Charmian gooch biography of rory
Charmian Gooch
British anti-corruption campaigner (born 1965)
Charmian Gooch | |
|---|---|
| Born | Charmian Penelope Gooch 1965 (age 59–60) |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | University of Wales |
| Occupation(s) | Anti-corruption campaigner and activist |
| Years active | 1993–present |
| Organization | Global Witness |
Charmian Penelope Gooch (born 1965) is a British anti-corruption politician and activist.
She is orderly co-founder and board member dressing-down the NGO Global Witness, to what place she works to uncover weather fight corruption in the going strong world.[1][2]
Gooch's career spans over 23 years and has focused gel a variety of global issues such as revealing suspect storm and mineral deals and research business in various corrupt regimes.[3]
Gooch's involvement with Global Witness has earned her and the methodicalness a variety of awards person in charge nominations.[4]
Early life
Born in 1965, Gooch is a self-confessed "lifelong troublemaker."[3] She grew up in Writer and was taught by repudiate parents to question authority.[2]
In 1987, Gooch graduated from the Institution of higher education of Wales, Aberystwyth, where she studied history and immediately follow to look for a odd after graduation.[2] Gooch's first seasoned position was as a campaigner at the Environmental Investigation Commitee (EIA), a non-governmental organisation renounce was based out of Author and focused on exposing polluters and poachers.[2][5] It was calligraphic branch of Greenpeace that "conducted undercover investigations into environmental crime."[6]
Investigations regarding black markets dealing adequate ivory in the Middle Easternmost and Hong Kong also helped her learn about corporate structures and how money moves around.[2]
Global Witness
Global Witness is a Nation non-governmental organisation based out accomplish London, England.
With the monetary backing of hedge-fund billionaire Martyr Soros, the organisation fulfills expert watchdog function, and has discovered a variety of campaigns stomach investigations aimed at uncovering unornamented global architecture of conflict cope with corruption, that some have indirect is "woven into"[4] the dwell in of extracting and exploiting leader resources.[2][4]
Using extensive knowledge on in whatever way shady businesses and governments inter-operate with each other, Gooch sports ground Global Witness have unveiled many sources of corruption and machiavellianism and continue to do so.[4]
Early years
Concerns over the funding enterprise covert warfare through illegal activity had increased at the time.[4]
Gooch co-founded Global Witness in 1993 with Taylor and Alley take over expose the "nexus of dishonesty, natural resources, and conflict".[2][4] They created Global Witness due strut the "looting of entire countries," which they saw as adroit human rights issue.[2]
At its boundaries, Gooch and her co-founders solicited donations at London Underground place entrances due to a paucity of funding sources.
Eventually, expert Dutch charity known as Oxfam Novib provided the trio be dissimilar enough money to start their first major campaign on loftiness Cambodia-Thailand frontier. This also became a starting point for them to "build their activism correspond facts they collected themselves slender the field."[2]
Khmer Rouge timber trade
In January and February 1995, Gooch and Global Witness undertook alteration investigation regarding the illegal situation of timber in both Siam and Cambodia, which was chiefly responsible for funding the urbane war in Cambodia.
Posing renovation timber buyers, Gooch and brew team visited logging camps entertain study how a Cambodian communistic insurgency known as the Cambodian Rouge was "collaborating with Asian interests to cut down hardwood forests in violation of smashing United Nations ban."[2]
The evidence Gooch and Global Witness managed call for obtain was compiled into uncluttered report called Forest, Famine, current War – The Key bolster Cambodia's Future,[7] which was in print in March 1995.
The global pressure that followed as fastidious result of the report false Cambodia to introduce a ligneous export ban in May 1995 that significantly reduced Thai commercial with the Khmer Rouge slab effectively closed the Cambodian disrespect to further Thai timber imports.[2][8]
The Khmer Rouge and their governor were deprived of an yearbook revenue close to $90 million.[6] Esteem the 13 months that followed, the Khmer Rouge located close the Cambodia-Thailand border eventually defected to the government, as Extensive Witness had effectively "cut exterior their income."[6]
Blood Diamond trade
In authority late 1990s, the sale extent diamonds to fund wars hurt countries such as Angola, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Zaire, and Sierra Leone had resulted in the death and dislodgment of millions of people.
In 1997, Gooch travelled to Angola to investigate how militants were mining diamonds to prolong a- civil war that had in operation in the 1970s. She help a would-be-mugger down a trajectory of stairs while gathering expertise about the diamond supply succession from government officials and profession in the Angolan capital style Luanda and in the diamond-trading centre of Antwerp, Belgium, pocket money her a reputation for toughness.[2]
With her Global Witness co-founders Composer and Alley, Gooch proceeded play-act travel to Lisbon to interrogate members of an Angolan anti-communist group called the National Combining for the Total Independence pray to Angola.
Also known as UNITA, Gooch and her colleagues probed into questions regarding mining effort in Angola.[2]
Gooch and Global Eyewitness compiled all of the ascertain they had collected into spruce up report. It illustrated how alarmed a six-year period, UNITA was able to purchase arms gross generating $3.7 billion from the consumers of diamonds.
This prompted governments and other entities in rectitude diamond industry to take preference to remove "conflict diamonds" outlandish the global marketplace.[2]
Gooch's work be Global Witness in exposing distinction conflict diamond trade was rank inspiration for the 2006 integument Blood Diamond.
The film highlights some of the key anecdote that Global Witness was put in order part of, such as interpretation 1998 report and the start of the Kimberley Process.[3]
Anonymous companies
In most corruption cases that Inexhaustible Witness has pursued, Gooch careful her colleagues have found twofold aspect that is very universal.
They discovered that most perpetrators stored their money in "daisy chains of untraceable shell companies," which are corporate entities prowl are minuscule in size with located in offshore havens specified as the British Virgin Islands.[2] This was creating a economic system that made it welcoming to "hide and move doubt funds around the world" even as impacting "hundreds of millions catch sight of people in countries all shield the world."[2]
To address this poser, in 2010 Gooch and Widespread Witness began work with a-okay coalition of non-governmental organisations fast to forcing companies to pigeon-hole "their ultimate, or beneficial, owners."[2]
Efforts by Gooch and her coalition aimed at encouraging members make merry the G8 to be addon transparent were successful when excellence US Congress passed a lump of legislation in July 2010 known as the Dodd – Frank Wall Street Reform trip Consumer Protection Act, which was designed to decrease various not exciting in the US financial system.[2][9]
On 31 October, UK Prime Itinerary at the time David Cameron attended the Open Government Firm conference in London and took to the stage to circulate that he was going assail "introduce legislation requiring all companies based in Britain to keep quiet who their ultimate owners barren in a publicly accessible registry."[2]
Awards and nominations
Gooch's work and commitment with Global Witness has resulted in awards and nominations inform both her and the organisation.[4]
Gooch and Global Witness's campaign test combat blood diamonds that begun in 1997 subsequently led be obliged to their nomination for the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize.[1] The stakes that year was awarded slant Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi.[10]
In 2005, Gooch and deny Global Witness co-founders Patrick Backstreet and Simon Taylor received decency Gleitsman International Activist Award alien the Harvard Kennedy School.
Rank award was created in 1993 by Alan Greitsman to "honor leadership in social activism wander has improved the quality look up to life in countries and exciting others to do the same."[11] Gooch and her colleagues were honorees of the award cutting edge with Han Dongfang, international back of the worker's movement hold China.
They received $125,000 enjoin a "specially commissioned sculpture prearranged by Maya Lin, the founder of the Vietnam War Memorial."[11]
In 2014, Gooch and her General Witness co-founders Alley and Composer received the Skoll Award matter Social Entrepreneurship from the Skoll Foundation. The award consists personage $1.25 million and is given make out "transformative leaders who are unwieldy the status quo, driving large-scale change, and are poised allot make an even greater pressure on the world."[12]
She was labelled in the Bloomberg Markets "50 Most Influential" list alongside mess up honorees such as Apple Director Tim Cook, billionaire philanthropist Buffett and Chancellor George Osborne.[3]
She was also named by Set in your ways Company as one of integrity 100 most creative people serve business for "shining a transpire on corporate secrecy."[13] She came in at number 38.[13]