Statewatch: About

About Statewatch
Follow us on and Statewatch services - with links to 11 free resources (pdf)

Statewatch is a non-profit-making voluntary group founded in 1991. It is comprised of lawyers, academics, journalists, researchers and community activists. Its European network of contributors is drawn from 18 countries. Statewatch encourages the publication of investigative journalism and critical research in Europe the fields of the state, justice and home affairs, civil liberties, accountability and openness.

One of Statewatch's primary purposes is to provide a service for civil society to encourage informed discussion and debate - through the provision of news, features and analyses backed up by full-text documentation so that people can access for themselves primary sources and come to their own conclusions.

Statewatch is the research and education arm of a UK registered charity and is funded by grant-making trusts and donations from individuals. You can support our work by making a donation.

For more information, read our brochure (pdf). If you are interested in contributing work to Statewatch, please get in touch.

A wide audience

Statewatch's services are very widely used:

The Statewatch website has over 110,000 unique visitors each month, over 1 million "hits" and visit, on average, over 20,000 separate pdf/URLs are visited each month. Thousands of people are signed up to our e-mail list (9,859) and follow us on Twitter (6,862)
The Statewatch database contains over 34,300 items from 1991 - ongoing

Website access and usage
2016: 1,155,540 user sessions, 12,089,510 hits
2015: 858,601 user sessions,14,730,845 hits
2014: 817,219 user sessions,10,088,230 hits
2013: 931,851 user sessions, 9,578,024 hits
2012: 959,237 user sessions, 7,305,161 hits
2011: 1,198,831 user sessions, 10,288,301 hits
2010: 2,070,595 user sessions, 11,306,982 hits
2009: 1,263,573 user sessions, 7,305,161 hits
2008: 1,232,435 user sessions, 9,896,072 hits
2007: 1,693,941 user sessions, 6,464,960 hits
2006: 1,341,158 user sessions, 5,446,221 hits
2005: 979,772 user sessions, 4,076,016 hits

Awards and praise

Statewatch has received six Awards for its work:

2011: Liberty awards Statewatch the human rights "Long Walk" Award: "For dedication to openness, democracy and informed debate about European institutions, keeping us reliably informed and suitably engaged for the last 20 years. Their network of independent volunteers has become one of the most respected and reliable sources of investigative journalism and critical research in the fields of the state, justice, home affairs and civil liberties in the European Union."
2004: European Voice newspaper, Brussels: Tony Bunyan, Statewatch editor, selected by a distinguished panel as one of the "EV50", one of the fifty most influential people in the European Union over the year for Statewatch's work on civil liberties and the "war on terrorism"
2001: European Voice newspaper, Brussels: Tony Bunyan, Statewatch editor, selected by a distinguished panel as one of the "EV50", one of the the fifty most influential people in the European Union over the year for Statewatch's work on access to documents in the EU
2001: The European Information Association gave Statewatch the "Chadwyck-Healey Award for achievement in
European Information" for its work on openness and the new code of access to EU documents
1999: Privacy International gave Statewatch an award for its work in exposing EU-FBI telecommunications surveillance plans
1998: The Campaign for Freedom of Information gave Statewatch an Award for its work on fighting for EU openness (access to documents)

A wide range of individuals and groups have praised our work:

"The campaign group Statewatch has performed great service over the years monitoring the activities of the European Union in the area of civil liberties. Its communications are a source of detailed, solidly researched, information on which NO2ID among many others (of all political persuasions) has come to rely" - No2ID, UK
"Statewatch provides a tremendous service rooting out documents which most of us have no idea how to get hold of!" - European Information Association
"We believe that, in general, Statewatch is a paradigm of sound scholarship" - Foundation for Critical Thinking
"A systematic job of researching this. It's the one source you need in Europe. It collects a lot. This is very serious. It's following the process for several years. So for any journalist training we do, doing FOI issues, that would be the one address to go to and say have a look there" - Wilfried Ruetten, Director of the European Journalism Centre, on Statewatch's work on FOI in the EU
"Statewatch has persistently and systematically over two decades, brought to public attention (through its exemplary website and thorough expert opinions, evidence and otherwise) the hidden and barely visible activities of EU executive power in its various components and manifestations. Often working behind the scenes, quietly, with little or no public funding.. individuals, such as Tony Bunyan, Professor Steve Peers and Dr Ben Hayes and others, have tirelessly worked to bring information and facts into the public domain" - Professor Deirdre Curtin in her book 'Executive Powers of the European Union' (Oxford, 2009)
"Statewatch's work in highlighting developments at the EU level over the past 30 years for the benefit of organisations like ICCL across Europe has proven invaluable" - Irish Council for Civil Liberties
"Statewatch is the most reliable source of comment and official documents - many not publicly available until request by Statewatch - on the most controversial areas of EU policy. It currently has the best coverage from around Europe of the "Mos maiorum"Joint Police Operation coordinated by the Italian Presidency, aimed at tackling illegal immigration to the EU." (INFO-EUROPA is edited by Patrick Overy at the European Documentation Centre, University of Exeter and Eric Davies of Eurojargon Enterprises, October 2014)
Steve Peers (Professor of Law, University of Essex) in the 4th Edition of EU Justice and Home Affairs Law (2016):"I am, as before, indebted to Tony Bunyan and Statewatch for continued advice and assistance."

History

The predecessor to Statewatch was "State Research" (1977-1982) (pdf) It produced a bi-monthly bulletin, carried out in-depth research, maintained a library and provided speakers. State Research monitored the UK state and civil liberties ,state agencies - Special Branch and MI5. racism, surveillance, protests and the activities of MI6 and the CIA.

Partners

As well as working with our contributors group, Statewatch works with a wide range of other organisations. We are a
member of:

We have also collaborated with a range of groups and organisations on particular projects and reports:

Back from the battlefield: domestic drones in the UK was co-published with Drone Wars UK
Eurodrones, Inc., Legalising Surveillance and NeoConOpticon were co-published with the Transnational Institute
Securing Europe through Counter-terrorism: Impact, Legitimacy and Effectiveness (SECILE): a part-EU funded project
of assembled European human rights and legal research experts tasked with exploring the true impact of European counter-terrorism policy since 2001
Statewatch was one of the founder members of the European Civil Liberties Network, which attempted to bring together groups working on similar issues across Europe
The Policy Laundering Project was set up with the American Civil Liberties Union and Privacy International

Funders

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