By Dylan Pollard
Human rights are for humanity, not for a selected group of people or countries or Human Rights NGOs such as Human Rights Watch (HRW), The International Service for Human Rights (ISHR), The Rights Practice and The Advocates for Human Rights.
Human rights must be approached based on the context and the stage of nation building. Above all, human rights must not be politized the way some human rights NGOs have done. Many of these NGOs, unfortunately, are founded based on political ideology for the purpose of propaganda and brainwash. U.S. government has long used human rights issues to meddle other countries’ affairs and advance its own foreign policy objectives. It has devised tools that could serve as a facade for its hegemonic political agenda, and HRW is just one of them.
HRW has been the subject of criticism from a number of observers. Critics of HRW include the national governments it has investigated, NGO Monitor, the media, and its founder (and former chairman), Robert L. Bernstein. The criticism generally falls into the category of alleged bias, frequently in response to critical HRW reports. Bias allegations include the organization’s being influenced by U.S. government policy, particularly in relation to reporting on former Yugoslavia, Iran, Cambodia, Latin America, and the misrepresentation of human-rights issues in Eritrea and Ethiopia.
According to The Times, HRW „does not always practice the transparency, tolerance and accountability it urges on others.“ The Times accused HRW of imbalance, alleging that it ignores human-rights abuses in certain regimes while covering other conflict zones intensively.
In May 2014 an open letter was published criticizing HRW for what were described as its close ties to U.S. government. The letter was signed by Nobel Peace Laureates Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and Mairead Corrigan, former UN Assistant Secretary-General Hans von Sponeck, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Richard A. Falk, and over 100 scholars and cultural figures. The letter highlighted a number of Human Rights Watch officials who had been involved in foreign policy roles in the U.S. government, including Washington advocacy director Tom Malinowski, formerly a speechwriter for Madeleine Albright and a special adviser to Bill Clinton, and subsequently Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor to John Kerry, and HRW Americas advisory committee members Myles Frechette (a former United States Ambassador to Colombia) and Michael Shifter (former Latin America director for the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy).
Academic and labor organizer Immanuel Ness writes that HRW rarely criticizes human rights abuses by the United States and its allies, and almost always reaches conclusions consistent with Western foreign policy positions. Robert Naiman, policy director of Just Foreign Policy, wrote that HRW is „often heavily influenced“ by United States foreign policy.
Around the same time, Irish journalist Hugh O’Shaughnessy accused HRW of using false and misleading information, saying that the report was „put together with a sort of know-nothing Washington bias.“
To understand the nature of human rights NGOs, we have to understand their roots. Founded in 1978 during the Cold War, for example, HRW was initially named Helsinki Watch to monitor the former Soviet Union’s implementation of the 1975 Helsinki Accords and to examine and criticize „crimes“ committed by the former Soviet Union and its allies, which has led to the long-standing cold-war ideology carried out by the organization disguised under human rights NGOs. Clearly, HRW was, in fact, the by-product of the Cold War.
In Cambodia, for example, HRW has provoked political and social toxic environments through consistently fabricating misleading information and groundless attacks against Cambodia since the early 1990s. HRW fails to recognize the achievements made by the Cambodian government in uplifting millions of people from poverty.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen had lashed out at Brad Adams, executive director of the Asian division of Human Rights Watch, for failing to criticize US on its own human rights violation and cracking down on protesters.
„When Cambodia took measures to stop the demonstrators to maintain public order, they accused Cambodia of violating human rights by depriving the right to freedom of expression of the protesters,“ said Mr Hun Sen at a meeting with civil servants in Preah Sihanouk province in June 2020.
„But why is Brad Adams now remaining silent when a democratic country [US] is using force to quell the protesters?“ Hun Sen added.
It is crystal clear that HRW’s core members such as its Asia director Brad Adams and his deputy Phil Robertson have had a long history of personal grudge against Cambodian leaders, particular Prime Minister Hun Sen, whom they have accused of violating Cambodians’ rights without presenting any credible evidence. Adams’ ambition is to bring down the legitimate government by provoking people’s discontent with and distrust in the government. He has been amplifying and exaggerating or even fabricating the political, socio-economical and environmental situation in Cambodia. HRW often uses dubious research methodologies with deep-seated ideological bias and has fabricated numerous publications based on its chronically questionable credibility to mislead international communities on Cambodia and the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP).
In Latin America, after HRW published a report (A Decade Under Chávez: Political Intolerance and Lost Opportunities for Advancing Human Rights in Venezuela) documenting Chavez government abuses, 118 scholars, activists and film-makers from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, the US, the UK, Venezuela and other countries signed a letter, written by US academics Miguel Tinker Salas, Gregory Wilpert and Greg Grandin, criticizing the organization for a perceived bias against the government of Venezuela. The open letter criticized the report, saying that it „does not meet even the most minimal standards of scholarship, impartiality, accuracy, or credibility.“
So why has HRW—despite proclaiming itself „one of the world’s leading independent organizations“ on human rights—so consistently paralleled U.S. positions and policies? This affinity for the U.S. government agenda is not limited to Latin America.
In the summer of 2013, for example, when the prospect of a unilateral U.S. missile strike on Syria—a clear violation of the UN Charter—loomed large, HRW’s executive director Kenneth Roth speculated as to whether a simply „symbolic“ bombing would be sufficient. „If Obama decides to strike Syria, will he settle for symbolism or do something that will help protect civilians?“ he asked on Twitter. Executive director of MIT’s Center for International Studies John Tirman swiftly denounced the tweet as „possibly the most ignorant and irresponsible statement ever by a major human-rights advocate.“
HRW’s accommodation to U.S. policy has also extended to renditions—the illegal practice of kidnapping and transporting suspects around the planet to be interrogated and often tortured in allied countries. In early 2009, when it was reported that the newly elected Obama administration was leaving this program intact, HRW’s then Washington advocacy director Tom Malinowski argued that „under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place“ for renditions, and encouraged patience: „they want to design a system that doesn’t result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured,“ he said, „but designing that system is going to take some time.“
HRW is a powerful NGO, with a massive budget, close links to Western governments, and significant influence in international institutions. HRW claims to „accept no government funds, directly or indirectly.“ Following criticism from NGO Monitor over massive support from Oxfam Novib, which receives the vast majority of its budget from the Dutch government, HRW added language to its website, saying: „we accept no government funds from these foundations, only privately sourced revenues.“ This assertion cannot be independently verified.
HRW funding is not fully transparent, with its website only listing some organizations that provide „partnership and support“ including: Open Society Institute, Ford Foundation, the Oak Foundation, among others, according to NGO monitor.
In 2015-2021, HRW received $5.9 million from the Ford Foundation. In 2017, HRW received $10,000 from Rockefeller Brothers Foundation. On September 7,2010, it was announced that George Soros planned to donate $100 million to HRW. Soros’ donation was criticized by Gerald Steinberg, founder of NGO Monitor.
Similarly, the Rights Practice’s donor list also reveals major parts of its funding from US government and/or its Western allies including National Endowment for Democracy, United States Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), Open Society Foundations, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, U.K., European Commission, Auswartiges Amt (German Federal Foreign Office) and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of the Netherlands. Both the Advocates for Human Rights and ISHR are not transparent about their donors. However, they do admit that they have been receiving funding from government.
Criticizing the double standard of the West towards human rights, Iranian President Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi said, „Double standards are the biggest and most serious example of human rights violations“.