The Revolving Door at Human Rights Watch

[Judi Lynn]

Weekend Edition July 11-13, 2014
An Open Letter to Kenneth Roth

The Revolving Door at Human Rights Watch

by MAIREAD MAGUIRE, ADOLFO PEREZ ESQUIVEL, RICHARD FALK, HANS von SPONECK & KEANE BHATT


Dear Kenneth Roth,

While we welcome your stated commitment to Human Rights Watch’s independence and credibility, we are dismayed by your rejection of our common-sense suggestion for strengthening them: bar those who have crafted or executed U.S. foreign policy from serving as HRW staff, advisors or board members—or, at a bare minimum, mandate lengthy “cooling-off” periods before and after any associate moves between HRW and the foreign-policy divisions of the U.S. government.

Before addressing your letter’s objections to the three instances of HRW’s advocacy that suggest a conflict of interest, we would like to reiterate that they were “limited to only recent history,” and that other cases could have been raised as well. One obvious example of HRW’s failure to appropriately criticize U.S. crimes occurred after the 2004 coup d’état against the democratically elected government of Haiti. The U.S. government essentially kidnapped Haiti’s president; thousands of people were killed under the ensuing coup regime; and deposed officials of the constitutional government were jailed.

In the face of what were likely the worst human rights abuses of any country in the Western hemisphere at the time, HRW barely lifted a finger. HRW never hosted a press conference criticizing the coup or post-coup atrocities. In contrast to HRW’s appeals to the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Democratic Charter for Venezuela and Cuba, HRW never publicly invoked the Charter in the case of Haiti, even as Articles 20 and 21 afforded multilateral measures “in the event of an unconstitutional alteration of the constitutional regime.” HRW never placed an op-ed about the overthrow in a prominent newspaper. (In 2004 The New York Times alone published at least five HRW opinion pieces and four HRW letters on other subjects.) It is reasonable for outside observers to question whether this lack of response from HRW to such large-scale human rights violations had anything to do with U.S. foreign-policy priorities.

The very existence of such questions regarding HRW’s advocacy should be reason enough to impose sharp restrictions on HRW’s close ties to the U.S. government. Given the impact of global perceptions on HRW’s ability to carry out its work, simply the appearance of impropriety can impede HRW’s effectiveness. Closing HRW’s revolving door would be an important first step to allaying or preempting concerns that HRW’s priorities are compromised.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/11/the-revolving-door-at-human-rights-watch/

[The Magistrate]

1. People Forget, Ma'am

Human Rights Watch was pretty much set up as a right-wing alternative to Amnesty International, which gave the Reagan administration fits by pointing to crimes of authoritarian regimes his administration backed as 'anti-communist', back when Jean Kirkpatrick famously maintained torture by an anti-communist government was somehow different from torture by a left or communist government, such that while the latter deserved condemnation, the former did not. It has lapsed in some degree from that early commitment, if for no other reason than the fact that most people who go in for the work are more liberal than not, but the roots run deep.