Speaking of small players doing big things, The Center for Global Development singled Global Witness out for its prestigious 2007 Commitment to Development Award. "The Commitment to Development 'Ideas in Action' Award honors individuals or organizations for 'raising public awareness and changing the attitudes and policies of the rich world toward developing countries.'"

Global Witness has done that by focusing its efforts on specific abuses in specific places. The entire organization has a staff of only 35, but they've learned to leverage their strengths:

Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development, said Global Witness, founded in 1992 by environmental activists Patrick Alley, Charmian Gooch and Simon Taylor, has repeatedly exposed "the corrupt exploitation of natural resources and the international trade system" as well as human rights and environmental abuses.

Its first investigation of illegal timber sales by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia shut down that trade in 1995. A headline-making Global Witness report in 1998 showed how rebels in Angola were financing a deadly civil war by selling diamonds. That work, along with a January 2000 report by Partnership Africa Canada, another crusading NGO, on the role of diamonds in the civil war in Sierra Leone, figured prominently in the establishment of the Kimberley Process to certify diamonds that are not mined from conflict zones.

Global Witness, which now has a staff of 35 and a £3 million budget, produces reports and videos exposing corruption and environmental wrong-doing, especially in countries awash in oil revenues, from Turkmenistan to Equatorial Guinea. It was a founder of the Publish What You Pay campaign, which seeks transparency about how resource-rich governments spend their share of mineral revenues. Funders include a dozen foundations as well as the development agencies of Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. It recently helped put a timber and arms trafficker in jail in Holland.

Congrats to CGD for looking beyond the big players to small but significant contributors like Global Witness.