Ayanda serves as an Archiving Coordinator for VIDERE. She has over a decade of experience in cataloguing, storing & preserving visual human rights documentation. Additionally, she has collaborated with various stakeholders to ensure human rights documentation has impact both in..
the short & long term. Ayanda holds a Master’s degree in Human Rights and has additional training in security and visual analysis.
Yvonne Ng is an audiovisual archivist and has been part of the WITNESS team since 2009. In collaboration with WITNESS regional leads, she trains and supports partners on collecting, managing, and preserving video documentation for human rights advocacy and evidence.
Yvonne currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA), on the Advisory Boards of the Memory Lab Network and Documenting the Now.
Today, we will be talking about
“Archiving for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights”
In addition to the far-reaching economic impacts, internet shutdowns in #Africa limit people’s ability to express themselves freely, activists/journalists struggle to upload photos/videos documenting abuse and students are cut off from their lessons.
While governments, with the cooperation of telcos, may try to justify shutdowns in the name of “public safety” or other reasons, they are increasingly using it as a tactic to control flow of information, their people and to silence dissent.
Nevertheless, #documenting human rights violations is as important as ever during an internet shutdown because it can be a way to #preserve voices that authorities are trying to silence, and to secure #evidence of abuses that can be used to demand accountability later on.