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Human Rights Watch (HRW)


Self Description

May 2003: "More than 150 dedicated professionals work for Human Rights Watch around the world.... Human Rights Watch is the largest human rights organization based in the United States. Human Rights Watch researchers conduct fact-finding investigations into human rights abuses in all regions of the world. Human Rights Watch then publishes those findings in dozens of books and reports every year, generating extensive coverage in local and international media....Human Rights Watch started in 1978...Human Rights Watch is based in New York...Human Rights Watch tracks developments in more than 70 countries around the world. "  http://www.hrw.org/about/whoweare.html

Third-Party Descriptions

February 2010: 'But they don't even try. They abdicate, and that abdication has been a huge moral failure. It's a cold hard fact that the Olympics have become vehicles for evil, partly thanks to their scale. In 2007 and 2008, Human Rights Watch documented scores of human rights abuses directly linked to the Beijing Games. From forced evictions to the arrest of dissidents, the Olympics led to "an overall deterioration of human rights in China." The Olympics are leaving huge debts -- of all sorts -- in their wake. In some cases, they left men and women broken and in jail. For the moment, this is the IOC's real legacy.'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/27/AR2010022703315.html

October 2009: "AS the founder of Human Rights Watch, its active chairman for 20 years and now founding chairman emeritus, I must do something that I never anticipated: I must publicly join the group’s critics. Human Rights Watch had as its original mission to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters. But recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/opinion/20bernstein.html

September 2009: 'A December 2008 report by the New York-based watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) went as far as to assert a "disturbing continuity" with Saddam Hussein-era detention. A committee set up by the Iraqi government in June is investigating abuses. But a lack of accountability and political will, say human rights workers, are serious impediments to reversing the culture of abuse cultivated under Mr. Hussein.'

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0912/p08s01-wome.html

August 2009: "BAGHDAD, Aug. 16 -- Human Rights Watch will urge in a report to be released Monday that the Iraqi government do more to protect gay men, saying militiamen have killed and tortured scores in recent months as part of a social cleansing campaign."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/16/AR2009081602088.html

August 2009: "Saudi Arabia's much praised rehabilitation program for terror suspects is under fire from the US-based Human Rights Watch because its participants are detained for lengthy periods without charges."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0810/p06s05-wome.html

August 2009: "Most states prohibit corporal punishment in public schools, but 20 do not. The two watchdog groups that collaborated on the report, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, are urging federal and state lawmakers to extend the ban nationwide and enact an immediate moratorium on physical punishment of students with disabilities."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/education/11punish.html

August 2009: 'Human Rights Watch urges America to scale back its sex-offender registries. Those convicted of minor, non-violent offences should not be required to register, says Ms Tofte. Nor should juveniles. Sex offenders should be individually assessed, and only those judged likely to rape someone or abuse a child should be registered. Such decisions should be regularly reviewed and offenders who are rehabilitated (or who grow too old to reoffend) should be removed from the registry. The information on sex-offender registries should be held by the police, not published online, says Ms Tofte, and released “on a need-to-know basis”. Blanket bans on all sex offenders living and working in certain areas should be abolished. Instead, it makes sense for the most dangerous offenders sometimes to face tailored restrictions as a condition of parole.'

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14164614

June 2009: "International migrant workers, foreign students and political refugees are often endangered by laws that discriminate against people with AIDS, the advocacy group Human Rights Watch reported last week."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/health/23glob.html

January 2009: 'Fred Abrahams, a senior researcher with the advocacy group Human Rights Watch, said Hamas is unquestionably committing a war crime when it fires rockets into civilian areas of Israel. But he said there are also serious questions over the legality of Israel's war tactics. "I am convinced the IDF has conceived its interpretation of the [international] law to come up to the very limit, and possibly over," he said.'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/14/AR2009011404009.html

December 2008: 'Human rights groups said the judge should hold a full hearing to determine that any pleas are free from coercion. "In light of the men's severe mistreatment, the judge should require a full and thorough factual inquiry to determine whether or not these pleas are voluntary," said Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch. Daskal also said Mohammed's possible influence over the others should be explored.'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/08/AR2008120801087.html

August 2008: 'Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, a private group based in New York, said he and other rights advocates had been skeptical that China would fulfill its pledge to allow greater free speech during the Olympic Games. Still, he said, the International Olympic Committee should be held accountable for not pressing China on the issue. “The I.O.C. seems oblivious to the fact that they’re holding the Games in a repressive environment,” he said.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/19/sports/olympics/19protest.html

May 2008: "Two new reports, issued Monday by the Sentencing Project in Washington and by Human Rights Watch in New York, both say the racial disparities reflect, in large part, an overwhelming focus of law enforcement on drug use in low-income urban areas, with arrests and incarceration the main weapon."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/06/us/06disparities.html

March 2008: 'Nevertheless, the release Tuesday of two reports by New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) underscores continuing human rights abuses in Saudi society. Based on what the rights group calls "hundreds of interviews" with Saudi officials, former detainees, and their families, the reports describe cases of long detention without charges or trial, sometimes in solitary confinement, arbitrary arrests, lack of legal counsel, and forced confessions.'

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0326/p06s01-wome.html

February 2008: "The Human Rights Watch report states that the commission has opposed attempts to strengthen Mexico's state rights commissions and to bring the country into compliance with international human rights standards. In 2002, it refused to join in an analysis of Mexican human rights conducted by the administration of then-President Vicente Fox and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, the report states."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021301994.html

February 2008: "Human Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy group, has used its past 17 annual surveys to highlight the most egregious humanitarian crises in the world and to note improvements when warranted. The latest report marks a break with that tradition by focusing on democracy and the ways in which U.S. influence have affected other countries' pursuit of it."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/31/AR2008013103575.html

January 2008: 'Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel for Human Rights Watch, asked, "Under what circumstances would the United States ever accept as legal one of its citizens being strapped to a board and suffocated with water?"'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/30/AR2008013001654.html

December 2007: "But Human Rights Watch says it has documented dozens of cases of severe abuse by Ethiopian troops in the Ogaden, including gang rapes, burned villages and what it calls “demonstration killings,” like hangings and beheadings, meant to terrorize the population."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/world/africa/15ethiopia.html

December 2007: 'Tom Malinowski, Washington director of Human Rights Watch, said General Hayden’s claim that the [Al Qaeda interrogation] tapes were destroyed to protect C.I.A. officers “is not credible.”'

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/washington/07intel.html

November 2007: 'Human Rights Watch said it has called on Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah "to immediately void the verdict and drop all charges against the rape victim and to order the court to end its harassment of her lawyer."'

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/11/20/saudi.rape.victim/index.html

November 2007: Since democracy returned to Nigeria in 1999, politicians across the country have used cults to intimidate opponents and rig votes. A Human Rights Watch report published in October concluded that the political system was so corroded by corruption and violence that, in some places, it resembled more a criminal enterprise than a system of government. The April elections were so brazenly rigged in some areas and so badly marred by violence that international observers said the results were not credible.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/world/africa/09nigeria.html

November 2007: When details of the operation became known, high French officials, United Nations officials, and indignant French citizens, newspapers and child protection agencies sounded their disapproval of Zoé’s Ark’s actions. Jo Becker, child rights advocate at Human Rights Watch in New York, said that removing a child from his or her immediate surroundings might make sense only under circumstances like immediate risk of being forced into military service or a threat of immediate harm. “We would always say,” she said, “that the best place for children is in their community and with their families.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/weekinreview/04polgreen.html

October 2007: Joanne Mariner, director of terrorism and counterterrorism research for Human Rights Watch, said the CIA has moved many prisoners from country to country and relied on other spy services to take custody of suspects, sometimes temporarily and sometimes for good.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/26/AR2007102602326.html

October 2007: “In recent years the military has continued to expand while at the same time losing large numbers of soldiers to desertion,” a co-author of the report, Jo Becker, said in an interview. “Recruiters and civilian agents are sweeping boys as young as 11 and 12 off the streets. Children are literally being bought and sold by recruiters.” Ms. Becker is the director of children’s rights advocacy for Human Rights Watch.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/31/world/asia/31child.html

October 2007: A variety of armed groups, including the Congolese military, have routinely terrorized civilians across eastern Congo in the past year, with killings, massacres, rapes, abductions, looting and other brutalities perpetrated by all parties in the conflict, according to a report released Tuesday by New York-based Human Rights Watch.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/23/AR2007102302072.html

October 2007: Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch, said the ruling highlights the need for oversight of the government's transfer policies. 'It's an important and significant development and positive step forward,' Daskal said. 'Having a court step in and order the administration not to transfer a detainee to what is likely torture sets a precedent for other courts and other judges to do the same thing.'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/09/AR2007100901537.html

October 2007: Human Rights Watch warned on Tuesday that wealthy and violent political godfathers have hijacked Nigeria's eight-year-old democracy while enjoying almost total impunity for their misdeeds.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/09/AR2007100900956.html

October 2007: “Fujimori, like Pinochet, was once considered invincible,” said Daniel Wilkinson, deputy director for the Americas at Human Rights Watch. “Now the definition of invincibility has been shaken.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/weekinreview/07romero.html

October 2007: “The crackdown on the media and on information flow is parallel to the physical crackdown,” said David Mathieson, an expert on Myanmar with Human Rights Watch, “and it seems they’ve done it quite effectively. Since Friday we’ve seen no new images come out.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/world/asia/04info.html

September 2007: In 2004, Human Rights Watch published a devastating report that linked the rising incidence of HIV/AIDS cases in Jamaica to the rampant bigotry on the island."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20642693/site/newsweek

August 2007: Separatist militants in Thailand's mostly Muslim southern provinces have stepped up a decades-long, low-intensity insurgency into a wave of brutal bomb attacks, assassinations, machete hackings and, in some cases, beheadings and mutilations in the past 3 1/2 years, an extensive Human Rights Watch report said today.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/27/AR2007082701355.html

August 2007: “I don’t think they are remotely comparable, and even in Britain it’s quite controversial,” said Dinah PoKempner, the general counsel of Human Rights Watch in New York. China has fewer limits on police power, fewer restrictions on how government agencies use the information they gather and fewer legal protections for those suspected of crime, she noted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/business/worldbusiness/12security.html

May 2007: "This is only the second time in the organization's 29-year history that it has issued a book-size report on a corporation...when the world's largest economy has labor laws that are so weak that it is unable to prevent the world's largest corporation from violating workers' rights to organize, it is troubling."Human Rights Watch report says that Wal-Mart's anti-union actions create a 'climate of fear' at its U.S. stores."

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/apr2007/db20070430_084675.htm

May 2007: The arrests are 'just one of a series of threats to freedom of expression that have emerged in the past year, and you have to see it in the context of a broader political crackdown that the government is engaged in right now,' says Elijah Zarwan, the Egypt researcher for Human Rights Watch. 'In Abdel Moneim's case … he was singled out because he helps run the Brotherhood's English-language website, because he's organized others to start blogging, and because he's spoken out at international human rights conferences.'

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0502/p01s04-wome.html

April 2007: Much as in the United States in the 1960s, in Mexico it is the state legislatures that have become abortion flash points. Abortion rights advocates scored their biggest victory in 2000 in the state of Yucatan, northwest of Cancun. Yucatan now allows abortions for women who already have three children and can prove that they cannot afford another child. All Mexican states permit abortions for rape victims, though a study by Human Rights Watch found that local officials frequently find ways to deny the procedures.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/14/AR2007041400775.html

April 2007: 'It's one of the first – if not the first – times that a [US-based] company is indicted and pleads guilty to providing material support to an organization known to commit widespread human rights abuses,' says Arvind Ganesan, director of the Business and Human Rights program at the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0411/p01s03-woam.html

January 2007: Last week, a report by New York-based Human Rights Watch accused the Karuna, a Sri Lankan group that split off from the Tamil Tiger rebels, of abducting hundreds of children in eastern Sri Lanka, in complicity with the country's military and government, to deploy them against the rebels.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/29/AR2007012901586.html

January 2006: At the same time, Human Rights Watch released its annual report, upbraiding the Bush administration for undermining its credibility in promoting freedom abroad through its embrace of abusive interrogation tactics in the battle with terrorists. 'There's no question that the issue of torture in particular has compromised the U.S. voice, and not only torture but a manifold list of other human rights issues,' said the group's associate director, Carroll Bogert.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/24/AR2006012401901.html

March 2006: Human Rights Watch says it has documented 3,000 cases of psychiatric punishment of political dissidents since the early 1980's. The group contends that the use of penal mental asylums to confine dissidents has increased in recent years, as the police have sought ways to punish followers of banned religious sects, political dissidents and persistent petitioners without channeling them through the court system.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/international/asia/16cnd-china.html

February 2006: His remarks placed him at odds with Secretary General Kofi Annan and the leaders of human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, who urged member nations to support the proposal. They expressed the fear that reopening the negotiations just weeks before the current Human Rights Commission is scheduled to meet in Geneva would prompt countries to oppose the new council. The draft circulated yesterday would make next month's meeting of the commission its last.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/23/AR2006022301995.html

Relationships

RoleNameTypeLast Updated
Status/Name Change from Helsinki Watch Organization Mar 28, 2010
Supporter of (past or present) Publish What You Pay Coalition Organization Nov 3, 2007
Organization Executive (past or present) Ann Beeson Esq. Person Dec 21, 2005
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) Nicholas Bequelin Person Aug 2, 2008
Founded/Co-Founded by Robert L. Bernstein Person Mar 28, 2010
Organization Executive (past or present) Jennifer "Jen" Daskal Esq. MA Person Jun 14, 2007
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) Sara "Meg" Davis Ph.D. Person Aug 7, 2009
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) Richard Dicker Person
Organization Executive (past or present) Jamie Fellner Person May 25, 2006
Organization Executive (past or present) Arvind Ganesan Person Apr 13, 2007
Organization Executive (past or present) Eric Goldstein Person Sep 7, 2006
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) Tom Malinowski Person
Organization Executive (past or present) Joanne Mariner Esq. Person Aug 21, 2006
Organization Executive (past or present) Juan E. Méndez Esq. Person Jul 14, 2006
Organization Head/Leader (past or present) Kenneth Roth Person
Financial Recipient from (past or present) Herbert Sandler Person Dec 25, 2008
Financial Recipient from (past or present) Ms. Marion O. Sandler Person Dec 25, 2008
Organization Executive (past or present) Director/Trustee/Overseer (past or present) Prof. Gary G. Sick Ph.D. Person May 21, 2007
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) Prof. Eric Stover Ph.D. Person Mar 11, 2008

Articles and Resources

152 Articles and Resources. Go to:  [Next 20]   [End]

Date Fairness.com Resource Read it at:
Feb 28, 2010 IOC failing in its responsibility to the Olympics

QUOTE: the primary achievements of his millennial Olympic movement are unwieldy growth, a breathtaking collaboration with regimes that commit human rights abuses, and a shucking of responsibility for Olympic-sized ills.

 Washington Post
Nov 19, 2009 Democracy under threat: Congo's constitution

QUOTE: In the past three years the 38-year-old president [of Congo, Joseph Kabila] has shown increasingly little interest in living up to the democratic promise that impressed the West when he won at the polls in 2006.

 Economist
Oct 19, 2009 Rights Watchdog, Lost in the Mideast (Op-Ed Contributor)

QUOTE: Human Rights Watch had as its original mission to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters. But recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.

 New York Times
Sep 13, 2009 In Iraq's prisons, a culture of abuse

QUOTE: ...Iraq's national detention system as a whole has been harshly criticized by Western human rights organizations.

 Christian Science Monitor
Aug 24, 2009 Report Cites Abuse at State Juvenile Prison Centers

QUOTE: Children at four juvenile detention centers in New York were so severely abused by workers that it constituted a violation of their constitutional rights, according to a report by the United States Department of Justice made public on Monday.

 New York Times
Aug 18, 2009 Mexico Drug Fight Fuels Complaints

QUOTE: Mexico’s fight against drug traffickers generated a sixfold increase in human rights complaints against the Mexican military between 2006 and 2008, and it is unclear that any of those complaints resulted in prosecutions, according to a State Department report on the effort.

 New York Times
Aug 17, 2009 Gay Men Targeted In Iraq, Report Says: Militias Blamed for Scores of Killings

QUOTE: Human Rights Watch will urge in a report to be released Monday that the Iraqi government do more to protect gay men, saying militiamen have killed and tortured scores in recent months as part of a social cleansing campaign.

 Washington Post
Aug 11, 2009 Pro-Democracy Leader in Myanmar Is Convicted

QUOTE: A court in Myanmar sentenced the pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to 18 months of additional house arrest Tuesday, drawing widespread condemnation from around the world.

 New York Times
Aug 10, 2009 As Dubai's Glitter Fades, Foreigners See Dark Side: More Jailings, Prosecutions Follow Downturn

QUOTE: Dubai is still far more free and more predictable than most of its neighbors, but a chill has taken hold as property values tumble, jobs vanish and businessmen are detained.

 Washington Post
Aug 10, 2009 Disabled Students Are Spanked More

QUOTE: More than 200,000 schoolchildren are paddled, spanked or subjected to other physical punishment each year, and disabled students get a disproportionate share of the treatment, according to a new study.

 New York Times
Aug 10, 2009 Rights group criticizes Saudi Arabia's Al Qaeda reeducation program: The vaunted program is supposed to convince militants that Al Qaeda's ideology is un-Islamic. But Human Rights Watch says it violates international law.

QUOTE: Saudi Arabia's much praised rehabilitation program for terror suspects is under fire from the US-based Human Rights Watch because its participants are detained for lengthy periods without charges.

 Christian Science Monitor
Aug 07, 2009 Corrupt Democracy in India

QUOTE: new reports documenting the pervasive abuses committed by the Indian police are providing firsthand evidence not only of warrantless arrests... but also the complicity of parties and political leaders who have turned police and paramilitary forces in a number of [Indian] states into bodyguard agencies and private armies.

 Nation
Aug 06, 2009 Unjust and ineffective: Sex laws

QUOTE: Many people assume that anyone listed on a sex-offender registry must be a rapist or a child molester. But most states spread the net much more widely

 Economist
Aug 06, 2009 Cambodian conviction signals crackdown on dissent

QUOTE: Cambodian court found a prominent politician guilty of defaming the country's prime minister Thursday in what analysts call a setback on Cambodia's shaky path to democracy.

 Christian Science Monitor
Aug 04, 2009 California Prisons Must Cut Inmate Population

QUOTE: A panel of federal judges ordered the California prison system on Tuesday to reduce its inmate population... The judges said that reducing prison crowding in California was the only way to change what they called an unconstitutional prison health care system that causes one unnecessary death a week.

 New York Times
Aug 04, 2009 India: Overhaul Abusive, Failing Police System: Disrepair of Police Forces and Lack of Accountability Contribute to Rights Violations

QUOTE: The Indian government should take major steps to overhaul a policing system that facilitates and even encourages human rights violations, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
Aug 04, 2009 Symbol of Unhealed Congo: Male Rape Victims

QUOTE: For years, the thickly forested hills and clear, deep lakes of eastern Congo have been a reservoir of atrocities. Now, it seems, there is another growing problem: men raping men.

 New York Times
Jul 23, 2009 U.S. Rebuffs U.N. Requests for Guantanamo Visits, Data on CIA Prisons

QUOTE: he Obama administration has declined requests from U.N. human rights investigators for information on secret prisons and for private interviews with inmates at the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, U.N. officials said, dampening their hopes of greater U.S. cooperation on human rights issues.

 Washington Post
Jul 16, 2009 Chechen Rights Activist Is Slain: U.S. Urges Russia to Bring Estemirova's Killers to Justice

QUOTE: Chechnya's most outspoken human rights activist was found shot to death hours after being kidnapped Wednesday, provoking international outrage and calls for renewed scrutiny of Russia's violent policies in the Caucasus.

 Washington Post
Jun 26, 2009 Zimbabwe’s Diamond Fields Enrich Ruling Party, Report Says

QUOTE: Zimbabwe’s military, controlled by President Robert Mugabe’s political party, violently took over diamond fields in Zimbabwe last year and has used the illicit revenues to buy the loyalty of restive soldiers and enrich party leaders...

 New York Times

152 Articles and Resources. Go to:  [Next 20]   [End]