Human Rights Watch

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Human Rights Watch ( HRW ) is a US , international, non-governmental organization that promotes human rights through investigations and outreach . It is based in New York City .

history

Human Rights Watch was founded in 1978 under the name Helsinki Watch to document compliance with the Helsinki Final Act by the Soviet Union and to support Soviet human rights groups. In 1988, Helsinki Watch merged with other international organizations pursuing similar goals to form Human Rights Watch .

The organization employs around 400 full-time employees worldwide (in 2019: 465), as well as additional experts and volunteers on a project basis. In fiscal 2012, HRW had a budget of $ 59 million; in 2019, it was $ 93 million, with 36% of its revenue coming from sources outside the United States.

Human Rights Watch is funded solely through donations from individuals and foundations. The organization categorically rejects (financial) aid from national governments.

In September 2010, billionaire George Soros donated $ 100 million to the organization.

Kenneth Roth (2008)

Kenneth Roth has been Executive Director of Human Rights Watch since 1993 .

Positions

The organization focuses primarily on research and high-profile reporting on human rights violations. The main concern of the organization is the prevention of social or gender-based discrimination , corruption in governments and abuse of state violence (e.g. torture and solitary confinement ). A separate sub-department deals exclusively with human rights violations against women. Human Rights Watch was one of six non-governmental organizations that formed the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers in 1998.

  • Like most human rights groups, Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty .
  • The organization advocates legal and unhindered access to abortion.
  • On March 2, 2005, Human Rights Watch unsuccessfully initiated a criminal case against Donald Rumsfeld in an Illinois court for condoning torture in US military prisons .
  • During the 2006 Lebanon War , HRW publicly accused Israel of having committed war crimes through the air raid on Cana and hospitals, clearly marked ambulances, refugee convoys with white flags and war crimes through the use of internationally banned weapons (e.g. phosphor bombs) .
  • In July 2014, the organization accused the NSA and other US intelligence agencies of interfering with investigative journalism in the US and jeopardizing the freedom of the press with their surveillance .

Honors

The organization in turn awards the Alison Des Forges and Hellman Hammett Grants, named after Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett .

criticism

In November 2006, Jonathan Cook criticized a publication by HRW in CounterPunch magazine about human rights violations against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip , which were used by Palestinian terrorist organizations as organized human shields, as one-sided. For his part, Cook sympathized with the Palestinian suicide bomber Fatma al-Najar.

In mid-July 2009 Jeffrey Goldberg reported in The Atlantic magazine about author David Bernstein, who alleged that a group of HRW officials headed by Middle East chief Sarah Leah Whitson had traveled to Saudi Arabia was "to raise money from wealthy Saudis by highlighting HRW's demonization of Israel"; denouncing the disastrous human rights situation in Saudi Arabia was only a secondary goal of the trip.

In May 2014, Nobel Peace Prize winners Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and Mairead Maguire , former UN Deputy Secretary-General Hans von Sponeck , UN Special Envoy Richard Falk and over a hundred scholars wrote an open letter to Kenneth Roth explaining the proximity of Human Rights Watch to the US Government & a. in the form of the "revolving door system" between Human Rights Watch and the US government and called on the organization to end this situation.

On November 5, 2019, the Supreme Court in Jerusalem declared the planned expulsion of the regional leader Omar Shakir to be legal. The Ministry of the Interior decided in 2018 not to extend Shakir's work visa because it supported boycotts. Omar Schakir, an American with Iraqi roots, left Israel in December 2019 and continued his work from neighboring Jordan.

In 2020, Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth was caught accepting donations from Saudi real estate magnate Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber on condition that the $ 470,000 donation was not in support of LGBT advocacy may be used in the Middle East and North Africa. The donation was returned and Human Rights Watch issued a statement saying that accepting the donation was a "deeply unfortunate decision" in response to an investigation report by The Intercept newspaper into the donation.

literature

Web links

Commons : Human Rights Watch  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Markus Bickel: Jihadism: Common enemies, different readings. In: faz.net. September 28, 2014, accessed February 6, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Frequently Asked Questions, on the HRW website, accessed on November 14, 2013 (English)
  3. ↑ HRW Annual Report 2019. Accessed on April 18, 2020 (English).
  4. ↑ Via Human Rights Watch - FAQ In: hrw.org , accessed February 6, 2018.
  5. ↑ Charity: Billionaire Soros donates $ 100 million to Human Rights Watch. In: zeit.de. Zeit Online / dpa, September 7, 2010, accessed on February 6, 2018 .
  6. ↑ BBC News: Qana bombs at Israeli war crime (English) 31 July, 2006.
  7. ↑ HRW: US: Surveillance Harming Journalism, Law, Democracy . July 28, 2014
  8. ↑ Human Rights Watch & ACLU (eds.): With Liberty to Monitor All: How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming Journalism, Law, and American Democracy. Human Rights Watch, 2014, ISBN 978-1-62313-181-4 ( PDF; 1.17 MB )
  9. ^ Marc Pitzke : Consequences of the NSA spy madness: The end of freedom of the press . In: Spiegel Online . July 28, 2014
  10. ^ United Nations - Department of Public Information: WINNERS OF 2008 UNITED NATIONS HUMAN RIGHTS PRIZE ANNOUNCED; AWARDS WILL BE MADE ON HUMAN RIGHTS DAY, DECEMBER 10, IN GENERAL ASSEMBLY , from website un.org , November 26, 2008, accessed June 9, 2009.
  11. ↑ Winner 2016: Human Rights Watch , In: ifa.de , June 22, 2016, accessed on June 22, 2016.
  12. ^ "Human Rights Watch published (...) [i] n its press release 'Civilians Must Not Be Used to Shield Homes Against Military Attacks' [and] lambasts armed Palestinian groups for calling on civilians to surround homes that have been targeted for air strikes by the Israeli military. ”Jonathan Cook: Would HRW Have Attacked Martin Luther King, Too? ( Memento of January 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), in: CounterPunch , November 30, 2006, Nazareth.
  13. ↑ Jeffrey Goldberg , Fundraising Corruption at Human Rights Watch , The Atlantic , July 15, 2009
  14. ^ Human Rights Watch Goes to Saudi Arabia Seeking Saudi Money to Counterbalance "Pro-Israel Pressure Groups" . In: The Wallstreet Journal , Dow Jones & Company, Inc., July 15, 2009. Archived from the original on December 27, 2014. Retrieved on February 5, 2018. 
  15. ^ Nobel Peace Laureates to Human Rights Watch: Close Your Revolving Door to US Government , AlterNet, May 12, 2014; Kenneth Roth's answer to the open letter: Letter to Nobel Laureates ( Memento of July 7, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), HRW; Reply from Mairead Maguire, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Richard Falk, Hans von Sponeck and Keane Bhatt: Nobel Peace Laureates Slam Human Rights Watch's Refusal to Cut Ties to US Government , AlterNet; James Grainger: Human Rights Watch's 'revolving door' , Buenos Aires Herald ; Debate with Amy Goodman , Nermeen Shaykh, Keane Bhatt and Reed Brody : Is Human Rights Watch Too Close to US Gov't to Criticize Its Foreign Policy? , Democracy Now , June 11, 2014; Open letter to Kenneth Roth: Nobel Peace Laureates to Human Rights Watch: Close Your Revolving Door to US Government , Global Research , May 12, 2014; Beate Taufer: Nobel Laureates accuse Human Rights Watch of closeness to the US government , amerika21.de , May 30, 2014; Joe Emersberger: HRW Claims US 'Most Powerful Proponent of Human Rights'? , Telesur , February 2, 2015; Jack Healey: Revolvers: Blurred Lines Between Human Rights Organizations and the State Department , Huffington Post , July 2, 2014.
  16. ↑ Supreme Court confirms expulsion of HRW regional manager. Israelnetz.de , November 6, 2019, accessed on November 10, 2019 .
  17. ^ Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com): Omar Shakir cannot be silenced | DW | 11/25/2019. Deutsche Welle, November 25, 2019, accessed on April 13, 2020 (German).
  18. ↑ Alex Emmons: Human Rights Watch Took Money From Saudi Businessman After Documenting His Coercive Labor Practices. In: The Intercept. March 2, 2020, Retrieved April 18, 2020 (American English).