While legal protections for whistleblowers have been adopted in various parts of the world, planning for the enhancement of such protections to align with the political will for legal reform remains a highly uncertain endeavour. While effective laws to protect whistleblowers are vital for holding power to account, WIN has always recognised that whistleblowers need more than the law to ensure they survive the process of speaking up and speaking out. Strategic support is essential to ensure the information disclosed is acted on and has the positive impact whistleblowers want, whether it is to a) prevent or stop further harm or damage b) hold those responsible for the wrongdoing or the harm to account and/or c) contribute to the organisational or wider change needed to help ensure that the same thing won’t happen again.
WIN was set up by civil society organisations working in the field to create an international hub of information and expertise from which they could draw for their own efforts and effectiveness when supporting whistleblowers and to ensure greater public, institutional, legal, and cultural understanding of the value of whistleblowing around the world.
We have been fascinated by the ways our work and collaborations and the issue of whistleblowing and protections have been explored by academics, whether as a matter of governance and democracy, secrecy and oppression, freedom and accountability. Here are a few examples for your reading pleasure. Please note, Professor Kenny’s article reminded us of an earlier exploration by Professor Wim Vandekerchove of how the EU Directive to protect whistleblowers came about and the role played by unions and civil society, including WIN. So we include it separately here. If you know of more essays or articles, please send them our way!
Ugljesa Radulovic, Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Johannesburg, speaks about WIN and its importance in an article titled International Cooperation for Better Whistleblower Protection in South Africa (published 10 December 2024)
Collaboration on a global scale is not missing in the realm of whistleblowing. One prominent collaborative example is the Whistleblowing International Network (WIN), which serves not only as a “global whistleblowing membership network” but also as an “information hub for the whistleblower protection community” (Whistleblowing International Network, 2019a)…
There is, similarly, international collaboration on the research front, with the International Whistleblowing Research Network providing a platform for academics and researchers to exchange their work and ideas. Several other collaborative initiatives seek to advance the global understanding of whistleblowing and how whistleblowers can be better protected.
Professor Kate Kenny of Galway University's article After months of Trump’s shock tactics, whistleblower groups are pushing back against attacks on workers’ rights (published 25 March 2025), highlights the importance of global action and the role networks like WIN and the UNCAC coalition can play in mobilising such efforts.
Organisations like the Whistleblowing International Network and the UNCAC coalition support civil society groups in countries around the world with new but fragile whistleblower protection systems introduced to support public trust and democratic accountability. These partnerships harness public opinion through the media and lobby for change. They come together in regular online events and forums to sustain momentum…
As my recent book details, this collective activism is not easy. These organisations operate on limited funding. And in the face of disinformation on social media, defending truth and facts can be challenging. Yet, as I found, strategising and collaborating can help counter aggressive opposition.
Professor Wim Vandekerckhove examines the lead up to the adoption of the EU Directive on whistleblower protection in 2019 and the essential role of unions and civil society (including WIN) in making it happen in Is it Freedom? The Coming About of the EU Directive on Whistleblower Protection (published 5 March 2021). It explores how whistleblowing in terms of a philosophical understanding of the idea of freedom and offers a valuable perspective on how this can be applied to two of the main disputed elements in the negotiations for a new EU legal framework: namely, how broadly to define the material scope (ie. what information which if disclosed would fall within the scope of protection) and whether an individual must follow a mandatory sequence of reporting to be protected or can choose which is the most appropriate recipient of the information.