Work
Global Witness has worked on diamonds, oil, timber, cocoa, gas, gold and other minerals. It has undertaken investigations and case studies in Cambodia, Angola, Liberia, DR Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Kazakhstan, Burma, Indonesia, Zimbabwe, Turkmenistan and Ivory Coast. It has also helped to set up international initiatives such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, the Kimberley Process, and the Publish What You Pay coalition.
The organization's first campaign involved work against the trade of illegal timber between Cambodia and Thailand which was funding the Khmer Rouge guerrillas.
Global Witness argues that natural resources can be, and have been, exploited to fund armies and militias who murder, rape and commit other human rights abuses against civilians. It says that "natural resources can potentially be used to negotiate and maintain peace" and "could be the key to ending Africa's poverty".
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Famous quotes containing the word work:
“Our work ... is to present things that are as they are.”
—Frederick II Hohenstaufen (1194–1250)
“In the wildest nature, there is not only the material of the most cultivated life, and a sort of anticipation of the last result, but a greater refinement already than is ever attained by man.... Nature is prepared to welcome into her scenery the finest work of human art, for she is herself an art so cunning that the artist never appears in his work.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I suppose I have a really loose interpretation of “work,” because I think that just being alive is so much work at something you don’t always want to do.... The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep.”
—Andy Warhol (1928–1987)