Human Rights Watch

Name	Human Rights Watch
Type	Non-profit NGO
Founded date	1978
Location	New York City, United States
Key people
Area served	Worldwide
Focus	Human rights activism
Former name	Helsinki Watch
Homepage	hrw.org

speaking at the 44th Munich Security Conference 2008]]

Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo, Toronto, and Washington.

History

Human Rights Watch was founded as a private American NGO in 1978, under the name of Helsinki Watch, to monitor the former Soviet Union's compliance with the Helsinki Accords. Helsinki Watch adopted a methodology of publicly "naming and shaming" abusive governments through media coverage and through direct exchanges with policymakers. By shining the international spotlight on human rights violations in the Soviet Union and its vassal states in Eastern Europe, Helsinki Watch contributed to the democratic transformations of the region in the late 1980s.

Each year, Human Rights Watch presents the Human Rights Defenders Award to activists around the world who demonstrate leadership and courage in defending human rights. The award winners work closely with Human Rights Watch in investigating and exposing human rights abuses.

Human Rights Watch was one of six international NGOs that founded the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers in 1998. It is also the co-chair of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, a global coalition of civil society groups that successfully lobbied to introduce the Ottawa Treaty, a treaty that prohibits the use of anti-personnel landmines.

Human Rights Watch is a founding member of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange, a global network of non-governmental organizations that monitor censorship worldwide. It also co-founded the Cluster Munition Coalition, which brought about an international convention banning the weapons. Human Rights Watch employs more than 275 staff—country experts, lawyers, journalists, and academics – and operates in more than 90 countries around the world.

The current executive director of Human Rights Watch is Kenneth Roth, who has held the position since 1993. Roth conducted investigations on abuses in Poland after martial law was declared 1981. He later focused on Haiti, which had just emerged from the Duvalier dictatorship but continued to be plagued with problems. Roth’s awareness of human rights began with stories that his father told about escaping Nazi Germany in 1938. He graduated from Yale Law School and Brown University.

Financing and services

For the financial year ending June 2008, HRW reported receiving approximately US$44 million in public donations. In 2009, Human Rights Watch stated that they receive almost 75% of their financial support from North America, 25% from Western Europe and less than 1% from the rest of the world.

According to a 2008 financial assessment, HRW reports that it does not accept any direct or indirect funding from governments and is financed through contributions from private individuals and foundations. According to NGO Monitor this policy is violated by support from the Dutch government and a May 2009 fund raising trip to Saudi Arabia.

Notably, billionaire financier and philanthropist George Soros announced in 2010 his intention to donate US$100 million to HRW over a period of ten years. He said, "Human Rights Watch is one of the most effective organizations I support. Human rights underpin our greatest aspirations: they're at the heart of open societies." The donation increases Human Rights Watch's operating budget from $48 million to $80 million. The donation was the largest in the organization's history.

Charity Navigator gave Human Rights Watch a four-star rating, the highest number of stars possible. The Better Business Bureau said Human Rights Watch meets its standards for charity accountability.

Human Rights Watch published the following program and support services spending details for the financial year ending June 2008. {| |- style="text-align:center; background:#f0f0f0;" ||Program services ||2008 Expenses (USD)

Robert L. Bernstein, Founding Chair Emeritus

James F. Hoge, Jr., Chairman of the Board

Kenneth Roth, Executive Director

Minky Worden, Media Director

Jamie Fellner, Senior Counsel for the United States Program of Human Rights Watch

Scott Long, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Director

Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa Director

Joe Stork

Marc Garlasco, former staff member

Sharon Hom

Issues and campaigns

Abolition of capital punishment worldwide

Arms trafficking

Child labor

Child soldiers

Extrajudicial killings and abductions

Extraordinary rendition by the United States

Gay rights

Genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity

Land mines

Legal proceedings against human rights abusers

Legalisation of abortion on demand

Rights of people with AIDS

Safety of civilians in war; opposes use of cluster bombs

Street children

Torture

Trafficking in women and girls

Women's rights

Publications

Human Rights Watch publishes reports on several topics and compiles annual reports ("World Report") presenting an overview of the worldwide state of human rights. Human Rights Watch has published extensively on the subjects such as Rwandan Genocide of 1994 and the conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Comparison with Amnesty International

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are the only two western-oriented international human rights organizations operating worldwide in most situations of severe oppression or abuse. The major differences lie in the groups’ structure and methods for promoting change.

Amnesty International is a mass-membership organization. Mobilization of those members is the organization's central advocacy tool. Human Rights Watch's main products are its crisis-directed research and lengthy reports, whereas Amnesty lobbies and writes detailed reports, but also focuses on mass letter-writing campaigns, adopting individuals as "prisoners of conscience" and lobbying for their release. Human Rights Watch will openly lobby for specific actions for other governments to take against human rights offenders, including naming specific individuals for arrest, or for sanctions to be levied against certain countries, recently calling for punitive sanctions against the top leaders in Sudan who have overseen a killing campaign in Darfur. The group has also called for human rights activists who have been detained in Sudan to be released.

Its documentations of human rights abuses often include extensive analysis of the political and historical backgrounds of the conflicts concerned, some of which have been published in academic journals. AI's reports, on the other hand, tend to contain less analysis, and instead focus on specific abuses of rights.

In 2010 The Times of London wrote that HRW has "all but eclipsed" Amnesty International. According to The Times, instead of being supporting by a mass membership, as AI is, HRW depends on wealthy donors who like to see the organization's reports make headlines. For this reason, according, HRW tends to "concentrate too much on places that the media already cares about," especially in disproportionate coverage of Israel.

Criticism

Criticism of Human Rights Watch may be classified into four major categories: accusations of poor research methods producing inaccurate reports, accusations of selection bias, accusations of ideological bias, and questions regarding their funding practices. anti-Israel, and anti-Ethiopian government. In 2008, Venezuela expelled the organization for its criticism. In the third category, Human Rights Watch was accused of using anti-Israeli sentiment to elicit support while fund-raising in Saudi Arabia.

Recent controversies

Robert L. Bernstein, a founder and former chairman of HRW, argued in October 2009 that "Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective" on events in the Middle East. Bernstein argued that "[t]he region is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region."

Strong criticism against Human Rights Watch was caused by the Organization's declarations in favour of CIA illegal actions of Extraordinary rendition towards suspect terrorists.

Human Rights Watch made headlines in September 2009 when its Middle East military analyst, Marc Garlasco who led investigations into Israeli wars in Lebanon and Gaza, was found posing on the internet dressed in a sweat shirt with a German Iron Cross. After pressure from the media HRW suspended Marc with pay pending an investigation. Several media reports highlighted his interest in World War II artifacts and accused him of collecting Nazi memorabilia. Garlasco has said that the allegations of Nazi sympathies were "defamatory nonsense, spread maliciously by people with an interest in trying to undermine Human Rights Watch's reporting."

In February 2011, HRW appointed Shawan Jabarin to their Mideast Advisory Board. Jabarin is a very controversial figure, labeled "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by the Israeli Supreme Court, for his dual roles in both the terrorist organization PFLP, and the human rights organization, Al Haq. HRW’s decision to include Jabarin on its Mideast Board sparked criticism from Robert L. Bernstein, the founder of HRW, Stuart Robinowitz, a prominent New York attorney who has undertaken human-rights missions for the American Bar Association and Helsinki Watch (the predecessor to HRW) in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and El Salvador, and Prof. Gerald Steinberg, the president of the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor.

In a Los Angeles Times op-ed, February 24, 2011, weeks after the rebellion against the Libyan regime had intensified and Gaddafi began murdering his own citizens, Sarah Leah Whitson, head of the Middle East and North Africa division of HRW, belatedly reversed course from her earlier reporting, acknowledging the absence of human rights “reforms” in Libya. “With no progress on any institutional or legal reforms. For sure, most Libyans we spoke with never had much faith that Moammar Qaddafi would learn new tricks, or that the announced reforms were anything more than an endless loop of promises made and broken.” Jeffrey Goldberg, writing in the Atlantic Monthly, takes Whitson to task for her having had "something of a soft spot" for Qaddafi and his son.

See also

American Freedom Campaign

Avocats Sans Frontières

Democracy Watch (International)

Freedom House

Helsinki Committee for Human Rights

Human Rights First

International Freedom of Expression Exchange

US Human Rights Network

References

External links

Human Rights Watch (official website)

Category:Civil rights organizations Category:International human rights organizations Category:Non-governmental organizations Category:Organizations established in 1978