Criticism of Human Rights Watch

The international non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch (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 United States government policy, particularly in relation to reporting on Yugoslavia, Latin America, and the misrepresentation of human-rights issues in Eritrea and Ethiopia. Accusations in relation to the Arab–Israeli conflict include claims that HRW is biased against Israel. HRW has publicly responded to criticism of its reporting on Latin America and the Arab–Israeli conflict.

Allegations of ideological and selection bias

HRW has been accused of evidence-gathering bias because it is said to be "credulous of civilian witnesses in places like Gaza and Afghanistan" but "skeptical of anyone in a uniform." Its founder, Robert Bernstein, accused the organization of poor research methods and relying on "witnesses whose stories cannot be verified and who may testify for political advantage or because they fear retaliation from their own rulers." In October 2009, Bernstein said that the organization had lost critical perspective on events in the Middle East: " e region is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region." HRW responded by saying that HRW "does not devote more time and energy to Israel than to other countries in the region, or in the world". Tom Porteus, director of the HRW's London branch, replied that the organization rejected Bernstein's "obvious double standard. Any credible human rights organization must apply the same human rights standards to all countries."

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 (notably Israel) intensively. Although HRW issued five reports on Israel in one fourteen-month period, ''The Times'' first said in twenty years HRW issued only four reports on the conflict in Kashmir (despite 80,000 conflict-related deaths in Kashmir and "torture and extrajudicial murder ... on a vast scale") and it first said no report on post-election violence and repression in Iran. In their correction issued on 4 April 2010, ''The Times'' said HRW had published nine articles about the conflict in Kashmir and one report about the post-election abuses in Iran in February that year.Correction: Human Rights Watch
''The Times'', 4 April 2010, on Wayback Machine A source told ''The Times'', "Iran is just not a bad guy that they are interested in highlighting. Their hearts are not in it. Let's face it, the thing that really excites them is Israel." The newspaper quoted Noah Pollak, an HRW critic and conservative commentator, said HRW cares if Israel maltreats Palestinians but "is less concerned if perpetrators are fellow Arab". One example given was the 2007 Lebanon conflict in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp and it was said HRW issued one press release but not a report. In their correction, ''The Times'' said HRW had written three press releases and had reported abuses against Palestinians by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Kuwait, Jordan and Iraq.

In the February 2013 issue of ''The Spectator'' Nick Cohen wrote, " Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch look with horror on those who speak out about murder, mutilation and oppression if the murderers, mutilators and oppressors do not fit into their script." Robert Bernstein accused HRW of allowing repressive regimes to play a "moral equivalence game", failing to weigh evidence according to whether it was collected from an open or closed society and failing to recognize any "difference between wrongs committed in self-defense and those perpetrated intentionally." ''The Times'' accused HRW of filling its staff with former radical political activists, including Joe Stork and Sarah Leah Whitson: "Theoretically an organization like HRW would not select as its researchers people who are so evidently on one side." HRW has been accused of being unwilling (or unable) to perceive threats posed by Islamic extremism because their leftist ideology leads them to see criticism of Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaeda and similar groups as "a dangerous distraction from the real struggle." An example was a 2006 verbal attack on Peter Tatchell, who was accused of racism, Islamophobia and colonialism by HRW staff for criticizing Iran's execution of homosexuals.

In May 2014 an open letter was published criticising Human Rights Watch for what were described as its close ties to the government of the United States. 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 US 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). The letter contrasted HRW's criticism of Venezuela's candidacy for the United Nations Human Rights Council in a letter to Hugo Chávez to the lack of censure regarding the United States' tenure as a member of the Council, despite the US government's use of a "kill list" for designated enemies, ongoing usage of extraordinary renditions and the continued detention of combatants at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. The signatories called on Human Rights Watch to ban those involved in formulating or carrying out US foreign policy from serving as members of the organisation's staff, advisers or board members, or as a "bare minimum", instituting lengthy cooling-off periods between spells working for HRW and in the service of US foreign policy.

Left-wing academic and labour 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.

Allegations regarding Latin America

Robert Naiman, policy director of Just Foreign Policy, wrote that HRW is "often heavily influenced" by United States foreign policy.

Venezuela

Human Rights Watch work in Venezuela became controversial in September 2008, when the country's government expelled two HRW staff members accused of "anti-state activities". Then Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro said, "These groups, dressed up as human rights defenders, are financed by the United States. They are aligned with a policy of attacking countries that are building new economic models." The report highlights the discrimination of Chávez administration against political opponents and freedom of expression. According to one of the expelled members, the decision of the Venezuelan government was against Venezuelan law.

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." HRW director Kenneth Roth responded that the letter misrepresents "both the substance and the source material of the report". 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 sort of know-nothing Washington bias." Tom Porteous, Human Rights Watch's London director, said that O'Shaughnessy " ... not only fails to provide any evidence for these allegations", but " ... more seriously, he misrepresents HRW's positions in his apparent determination to undermine our well earned international reputation for accuracy and impartiality."

Honduras

On 21 August 2009, 93 academics and authors from the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Colombia and other countries published an open letter criticizing HRW's "absence of statements and reports" on human-rights violations in Honduras after 8 July 2009, following the 28 June coup d'état. According to its authors, after 8 July HRW had not "raised the alarm over the extra-judicial killings, arbitrary detentions, physical assaults, and attacks on the press - many of which have been thoroughly documented - that have occurred in Honduras, in most cases by the coup regime against the supporters of the democratic and constitutional government of Manuel Zelaya"; they asked HRW to make a strong statement against the human-rights violations and conduct its own investigation. The letter's signers said that the Obama administration was supporting the ''de facto'' Roberto Micheletti government by providing "aid money through the Millennium Challenge Account and other sources", training Honduran military students at the School of the Americas and ignoring Honduras' human-rights situation. Four days later, HRW published a summary of the preliminary version of a Honduran human-rights report by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) published on 21 August and cited its earlier reports (published until 8 July): "Given the scope of alleged abuses, and the region's history of bloody coups leading to massive violations, human rights advocates believed the situation warranted the direct intervention of the region's most authoritative human rights investigative body, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights."

Criticism regarding the Arab–Israeli conflict

Allegations of anti-Israel bias

Robert Bernstein wrote that by focusing on Israel and neglecting human rights violations by less free states in the Middle East that HRW had cast "aside its important distinction between open and closed societies." In response, Aryeh Neier HRW co-founder and former executive director said, it "is wrong to suggest that open societies should be spared criticism for human rights abuses". Neier also said that Robert Bernstein's distinction between "wrongs committed in self-defense and those committed intentionally" is not made by the laws of war and is dangerous. "On such grounds, groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq" (which "murdered tens of thousands of civilians after" the 2003 American invasion) could justify their crimes.

Writing in the ''Wall Street Journal'' in 2009 about a controversial fundraising event that HRW held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Noah Pollak stated that the organization displayed a strong bias against Israel. Pollak observed that from 2006 to 2009 Human Rights Watch's reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict had been almost entirely devoted to condemning Israel (87 criticisms of Israeli conduct against the Palestinians and Hezbollah, versus eight criticisms of Palestinian groups and four of Hezbollah for attacks on Israel).

For a '' Jerusalem Post'' article, Natan Sharansky said: "Here is an organization created by the goodwill of the free world to fight violations of human rights, which has become a tool in the hands of dictatorial regimes to fight against democracies ... It is time to call a spade a spade. The real activity of this organization today is a far cry from what it was set up 30 years ago to do: throw light in dark places where there is really no other way to find out what is happening regarding human rights." HRW executive director Kenneth Roth responded that "Israel accounts for about 15 percent of our published output on the region" and "our war coverage in the region has documented violations by all sides". According to Roth, "By failing to hold those responsible to account, Israel increases anger and resentment among the Palestinian population and in the wider Arab world and undercuts moderates who wish to pursue peace." ''Time'' Mideast correspondent Scott MacLeod wrote in the ''Los Angeles Times'' that Israeli policy cannot be shielded from a group like Human Rights Watch.

HRW has been accused of bias against Israel
and having an anti-Israeli agenda by NGO Monitor. Political science professor and former consultant to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs Gerald M. Steinberg of Bar Ilan University, head of NGO Monitor (a pro-Israel NGO), accused HRW of having "a strong anti-Israel bias from the beginning". According to Steinberg, the organization's reports were based primarily on "Palestinian eyewitness testimony": testimony that is "not accurate, objective or credible but serves the political goal of indicting Israel". In a ''The Wall Street Journal'' opinion piece, law professor David Bernstein called HRW "maniacally anti-Israel". Spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Mark Regev said: "We discovered during the Gaza operation and the Second Lebanon War that these organizations come in with a very strong agenda, and because they claim to have some kind of halo around them, they receive a status that they don't deserve," referring to HRW and Amnesty International allegations of human-rights violations by Israeli forces during those conflicts.

The organization has also been accused of ignoring anti-Semitism or being anti-Semitic itself. In a 2005 speech to the Anti-Defamation League former Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio said, "NGOs like Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International pay little attention to anti-Semitism." The ADL has also said, "While Human Rights Watch acknowledged in a May 3 report that there was no evidence of a massacre n Jeninand that Palestinian gunmen had contributed to endangering Palestinian civilians, they continued to emphasize that there was prima facie evidence Israel committed war crimes." In ''The New York Sun'', ADL national director Abraham Foxman criticized Roth's use of "a classic anti-Semitic stereotype about Jews". In 2012, ''New Europe'' said that HRW "allegedly erased references in its reports to its previous cooperation with the Gaddafi regime, including the role of the organization's MENA Director, Sarah Leah Whitson, in marketing Saif al-Islam Gaddafi as a reformer."

HRW Middle East and North Africa division director Sarah Leah Whitson responded to criticism: "In the case of Israel, where our focus is primarily on the violations of international law and humanitarian law in the occupied Palestinian territories, the fact that government is a democracy is completely irrelevant, because the rule in place in the occupied territories is military rule, it is not a democracy". In July 2009, ''Jerusalem Post'' columnist Larry Derfner accused Israel's Prime Minister's Office and NGO Monitor of "smearing" human-rights organizations in response to the criticism of HRW. HRW program director Iain Levine said in August 2009, "If the Israeli government wants to silence critics, it should fully investigate allegations of wrongdoing and take action to end the abuses." In a ''Jerusalem Post'' op-ed piece that month, Kenneth Roth wrote that reports of recent Israeli human-rights violations had "given rise to an intense campaign by the Israeli government and some of its uncritical supporters to smear the messengers and change the subject." According to Roth, the "problem is not the messenger carrying news of that misconduct, whether Judge Goldstone or the human rights groups that have been the target of a disinformation campaign launched by the Israeli government and some supporters. The problem is the conduct of the Israeli military." According to ''The Times'', "most" HRW Middle East staff "have activist backgrounds — it was typical that one newly hired researcher came to HRW from the extremist anti-Israel publication Electronic Intifada — unlikely to reassure anyone who thinks that human-rights organizations should be non-partisan." ''The Times'' later said that the Electronic Intifada had published the HRW researcher's articles without permission and that she "was not directly employed by that group".

In a November 2012 ''The Wall Street Journal'' article, David Feith said that there has been "bitter debate" within HRW about whether Iran's alleged call for annihilation of Israel is a violation of human rights. HRW vice-chair Sid Sheinberg wrote in an internal email that doing nothing while Ahmadinejad wants to "kill Jews and annihilate Israel ... is a position unworthy of our great organization." According to Kenneth Roth, "Tehran isn't inciting genocide and claims to the contrary are part of an effort to beat the war drums against Iran."

In an analysis published by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Ron Kampeas

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