Stories are incredibly powerful. They bring us closer together and heighten our sense of shared humanity. Meet the Avaaz community in our great global storytelling.

A Maasai Victory

For 20 years, the Tanzanian government has been trying to evict a Maasai community from its traditional lands to make room for a big game hunting company to bring in tourists to shoot wildlife. A year ago, our community launched a campaign calling on the Tanzanian President to stop the evictions -- and after many months of working closely with the Maasai community, we finally won!

It was a massive effort -- 1.7 million of us signed the petition, with the Maasai, we rallied the international media, getting CNN and Al Jazeera to visit the area and break the story to the world. Then Avaaz members funded hard-hitting adverts in local papers calling out the government. When news of an impending eviction surfaced, we supported a Maasai march on the capital -- there traditional leaders camped outside the Prime Minister's office for three weeks, forcing him to listen to their case. The pressure was building and, in late September, the Tanzanian Prime Minister visited the area and told the Maasai that the President had confirmed that they would not be evicted.

The Maasai are waiting to get this in writing, but the commitment to end the conflict is a huge breakthrough that many said would be impossible. Read this Guardian piece to hear how this amazing community of Maasai took on their government, and won.

“On behalf of CSOs in Ngorongoro and the Maasai community, we are very grateful for the support Avaaz has given us in different ways in the struggle to retain the community land... I am lost for words as to the impact this campaign has had."

Samwell Nangiria, Local NGO Coordinator

Confronting Horror in Paradise

When a 15-year-old rape survivor in the Maldives was sentenced to be flogged for also allegedly having consensual sex with another man, it put the global spotlight on these so-called paradise islands. Over 2 million Avaaz members signed a petition asking President Mohammed Waheed to intervene in the girl’s case and put an end to the practice of flogging altogether.

Avaaz lobbied at the highest levels of government in the Maldives and launched an advertising campaign targeting the tourism industry by exposing the reality of life for women in this island paradise. And in August the High Court finally dropped the outrageous flogging sentence (read more in The Independent). An Avaaz commissioned poll conducted amongst Maldivians showed that 92% of Maldivians want reform of laws and systems to protect women and 62% want to see a moratorium on flogging. With this progress in hand, Avaaz will continue campaigning to end this war on women in the Maldives.

"The Avaaz contribution was the spearhead of the campaign to overturn the flogging sentence; a petition signed by millions, a country visit, a public opinion survey... all proved irresistible. I hope Avaaz will continue to seek reform in Maldives."

Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, former foreign minister, current UN Special Rapporteur on Iran

2013

24

MILLION

MEMBERS

Brazil says NO to Corruption, YES to 21st Century Democracy!

JULY 2013

Brazilians are saying enough is enough to rampant corruption. First it was the hugely successful Clean Record Law campaign, to bar politicians convicted of crimes from running for office -- which studies have shown Avaaz played a key role in winning. Now an Avaaz member has created the biggest online petition in Brazilian history -- with over 1.6 million voicesdemanding that Senators kick out the Senate President, a disgraced politician under a cloud of corruption allegations. He’s still there for now, but we’re close to ending the secret voting process which allowed him to get the Senate top spot.

Even better, the Senate just voted to make it easier and faster for citizens to force politicians to take action. Avaaz was repeatedly cited during the Senate debate, in which they agreed to halve how many people need to sign popular initiative petitions, and they determined that online signatures can count! Now we’re going all out to get the lower house on board.

Avaaz's new Community Petitions platform http://www.avaaz.org/en/

Avaaz and our Commitment to Accuracy

Much like a newspaper or a media organization creates stories, Avaaz creates and publishes hundreds of campaigns every year, and sends out thousands of emails, press releases and statements about these campaigns. Also like journalists, we often do these on very short timescales responding to urgent events. 

We strive for accuracy, and 99.9% of the time we succeed. But it’s impossible to get it right every time, and when we get it wrong, we’re committed to publishing corrections to our public communications on this page, and linking to this page from the front page of our website. In addition, if any campaign has been conducted on the basis of a serious inaccuracy, we are committed to informing the people who have joined the campaign and offering them a chance to withdraw their support. 

This page can be found at any time by the link from the front page of our website. 

Corrections for 2013: 

• August 13th: In a climate change fundraising email to members we described climate scientist Dr. Julienne Stroeve as “not believing her eyes” when she saw the recent state of the Arctic ice melt. This characterization of her reaction was inaccurate. It was an interpretation of her reaction we made based on press reports of her trip but it was not supported by her statements. Dr. Stroeve has spent decades measuring the ice, and while she was alarmed, it was not correct to say she felt disbelief. We regret the error and corrected it as soon as it was brought to our attention.



• July 25th: In an email to Italian members, we wrote that Medoilgas was “refusing to do an environmental impact assessment” prior to drilling for oil off the coast of Italy. In fact, Medoilgas did apply for an initial Environmental Impact Assessment but is refusing to apply for and obtain an Integrated Environmental Authorisation which is being requested by the Italian government. In addition, our email stated that after a recent change in the law, “companies can drill for oil near the coast without even the obligation of the normal controls necessary to protect the environment.” That is incorrect. While the new law lifted a moratorium on offshore drilling for certain projects, those who do drill are required to comply with the “normal” procedures that were in place before the moratorium. There are many, however, who believe these procedures are insufficient to protect the environment.



• March 20th: In an email to members we wrote: "a 15-year-old rape survivor has been sentenced to be whipped 100 times in public! [....] The girl's stepfather is accused of raping her for years and murdering the baby she bore. Now the court says she must be flogged for “sex outside marriage!" This is correct; however, we're concerned that the wording may have led some to believe that her flogging was a punishment for being raped by her stepfather, when in fact her sentence was for extra-marital sex with another man who has not been named. Sources suggest that the girl was abused by many men on the island where she lived, and it's not clear that the "crime" for which was sentenced was consensual sex with or abuse at the hands of another man. We spotted this problem within 24 hours and immediately amended the website text of the petition page to read: "The girl's stepfather is accused of raping her for years and murdering the baby she bore. Now the court says she must be flogged for “sex outside marriage” with a man who has not even been named."

Corrections for 2012: 

• November 29th: In a map posted to Avaaz Daily Briefing and social media shortly after the UN general assembly vote on recognising Palestine as a non-member observer state, New Zealand was incorrectly marked as abstaining in the vote. In fact, New Zealand voted in favour of Palestinian statehood. In addition, Western Sahara was incorrectly shown as a part of Morocco, instead of as a non-self-governing territory. Both of these errors were quickly corrected on the Daily Briefing site and a notice of correction was made on the page.



• September 12th: In an email about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Avaaz said: “US Senator, Elizabeth Warren in a recent speech said: “Corporations are not people. People have hearts, they have kids, they get jobs, they get sick, they cry, they dance. They live, they love, and they die. And that matters, because we don't run this country for corporations, we run it for people." Let’s reach one million to stop the corporate takeover of our governments.” While Elizabeth Warren did say this, she is in fact a Candidate for the Senate, not a Senator.



• Aug 15th: Avaaz sent a campaign email to UK members titled “UK: Save our school fields!”. The email had a factual error in its opening line. The email to members stated: ”Michael Gove is selling off our school sports fields to rich property developers at a staggering rate — leaving a generation of British kids with nowhere to play”. The use of the word "staggering" was not accurate to describe the current sell-off rate, but given the relaxing of regulations governing the minimum field space required for schools this line should have read: "Changes to regulations could result in a staggering rate of school field sales to rich developers and the elimination of playing fields for a generation of children."



• July 18th: A campaign on gay rights in Poland launched on the new Avaaz petition site by a Polish politician included 2 factual errors. First was a claim that gay couples were denied visitation rights in hospitals. In fact partners are allowed to visit sick loved ones. However, they are not granted the same access rights as heterosexual couples and are forbidden from making critical decisions regarding the medical treatment of partners. The second error was a claim that gay couples could not buy houses together. Homosexual couples can jointly own properties, but the rights of partners are not respected in the execution of wills and estates -- if one partner dies and the property is left to the other, their claim of ownership can be challenged. This has been ruled as a violation of human rights by the European Court of Human Rights. The petition text itself was completely accurate, but unfortunately these two errors were not spotted before the campaign was emailed out to Avaaz members in Poland.



• May 23rd: Avaaz sent a campaign email to UK members titled “UK’s cruelest cut”. The email stated that each year tens of thousands of girls in the UK were forced into female genital mutilation, when in fact the number is unknown. What is known according to Forward, the leading NGO in this area, is that 98,000 girls under the age of 15 are at risk of being forced into this procedure. Our petition itself was factually correct, but based on the inaccuracy in the email we polled petition signers and asked whether they would like to withdraw their signature. 3% of respondents asked to have their signature removed, which we did before the petition was delivered.



• May 1st: In an email about a ‘denial of service’ attack on the Avaaz website to our community, we said “one expert has told us that the attack could likely only come from a government or a private corporation”. In our post-mortem of the campaign, we discovered that this expert had only not disagreed with that view when it was offered by members of our tech team as opposed to proposing it himself.



• February 28th: February 28th: In a press interview with BBC radio on the day the Syrian evacuation attempt was publicized, our Executive Director stated that no Free Syrian Army were involved in the evacuation attempt. This was false. The FSA played a significant role in the evacuation, which Avaaz was initially unaware of because of the chaos of the operation, the difficulty of communications with the field, and our policy of minimizing our contact with armed groups in Syria. The FSA's role was not mentioned in written press statements on February 28th and 29th regarding the evacuation. We apologize to the FSA for this honest mistake. In relation to this correction and the one below, a full statement on Avaaz's role in the journalists evacuation in Syria can be found here.



• February 28th: In a press release, we claimed that Avaaz had ‘coordinated’ an evacuation attempt by Syrian activists of 4 journalists and several wounded trapped in Baba Amr. In fact, we had supported and assisted some of the activists involved, relaying messages and information among them and between the journalists and their employers and families. While we had played a role in the decision-making and planning leading up to the evacuation, the evacuation itself was chaotic, and it is not accurate to claim that we coordinated it. This error was caught within 2 hours of the statement being released and before any press interviews were conducted, when we changed our statements to say that we "helped" or "supported" the activists involved.



• January 5th: In a ‘test’ email opened by 3500 Canadian Avaaz subscribers, we claimed that Prime Minister Harper was supporting a proposal by a private firm to start charging for entry to Jasper National Park. In fact, the charge would be levied only on those entering a specific private attraction at the park, and we had no clear evidence of where the Prime Minister stood on the matter, just educated guesses by insiders. We corrected the errors immediately upon discovery and informed the people who had received the incorrect email.