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Description
In 2004 a law was passed in Romania that offered protection to whistleblowers who file a complaint about infringements within public authorities, institutions, or companies. 17 years later though, after monitoring the implementation of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy (https://static.anaf.ro/static/10/Anaf/Informatii_R/SNA_2016_2020_28112016.pdf) between 2016 and 2020, the overall conclusion was that a whistleblower has little to no ways through which they can safely disclose wrongdoings. Employees are often scared to report abuses of the system due to negative consequences.
Recorder will raise awareness about the importance of whistleblowers in a democratic state and will show some commendable examples of bravery by publishing a video series of the most important and impactful Romanian whistleblower cases of the past years.
We will choose journalistic campaigns from Recorder and other newsrooms that had great exposure and impact in Romania as well as less known cases to the public. The main goal of the campaign is to inform the citizens of their rights and the law that offers protection to whistleblowers. We hope to portray the fundamental importance of whistleblowers to civil servants who are frustrated with our current government and have tried in the past, or plan in the future, to assume that role.
Funky Citizens, our partner, will contribute with their training and advocacy expertise. By expertise we understand both their collaborative input in elaborating project materials, such as the informative clip on the role of whistleblowers, but also in preparing and holding trainings, while the advocacy component is fundamental in assuring that the initiative here presented has a far-reaching impact of the topic at hand, even after the project period is over.
The main beneficiaries are civil workers, that thought of or tried assuming the role of whistleblowers, with a secondary focus on those that are frustrated with how the system operates.
Summary of project results
The project "Information and Advocacy Campaign to Strengthen the Role of integrity whistleblowers in Romania" brought into the public space the importance of the integrity whistleblower in the functioning of the rule of law. The context mentioned by the Promoter was that after more than 20 years since the adoption of the law on the protection of integrity whistleblowers through which irregularities in public institutions can be reported, the conclusions of public monitoring, for example, the National Anticorruption Strategy - show that how whistleblower integrity can signal irregularities is very little or not at all known in Romania. Employees are afraid to report abuses because of the sanctions that may appear. Starting from this need, the Promoter set out to (1) carry out a press campaign consisting of a series of mini-video documentaries in which whistleblowers who have produced changes through their actions talk about how their lives have evolved after they complained about the facts that made them known; (2) to develop a platform dedicated to whistleblowers, which will allow them to report factual situations with the guarantee of total anonymity and (3) to carry out an advocacy campaign to promote and protect whistleblowers, both among potential whistleblowers, as well as among the institutions and actors that must respect their rights.
The promoter made within Activity 3 - Creation and production of video-documentaries - 6 journalistic video materials. These are published on the organization''s website https://recorder.ro/voci-libere/ under the name of the campaign - "Free Voices" which aims, according to the Promoter, to show the importance of whistleblowers and to tell the stories of such people: what led them to appear publicly, what effects their revelations had and what happened to them after they came forward and complained of abuse. The last video material produced was also presented during the project''s closing event, where participants were able to talk with both the integrity whistleblower presented in the report and the journalist and editors who produced it.
Within A4 - Creation of an anonymous, perfectly secured communication platform, dedicated to whistleblowers - it was decided from the beginning of the project, after a research of the platforms used by other international organizations of investigative journalists, that it is not necessary to build from zero of an anonymized platform, but that you can use a secure platform called SecureDrop. Thus, the anonymized communication platform was integrated into the recorder.ro website at the link https://recorder.ro/contacteaza-recorder-intr-un-mediu-securizat/. From the platform integration until now, the Promoter''s team has constantly received irregularities from citizens assuming the role of integrity whistleblower. Each rule is investigated/analyzed by Recorder journalists.
As part of A5 - Publication of an explanatory video journalistic material about the role of the integrity whistleblower in Romanian society - it was published as part of the Voci libere campaign, on the recorder.ro website (https://recorder.ro/campanie-recorder-de -what-are-important-integrity-warnings/) in the first part of the project. On the YouTube recorder channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV6aTQE8J8w&t=2) it was watched by over 260,000 people; on social media channels, namely Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, it had a reach of over 263,300. The material explains the importance of integrity whistleblowers in Romanian society and presents both the public perception of the idea of a whistleblower, but also of the idea of reacting against irregularities in the system.
As part of the last activity - A6 - Advocacy and support for whistleblowers - a series of workshops and round tables with stakeholders interested/involved in the project were organized together with the project partner - Funky Citizens. Over 70 people participated in the five meetings - public officials (persons responsible for the implementation of whistleblower legislation), young students, journalists, NGOs, and other interested citizens. At the same time, within the campaign, collaboration discussions and work were held with 7 lawyers to be able to offer legal assistance to integrity whistleblowers. Representation was offered in court by 2 of them, in 4 open files (two in administrative litigation, one civil, and one criminal). Following the completion of the activities related to the advocacy component, the two partners developed a Position Paper summarizing the project''s efforts, as well as a series of recommendations for public institutions with a role in the field. The document can be found here - https://funky.ong/voci-libere/
During the project, the Promoter made 7 videos, one of which was explanatory and six in which we followed the situation and the evolution of 6 whistleblowers after their appearance in Recorder investigations. The explanatory material, Why integrity whistleblowers are important, aims to increase public awareness about the need to fulfill this role in contemporary society, to help create a society where corruption becomes the exception, not normality. The video reached 259,000 views on the YouTube Recorder channel alone and was exposed to more than 263,300 people on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok channels. The 6 materials on the evolution of whistleblowers in the Recorder materials have reached more than 2,659,000 people on YouTube and more than 2,451,900 people on Facebook channels, Instagram, and TikTok. Such materials are more than necessary to show the impact that a single whistleblower can have on its field, as well as to encourage other citizens to take a stand and report the irregularities they observe. In this respect, the Promotor has also made 5 meetings with stakeholders and citizens, together with the partners from Funky Citizens, 2 meetings with local authorities, and consulted 7 lawyers to represent integrity whistleblowers in court - this proposal was accepted by 2 of them and put into practice in four trials. Through the SecureDrop platform on the website recorder.ro, whistleblowers can send completely encrypted and anonymized messages, through a process that complies with all the cyber security rules. At the end of the campaign, Recorder and Funky Citizens designed a policy paper on the role of whistleblowers. The paper was discussed with journalists, editors, and whistleblowers.