Global Witness: Corruption, Conflict, and Governance

This report provides a dossier on Global Witness, a non-governmental organization established in 1993, focusing on its global operations related to natural resource conservation, corruption prevention, and human rights. Headquartered in London, the organization, founded by Patrick Alley, actively campaigns against the exploitation of natural resources and promotes social and environmental development. The report highlights Global Witness's view on the link between abundant natural resources and corruption, leading to political instability and conflicts. It details the organization's objectives, including exposing corruption during natural resource exploitation and human rights abuses. The report explores Global Witness's investigations into various business entities involved in unethical activities, its work on resources like diamonds, oil, and timber, and its provision of solutions for human rights problems in resource-rich countries. Furthermore, the report outlines Global Witness's four main areas of focus: corruption, conflict, environmental governance, and maximizing accountability and transparency, with references to relevant sources.

Dossier on Global Witness
Global Witness, is a recognized non-government organization established in the year
1993 carrying out its operations across the world related to conserving natural resources,
preventing corruption and human right abuses. It is headquartered in London and is founded by
Patrick Alley. The organization is actively involved in carrying out campaigns for preventing the
exploitation of natural resources and promoting social and environment development. The
Global Witness organization is of the view that presence of large amount of natural resources can
act as a major factor for the occurrence of corrupt practices in the mind of businesses (Levitt,
2015). Thus, the abundance of natural resources can lead to destabilizing the political
environment in a country leading to the occurrence of conflicts. As such, the organization is
mainly involved in breaking the links between natural resource exploitation and corruption on a
global level. The main objective behind the development of the organization is to depict a
relation between the occurrence of corruption and conflicts from fighting over to gin accesses to
the natural resources wealth. The excess of natural resources also lead to exploitation of human
rights by businesses as they seeks to maximize their profitability by harnessing the resources and
not paying attention to the well-being of labors during the process (Global Witness, 2018).
The organization has stated that its main goal is to expose the corrupt practices that take
place during the natural resources exploitation and human right abuses. It has undertaken various
investigation cases involving various business entities in illegal and unethical activities during
natural resources exploitation. The organization published its investigative report for
highlighting the various corrupt practices of business organizations that they undertake for the
sake of profit maximization (Humphreys, 2012). The investigative researches of the organization
has exposed many times the harnessing of natural resources for funding unethical activities that

lead to the occurrence of human right abuses against civilians. It has worked on natural resources
exploitation such as diamond, oil timber, gas and other minerals. The organization has
undertaken many investigations such as in Cambodia for exposing many scandals involving the
illegal trade practices of much business organizations such as that of BHP Billiton. The
organization also provides solutions related to the human tights problems for promoting the
welfare of citizens in resource rich countries (Flowers, 2008).
Global Witness is the global organization that works for the welfare of the people through
providing the details regarding the corruption, conflicts, accountability issues and governance
issues that are raised in many companies all around the world. Global Witness mainly works in
the following four broad strands:
 Corruption: It is the main aim of the Global Witness is to arrange the details and
campaigns against the organizations and governments that are actively involved in
facilitating the corruption and also plays the major role in diverting the money from the
natural resources so that it does not reach to the citizens (Leahy, 2017).
 Conflict: The purpose is to prevent the ongoing conflicts that abuse the human rights. The
objective of the Global Witness is to campaigns and make aware about the continuation
of the armed conflict and abuse of the human rights that lastly results in fighting on the
natural resources. It has been seen many times the world’s worst human rights abuses are
due to exploitation of the natural resources and also due to the political corruption. So to
highlight all these conflicts Global Witness plays the major role. They work with the
partners all around the world in order to fight for justice.
 Environmental Governance: Exploitation or degradation of the natural resources is one of
the major concerns all over the world. So it is important to reach out all these destruction

activities and make them expose in front of the public. In this regard Global Witness
plays an important role through organizing the campaigns and other public activities that
addresses the environment issues all over the world. All these campaigns are against the
destruction and over exploitation of the natural resources (Global Witness, 2018).
 Maximizing accountability and transparency: There must be accountability and
transparency of transactions that involves the use of natural resources. Global Witness
works in this context to promote the use of proper accountability and bring transparency
in the commercial deals that involves the extraction of the natural resources. The purpose
of the Global Witness is to provide information to the citizens in the resources rich
countries so that they can question the government and business officials about the
accountability and management of the resources (Rose, 2015).

References
Flowers, M. 2008. Conflict Resolution: Peace Implementation in New Wars. Lulu.com.
Global Witness. 2018. [Online]. Available at: https://www.globalwitness.org/en/ [Accessed on:
10 January 2018].
Humphreys, D. 2012. Logjam: Deforestation and the Crisis of Global Governance. Routledge.
Leahy, S. 2017. 200 Environmentalists Were Murdered Last Year. [Online]. Available at:
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/07/environmentalists-protestors-killed-violence-
global-witness-report/ [Accessed on: 10 January 2018].
Levitt, T. 2015. Global Witness: the media is dependent on NGOs to investigate corruption.
[Online]. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/aug/21/global-
witness-media-dependent-on-ngo-to-investigate-corruption [Accessed on: 10 January 2018].
Rose, C. 2015. International Anti-Corruption Norms: Their Creation and Influence on Domestic
Legal Systems. OUP Oxford.