2007 Commitment to Development Award Recipient: Global Witness

Global Witness receives the 2007 Commitment to Development Award for exposing how corruption and environmental betrayal go hand-in-hand. Global Witness, a small U.K.-based NGO, helped to bring the problem of conflict diamonds to the world's attention and has crusaded to stop the plunder of rain forests in Cambodia and Burma.

Its first investigation of illegal timber sales by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia shut down that trade in 1995. A headline-making Global Witness report in 1998 showed how the UNITA rebels in Angola were financing a deadly civil war by selling diamonds. That work figured prominently in the establishment of the Kimberly Process to certify diamonds that are not mined from conflict zones.

Global Witness, which now has a staff of 35 and a £3 million budget, produces reports and videos exposing corruption and environmental wrong-doing, especially in countries awash in oil revenues, from Turkmenistan to Equatorial Guinea. It was a founder of the Publish What You Pay campaign, which seeks transparency about how resource-rich governments spend their share of mineral revenues. Funders include a dozen foundations as well as the development agencies of Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. It recently helped put a timber and arms trafficker in jail in Holland.

Commitment to Development Award