Jan Dröge

GLS 312 – International Organizations

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international, non-government organization that focuses on human rights. Founded in 1978, it is headquartered in the Empire State Building in New York City with offices in many other cities worldwide, including Amsterdam, Beirut, Brussels, Geneva, Moscow, Tokyo and Washington, D.C. HRW was originally founded as a private US-based NGO under the name “Helsinki Watch”, created to monitor the former Soviet Union’s compliance with the Helsinki Accords – an act that was aimed at improving the relations between the Communist bloc around the Soviet Union, and the West.
Purpose and Mission According to HRW’s website, its mission is “to become a voice of Justice” and to “defend Human Rights worldwide”. The organization states that it is independent and international, and works as “part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and advance the cause of human rights for all.”
Corresponding to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, HRW opposes violations of what is considered basic human rights, which include capital punishment and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Furthermore, HRW advocates freedom in connection with what it calls fundamental human rights, such as freedom of religion, speech and press. The organization adopted a methodology of drawing international attention to these issues by publicly “naming and shaming” abusive governments through media coverage and direct exchanges with policymakers. Researchers of the NGO conduct fact-finding missions to investigate potential violations of human rights, also using diplomacy, staying in touch with victims, and providing required security for them in critical situations, while at the same time generating coverage in local and international media. Some of the issues that have been addressed by HRW include social and gender discrimination, torture, use of child soldiers, political corruption, and the legalization of abortion.

Organizational Structure HRW employs more then 275 staff in more then 90 countries around the world, including country experts, lawyers, journalists, and academics. Currently, executive director of the organization is Kenneth Roth, who has graduated from Yale Law School and Brown University and has held the position since 1993. Roth has conducted investigations on abuses in Poland after martial law was declared in 1981. At a later point, he also focused on Haiti, which had just emerged from the Duvalier dictatorship but continued to be plagued with human rights violations. James F. Hoge serves as chairman of the organization. Robert L. Bernstein, the American publisher and human rights activist, served as the Founding Chair of the Human Rights Watch until 1998 and later as Founding Chair Emeritus. He, however, also later went on to criticize HRW in a New York Times OpEd for what he considers its unfair treatment of Israel. He wrote that the organization he founded had “"lost its critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah.” Human Rights Watch, which is often compared to Amnesty International, has its major difference in the group’s structure: its documentations of human rights abuse most often consist of extensive analysis of political and historical backgrounds of the conflicts concerned. Amnesty International, on the other hand, usually reports with less analysis, and instead focuses on specific abuses of human rights.
Relations to Governments and UN
Human Rights Watch states is independent and does not take accept any direct or indirect funding from governments, or support from “any private founder that could compromise our objectivity and independence”. It has often been criticized, however, by national governments, other NGOs and the media for being influenced by the agenda of U.S. foreign policy, in particular in relation to conducting research on Latin America. It has also been accused of unfair and biased reporting of human rights issues in Eritrea and Ethiopia, as well as of being biased against Israel in relation to reporting on the Arab-Israel conflict.
Funding Sources As recorded in June 2011, the organization’s total annual expense totaled at $50.6 million. Human Rights Watch has stated that it receives almost 75% of their financial support from North America, 25% from Western Europe and less than 1% from the rest of the world. In a 2008 financial assessment, HRW published that it does not accept any direct or indirect funding from governments and is financed solely through financial contributions from private individuals and foundations. Just recently in 2010, financier and philanthropist George Soros announced his plan to donate $100 million to the organization in increments of $10 million, over the period of 10 years. According to him, HRW is “one of the most effective organizations I [Soros] support. Human rights underpin our greatest aspirations: they’re at the heart of open societies.” Soros’s donation, which was the largest in the organization’s history, allowed it to increase its annual operating budget from $48 million to $80 million. Charity Navigator, an independent American nonprofit corporation that evaluates charities, gave HRW a four-star rating overall, but only a three-star rating in their financial rating. The Better Business Bureau said HRW meets its standards for charity accountability. In 2011, 15% of the organization’s budget went to projects in Africa and around 12% to projects in Asia.
Advocacy Work Human Rights Watch’s main products are it crisis-directed research and lengthy reports on what it considers basic human rights abuse. It publishes these reports through local and international media in order to draw attention from the international community to the issue. HRW also focuses on mass letter-writing campaigns, adopting individuals as “prisoners of conscience” and lobbying for their release. The organization will openly lobby for specific actions for other governments to take against human rights offenders, including identifying specific individuals for arrest, or for sanctions to be levied against certain countries. Just recently, HRW called for punitive sanctions against the top leaders in Sudan who had overseen a killing campaign in Darfur. Likewise, the group has also called for human rights activists who have been detained in Sudan to be released. Human Rights Watch states in its mission statement that it is “actively focused on impact.” Claiming that the organization only succeeds when its actions lead to positive and sustainable change, it is passionate about being never complacent and always on the lookout for “new opportunities to advance [our] cause”. The group also voiced its commitment to working on difficult situations, “where long-term attention is required for meaningful impact”.
Programs on the Ground Human Rights Watch, as an organization, conducts its research and publishes reports throughout many geographic regions of the world. Logically, these are usually regions that are experiencing or have experienced political turmoil and are often part of a greater, geo-political conflict. More recently, Human Rights Watch has been mostly active throughout the Middle East and vast parts of Africa. The organization has conducted investigations especially throughout the Syrian civil war, as well as the on-going Israel-Palestine conflict, and is updating on a daily basis its coverage of those conflicts and the corresponding human rights abuse. HRW also actively lobbies and fights for reforming or banning certain practices that are seen throughout the world, such as child labor and soldiers, the elimination of the use of land mines, extractive industries and education.

Impact Assessment When assessing the impact of an organization like Human Rights Watch, one always has to keep in mind the task or mission that one these NGOs is dealing with. Certainly, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to abolish all human rights abuse worldwide, forever. Thus, one has to ask how effective, and how much of an impact this organization has, given the amount of resources that are available to it. That being said, it can in my opinion be concluded that HRW is reasonably successful at fighting human rights abuse – if not at actually eliminating it always and everywhere, then at least at drawing international attention to these issues, which often is half the task. Human Rights Watch most effectively combats human rights violations by doing exactly that – it conducts its research and publishes detailed reports of what type of violation is occurring, which is then extensively covered by local and international media. It then actively lobbies governments to take certain actions against individual or groups that HRW believes will help eliminating further human rights abuse. As the group cannot actively, physically intervening itself, it would be fair to say that HRW does everything they are capable of in fighting human rights abuse. At the end of the day the group itself does not have the manpower and tools necessary to intervene itself, so it is fair to say that they are effective in what their task is – which is drawing international attention to the issues involved.

Bibliohraphy

"Charity Navigator Rating - Human Rights Watch." Charity Navigator. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2014. http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=3845#.VCicr0v9JBU.

"False Allegations about Human Rights Watch's Latest Gaza Report | Human Rights Watch." HRW.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2014. <http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/08/14/false-allegations-about-human-rights-watch-s-latest-gaza-report>.

"Financial Statements 2011." Human Rights Watch, Inc. (n.d.): n. pag. HRW.org. Human Rights Watch. Web. 28 Sept. 2014.

Horn, Jordana. "Soros to Give Human Rights Watch $100m. over 10 Years." Soros to Give Human Rights Watch $100m. over 10 Years. J Post, n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2014.

"Human Rights Watch | Defending Human Rights Worldwide." Human Rights Watch | Defending Human Rights Worldwide. HRW, n.d. Web. 26 Sept. 2014. <http://www.hrw.org/>

"Human Rights Watch (international Organization)." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2014. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1459072/Human-Rights-Watch>.

--------------------------------------------
[ 1 ]. Financial Statements 2011
[ 2 ]. Horn, Jordana
[ 3 ]. Human Rights Watch