Global Witness - Work

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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