One of the world’s largest and most influential human rights organizations is facing an unusual amount of public criticism. Two Nobel Peace Prize laureates, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and Mairead Maguire, and a group of over a hundred scholars have written an open letter to Human Rights Watch criticizing what they describe as the group’s close ties to the U.S. government.
The letter claims there is a revolving door between the U.S. government and Human Rights Watch and that it has impacted the organization’s work in certain countries, including Venezuela. It cites the example of Tom Malinowski. In the 1990s he served as a special assistant to President Bill Clinton and as a speechwriter to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Then he became HRW’s Washington advocacy director. Then, last year, he left the organization after being nominated as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor under John Kerry. The letter also notes a former CIA analyst named Miguel Díaz who sat on a Human Right Watch advisory committee from 2003 to 2011. Díaz is now at the State Department. The letter urges Human Rights Watch to bar those who have crafted or executed U.S. foreign policy from serving as staff, advisers or board members.
Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth has defended his organization’s independence. In a recent letter to the Nobel laureates, Roth wrote, quote, “We are careful to ensure that prior affiliations do not affect the impartiality of Human Rights Watch’s work.”
Roth went on to highlight the group’s history of criticizing the U.S. human rights record. Roth wrote, quote, “We routinely expose, document and denounce human rights violations by the US government, including torture, indefinite detention, illegal renditions, unchecked mass surveillance, abusive use of drones, harsh sentencing and racial disparity in criminal justice, and an unfair and ineffective immigration system.”
Keane Bhatt talking:
The concern is that the revolving-door process that we delineated in the letter leads to a perverse incentive structure. That is to say, if you are a Human Rights Watch staff member and you are to criticize harshly and in principled terms actions by the U.S. government, one shouldn’t have in the back of his or her mind the possibility of actually working for that government. And we think that that possibility of looking at the U.S. government, which, you know, Human Rights Watch should be antagonistic towards, along with any other government, one should not see that as a possibility for future career advancement. And that generates perverse incentives. The revolving-door process is something that’s quite clearly understood in other industries, like the financial sector, in which you have a revolving door there. So we are simply saying that in the case of Human Rights Watch, which stands by its independence, that it should demonstrate that independence further by implementing an actual policy to have either a cooling-off period before and after HRW associates go into the U.S. government, or that they simply bar those who have created or executed U.S. foreign policy, given that the U.S. foreign policy establishment in the U.S. government is a routine human rights violator.
what we’re talking about is both working for the U.S. government before and after Human Rights Watch. In all of the countries that you’ve listed, I’m not aware of people who have worked in that government, then in Human Rights Watch and then back into government. And that’s the revolving-door phenomenon. So, if you have credible evidence of those people, we would probably oppose that, as well.
But the second point about focusing on the United States is that, as opposed to Peru or Mexico or Brazil, the United States is the world’s largest military hegemon. And as the world’s sole superpower, which has committed, you know, various human rights violations on an order of magnitude far beyond the scope of anything that could be accused upon Mexico or another country, this is really the core issue. And I just want to ask you, if it’s only two people—Miguel Díaz from the CIA, who is now an interlocutor—
if the advisory committee is simply an honorary title, what kind of message is that sending to the world that somebody who has worked at the CIA, perhaps the world’s greatest institutional human rights violator in the past half-century, is there as a way for—as a kind of a form of credentials? You know, what does that—what does that symbolize to the rest of the world when you talk about your independence? And then, secondly, when he goes into the State Department and his job title is explicitly serving as an interlocutor before the intelligence—between the intelligence community and non-government experts, namely Human Rights Watch and other organizations, what does that signal to the international community? So, let’s not even dispute the question of whether HRW’s advocacy is aligned with U.S. foreign policy. The very appearance, the very fact that we’re having this debate, is indicative of the need of having some kind of a policy—
This is not a question of left or right. This is a question of people who are associated with leading human rights violators working there. What can he bring to the table? What can he advise upon on human rights, when he has worked at the CIA.
I would dispute the contention that this is simply an effort by Venezuela supporters to try to tarnish HRW’s good name. Again, Reed Brody is not addressing the core issue here about a revolving door that’s taking place.
Tom Malinowski is an interesting case. He worked at the White House National Security Council for Bill Clinton as its senior director when Bill Clinton initiated the Yugoslavia bombings, which Human Rights Watch itself classified as committing violations of international humanitarian law. Secondly, he was a speechwriter for Madeleine Albright when she made the infamous comments that the price is worth it, in terms of imposing U.S. sanctions that may have killed a half a million Iraqi children. Malinowski then worked at Human Rights Watch as its lead lobbyist and then, immediately after, became the assistant secretary of state. You know, and so, the kinds of comments that he made, for example, in reference to Libya after the NATO intervention, are completely unalloyed in their—in their support. And so, when Tom Malinowski is strongly supportive of NATO interventions and then goes on to work at the Obama administration, which is a human rights violator—for example, you know, the secret kill list in which Obama has the right to murder anyone on the planet based on a, you know, secret order without any judicial oversight—these are the kinds of problems that exist. And whether or not—whether or not the advocacy is tarnished, the appearance of this revolving door should be addressed.
if criminal investigations should be launched against the Bush administration, then clearly the continuation of CIA renditions, the use of torture in Bagram and in Somalia, which Jeremy Scahill quite clearly demonstrated on this broadcast, the fact that Amrit Singh from the Open Society Justice Initiative was also on this program discussing the continuous use of renditions—again, a level of human rights violation that’s perhaps, you know, unparalleled, a secret kill list to kill anyone on the planet—all of these instances demand criminal investigations. And the fact that they haven’t been pushed by Human Rights Watch for Clinton, where Tom Malinowski once worked, and Obama, where he now works, is indicative of this issue.
And secondly, I think that the core issue here is that when HRW makes criticisms toward NATO, what signal does that send the international community when NATO’s former secretary general, Javier Solana, is on the board of directors at HRW? This is somebody who HRW itself criticized for presiding over violations of international humanitarian law. So, why don’t we make a simple policy? Those who bear direct responsibility for human rights violations should not be on the board of directors of an independent human rights organization.
We should have an immediate removal of Javier Solana from the board of directors, given that his power includes being able to remove staff at HRW. That’s what board of directors at nonprofits do.
when HRW documents atrocities committed by NATO, but then does not carry them to their logical conclusion that leads the international community to question the independence.
The United States is considered by the world, in a recent poll, to be the greatest threat to world peace today by three times the margin of the second runner-up. So what does it say to the world when HRW has somebody who has presided over a military organization? What does he bring to the table? What can he actually provide in terms of his insights and knowledge of human rights, when he’s somebody who presided over the bombing of civilian targets, the use of cluster munitions and so on?
because Chávez and Maduro have nowhere near the human rights record of the Obama administration [ HRW haven’t called for the prosecution of Chávez and of Maduro.]. And secondly, that’s the core question, is whether or not HRW chooses to operationalize its relatively tepid criticisms of Obama, given the severity of those human rights violations. Let’s take the case of drone strikes in Yemen, for example. What Human Rights Watch is advocating is not for the immediate cessation of drone strikes, which have killed hundreds of civilians around the world. What they’re asking for is greater transparency on the legal rationale for continuation of those drone strikes. So, the idea that the United dates can treat the entire planet as a legitimate battlefield is simply unquestioned.
And secondly, would HRW ask for the legal rationale from the Cuban government for why it carried out a drone assassination against Luis Posada Carriles? No, of course, it would immediately denounce a violation of that sovereignty, the issue of that, and they wouldn’t be asking the Justice Ministry of Cuba to justify its use of missile strikes on Florida.
that’s another issue, which is that the parameters for HRW are narrow, such that, you know, violations of international law, such as the threat or use of force, are outside of HRW’s purview. What that means is that the lone military superpower in the world, which has violated international law on many occasions—for example, in the case of Iraq, which led to the deaths of perhaps one million Iraqis, perhaps the greatest, you know, human rights catastrophe of the 21st century—because HRW’s purview does not allow it to oppose, you know, violations of international law, such as the threat or use of force, you know, we think that that’s a defect.
But what I’m saying is a narrower point, which is that if HRW has a stated policy of neutrality, then Tom Malinowski should not be endorsing and praising Libya, the Libya strikes by NATO, in pieces in Foreign Policy, and it should not be—
documentation is different from advocacy and operationalizing that research. And when Tom Malinowski completely omits the findings of HRW itself on the cases of 72 civilians killed in eight missile strikes by NATO in Libya in his extensive pieces
When Tom Malinowski, as the Washington advocacy director, simply omits that finding from his piece on NATO’s role in Libya, what that does is it raises reasonable suspicions that this person is thinking about possibilities of working within the Obama administration. And sure enough, by having a completely unconditional support and saying that what Libya shows is that Obama should be further engaged in the Arab Spring, what that does is it creates reasonable suspicions. And that’s why it’s crucial for HRW to impose some kind of a cooling-off period. There’s 15,500 people who have signed our petition at RootsAction.org demanding for just a basic cooling-off period. Whether—we can go back and forth all day discussing HRW’s policy priorities, but if it doesn’t affect HRW’s advocacy, then there should be no problem implementing such a proposal. It’s a very commonsense proposal that’s understood in any other industry. The human rights industry should be no different.
Human Rights Watch, you know, with its endowment, a $100 million endowment from George Soros, is the leading human rights organization in the world, and it sets an agenda for other organizations. It also has, you know, an outsize influence in Congress, and it has a very powerful network within the media to get its message out. And we think that if it were more independent, that it would be leveraging those very important assets towards, you know, doing more effective human rights advocacy.
So, in the case of Aristide in 2004, Human Rights Watch barely lifted a finger in the face of massive atrocities, perhaps the worst human rights situation in the hemisphere at that time, in the Western Hemisphere. You know, HRW could have simply, you know, positioned op-eds in The Washington Post or The New York Times or elsewhere, demanding the immediate restitution of the constitutional government of Aristide and denouncing the atrocity that took place. Why didn’t that happen? You know, the Bush administration literally kidnapped Aristide, as viewers of Democracy Now! know from that reporting, and flew him to the Central African Republic. You know, in that context, under a coup government in which thousands of people were being slaughtered in Port-au-Prince alone, you know, HRW should have taken a stronger approach. And we don’t think that it’s coincidental that, you know, the U.S. role in that coup and the subsequent atrocities that took place had a role in HRW’s relative silence.
Where were you in 2004 after the coup? Why did HRW send a letter to Colin Powell, not urging for the immediate restitution, the immediate reinstatement of Aristide, but simply asking Colin Powell, the Bush administration, which kidnapped Aristide, to put pressure on the coup government—that it installed—to prosecute both paramilitary leaders who precipitated that coup and deposed officials of the constitutional government? This is a warped idea of evenhandedness, and this is exactly the kind of issue that we’re talking about. The closeness of HRW with the U.S. government creates these completely bizarre forms of evenhandedness, which at, you know, first blush may seem speciously independent, but, you know, on closer inspection are completely fraudulent.
I find it very curious that Human Rights Watch will appeal to the OAS Democratic Charter in the question of Chávez’s court packing in Venezuela but would not appeal to the OAS Democratic Charter in the case of Aristide’s ouster, an unconstitutional ouster committed by the U.S. government, putting him on a plane and kidnapping him in Africa—and sending him to Africa. Why didn’t it invoke the U.N.—the OAS Charter?
I think that in 2008 a hundred academics clearly denounced what they called, you know, flimsy and inaccurate evidence. You know, HRW is entitled to its advocacy, but you can’t make up facts. And the core issue there was that, in one instance, HRW referred to the systematic discrimination and the provision of social services based on political affiliation. They literally had one case, and that was based on hearsay. That was based on a phone call with somebody who had a 98-year-old grandmother who was denied service. I mean, this is a level of scholarship that would not be admissible, you know, at high school level.
It suggests that the revolving-door issue with HRW
María Corina Machado appeared on Televen, OK, a prominent opposition leader, and referred to the Venezuelan government as a dictatorship, said that there was no democracy, accused it of various human rights abuses, and then said that there was a legitimate case to—you know, to use the constitution to push for the ouster of the elected government. These are the kinds of comments that, you know, no senator or congressmember in the United States could ever make at ABC or NBC. Could he say that the United States is a dictatorship?
this is the kind of expression, the freedom of expression that exists in Venezuela, where, you know, somebody, a prominent opposition leader, can refer to an elected government as a dictatorship.
— source democracynow.org
Keane Bhatt, lead organizer of the letter alleging a revolving door between the U.S. government and Human Rights Watch.