventually hold a state or individual accountable for the human rights crime that has been committed, or to free someone who has been falsely accused. If you are a frontline documenter and are documenting for advocacy reasons, you will often record testimony on camera. If you are solely documenting for evidence or legal accountability, you rarely need to document testimony on camera because preliminary interviews are most often captured in writing. If you decide to press record for advocacy reasons, this section will help make it more likely that the testimony you collect could be used for legal accountability purposes too. FILMING • • • FOR MORE INFORMATION See how video can be used in human rights advocacy outside the courtroom, as well as in the criminal justice process, in “The Role of Video Beyond the Courtroom” at vae. witness.org. 139 VIDEO AS EVIDENCE: FILMING PRELIMINARY INTERVIEWS V 1.0