Criticism of Human Rights Watch

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Human Rights Watch, a United States-based international non-government organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights, has been criticised in the form of commentaries from various organazations, journalists, and bloggers.

Allegations of anti-non-violent resistance bias

Human Rights Watch has been criticised for condeming the use of human shields.

Allegations of Western and pro-homosexual bias

According the a report in the Egyptian press, "the government often accuses human rights groups of importing a Western agenda that offends local religious and cultural values." This was in response to a report produced by Human Rights Watch on the perceived torture of homosexuals in Egypt.

Allegations of anti-Israel bias

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Human Rights Watch has been criticized as having an anti-Israel bias by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), the Anti-Defamation League, Honest Reporting, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs' NGO Monitor and Gerald Steinberg, the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), Abraham Cooper, and Isi Leibler.

Human Rights Watch has further been criticized as ignoring anti-Semitic behavior as an issue of importance over other human rights issues by Ana Palacio. Shimon Peres and Anne Bayefsky also criticized the 2001 World Conference against Racism, which Human Rights Watch attended and later moved to distance itself from.

Human Rights Watch has also been condemned for not highlighting human rights abuses in Israel enough.

Specific Allegations

In 2002 the Anti-Defamation League, in response to coverage of the Battle of Jenin, stated that Human Rights Watch “pre-judged Israel's behavior.” The Anti-Defamation League also wrote, “Human Rights Watch charged Israel with violations of international law and war crimes. Neither discussed the international law violations involved in arming a refugee camp, or demanded the United Nations be held in any way accountable for its lack of oversight in the camp. While Human Rights Watch acknowledged in a May 3 report that there was no evidence of a massacre and that Palestinian gunmen had contributed to endangering Palestinian civilians, they continued to emphasize that there was prima facie evidence Israel committed war crimes.”

In a 2006 communiqué Honest Reporting, a media watchdog group that monitors and reports on what it perceives as anti-Israel bias, wrote, “Human Rights Watch, along with many other organizations which claim to focus solely on human rights without a political agenda, have hardly proven themselves to be an "unbiased" source.” Furthermore, the communiqué asserted, “Human Rights Watch is not held accountable to anybody but its own staff” and, “The organization's bias against Israel is hardly new.”

NGO Monitor, a program of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, released a summary in 2006 which commented, “While NGO Monitor's analysis shows a significant reduction in Human Rights Watch's disproportionate focus on Israel in 2005, compared with 2004, clear evidence of systematic political bias remains...Many Humans Right Watch publications continue to reflect what can be described as gratuitous political attacks against Israel, often based on unverified media reports, and reflecting a hostile political agenda. ...Human Rights Watch's use of language to condemn Israel is highly politicized, especially when compared to reports on other countries in the Middle East...and continues to deny Israel the right to self-defense under international law.” NGO Monitor also carried out a quantitative study which asserted an anti-Israel bias.

NGO Monitor's director, Gerard Steinberg, had earlier written “During the height of the terror attacks against Israel, Human Rights Watch focused one-third of its entire Middle East effort on condemnations directed at Israel.” Steinberg asserted further, “The most infuriating instance of Human Rights Watch’s bias came in 2004, when Roth went to...Jerusalem to promote 'Razing Rafah', a one sided denunciation of Israeli policy. Its contents were based primarily on unsubstantiated reports of Palestinians, selected journalists, and so-called experts on tunneling.”

Anne Bayefsky, a Professor at York University and editor of Eye on the UN, argued that Human Rights Watch allowed anti-Israel and anti-Semitic to occur, based on her participation in the 2001 World Conference against Racism. Bayefsky also wrote, “When it comes to anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias, Human Rights Watch still has a lot of explaining to do, notwithstanding Executive Director Ken Roth's umbrage at criticism.” Bayefsky commented, “As we arrived at our meeting the chief Durban representative of Human Rights Watch, advocacy director Reed Brody, publicly announced that as a representative of a Jewish group I was unwelcome and could not attend.” Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and another participant at the conference, wrote “Contrary to the May 27 letter by the executive directors of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International U.S.A., Anne Bayefsky...was correct to criticize those two groups for their roles at the conference”. Cooper added regarding the forum document, “The concerns of one group of victims -- the Jewish people -- were left off that document, with the silent acquiescence of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.” He also recounted, “Like many other Jewish delegates at the conference, I was subjected to physical intimidation and threats.”

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), a member of the Israel Campus Roundtable, ran an article on their website in 2005 titled “What is Human Rights Watch's Agenda?” In this article CAMERA stated that Human Rights Watch is “A self-appointed arbiter of human rights abuses around the world” and that, “This would be a noble and worthy mission if it were carried out objectively, without regard to political or ideological agenda. Regrettably, this is not the case.” CAMERA has also stated, in a blog entry, “AI and another "voice of international appeasement" — Human Rights Watch — have consistently directed their righteous ire at Israel, sparing the real human rights abusers”, but doesn't identify the latter.

The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, a public affairs organization for the Australian Jewish community, concluded an anti-Israel bias in the 2002 article titled, “Israel’s critics and their war with the truth.” Regarding an apparent double standard, this article questioned, “It is hard to explain why victims of slavery and slaughter are virtually ignored by American progressives. How can it be that there is no storm of indignation at Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, which, though they rushed to Jenin to investigate false reports of Jews massacring Arabs, care so much less about Arab-occupied Juba, South Sudan's black capital? How can it be that they have not raised the roof about Khartoum's black slaves?” Human Rights Watch published a backgrounder in March 2002 on slavery in Sudan. "Human Rights Watch has long denounced slavery in Sudan in the context of the nineteen-year civil war."

In 2005 Isi Leibler, a columnist for The Jerusalem Post, stated that Human Rights Watch is among the groups that “Have long track records of bias and employing double standards in relation to Israel.”

In 2001, regarding the World Conference against Racism, which Human Rights Watch moved to distance itself from, CNN cited Shimon Peres, an Israeli politician, as saying, “It is an outburst of hate, of anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism without any consideration.”

In a 2005 address to the Anti-Defamation League, a former Foreign Minister of Spain, Ana Palacio, asserted that Human Rights Watch ignored anti-Semitism as an issue of importance over other human rights issues, such as gay or refugee rights. In this address she stated, “Disinterested NGOs like Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International pay little attention to anti-Semitism.”

Response

Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, published a response to criticism from Israel's supporters on April 1, 2004 in the Jerusalem Post, titled "The Truth Hurts" . Roth defends Human Rights Watch's allegations that Israel breaks humanitarian law, referring to "assassinating suspects when they could be arrested, punishing families for the acts of one of their members, employing abusive interrogation techniques, imposing punitive restrictions on the Palestinian population that go well beyond security requirements, building a security barrier not on the Green Line but with deep incursions into the West Bank to protect settlements that themselves violate the Geneva Conventions".

Roth responds to Gerald Steinberg's accusation that Human Rights Watch "was present in Durban when the NGO community hijacked a UN conference on racism to promote its own racist anti-Zionist agenda", pointing out that "Human Rights Watch publicly disassociated itself from the NGO's manifesto because of its unfounded attacks on Israel". Roth denies Steinberg's allegations of only one exception to '"consistent silence" in the face of Palestinian suicide bombing', pointing to 11 condemnations available to see on Human Rights Watch's website, and similarly denies his charge of "protecting Middle Eastern tyrants".

Aryeh Neier, a founder of Human Rights Watch and former Adjunct Professor of Law at New York University, writing in the New York Review of Books, defends Roth and Human Rights Watch from charges of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel bias. "Unfortunately, the criticisms are based on misunderstandings and distortions of international humanitarian law. They contribute to an atmosphere that makes rational discussion in the United States of Israel's policies and practices increasingly difficult."

Philip Weiss, an investigative journalist writing in The Nation, quotes a number of Human Rights Watch officials and board members responding to attacks on it by the New York Sun and others .

Weiss quotes Human Rights Watch emergency director Peter Bouckaert: "We always get attacked for our findings by the government involved. What makes this case different is, it's not the government, it's the external lobby. We have a difficult but positive dialogue with the Israeli government and the IDF. They don't dismiss us as morally repugnant or irrelevant. They take our findings seriously. The attacks are not about the facts, they're about insulating Israel from any type of criticism."

Weiss also quotes Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division. "There's a deep schizophrenia in some of the Jewish community, and people who are at the forefront of every single rights issue, from racial justice in the United States to the ethnic cleansing in Darfur--on Israel, it crumbles, and there is all this hand-wringing. And everyone is successfully marginalized."

Weiss also points to criticism of Human Rights Watch for being too soft on Israel.

Allegations of bias against India

Yatindra Bhatnagar, chief editor of "International Opinion", has criticized Human Rights Watch representatives and those of related organizations of having an anti-India bias with regards to their reports of communal riots in India between Hindus and Muslims, particularly in reference to the 2002 Gujarat violence. He writes that, instead of trying to heal the wounds of such incidents, organizations like Human Rights Watch focus disproportionately on blaming Hindus exclusively for the incident and trying to deflect attention from the violence perpetrated by Islamists in the Godhra Train Burning that precipitated the riots. In particular, he criticizes Human Rights Watch representative Smita Narula and her colleagues for providing a "blatantly one-sided" account of events and dismissing his concerns to that effect.

In addition, the reports on the Gujarat riots compiled by Human Rights Watch have been criticized by Arvin Bahl, a guest contributor to the "South Asia Analysis Group", as "one-sided" and "biased". He claims that the reports generally "are based on half-truths, distortions and sometimes outright falsehoods". He points out that Human Rights Watch's claims about the Bharatiya Janata Party advocating a Hindu Nation as its core ideology are false. He further says that his analysis of the reports accuse the Gujarat government for planning the riots but do not provide any evidence to back those assertions. He also criticizes Human Rights Watch's labeling of the attacks on Hindus by Muslims during the riots as "retaliatory". In his analysis he states that while he does not deny that Hindu extremists were responsible for the riots, he "objectively analyze the complexity of communal conflict in India and avoid the generalizations associated with Human Rights Watch reports."