Op-Ed

With democracies in peril across the globe, effective, impartial, and honest human rights advocacy is more needed than ever. When human rights advocacy is done right, it can have tremendous benefits. Just consider the cases of the late Andrei Sakharov or Natan Sharansky during the Cold War, or the international outcry on behalf of African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela.

When human rights advocacy is done wrong, however, the second-order effects can be tremendous. Autocrats and abusers can amplify an organization’s dishonesty or mistakes to delegitimize not only the flawed reports, but also those which are true. Thirty years ago, distinguished political scientist Guenter Lewy wrote Peace and Revolution, a study about how many pacifist organizations betrayed their true principles for the sake of politics. After the American Friends Service Committee, for example, embraced the genocidal Khmer Rouge, who should trust them on North Korea or the Hamas-run Gaza Strip?

In recent years, Human Rights Watch has also strayed from the objective to the subjective and from the neutral to the corrupt.

More than a decade ago, Sarah Leah Whitson, then-executive director for the Middle East and North Africa at Human Rights Watch and now managing director at the Quincy Institute, sought to raise money in Saudi Arabia by promising to be even more critical of Israel. When exposed, Human Rights Watch backed off that action but, last month, Ken Roth, the organization’s executive director was at it again, agreeing to limit the group’s work on gays in the Middle East in exchange for a cash infusion from a Saudi businessman.

This is not the first time Roth has subordinated his group’s mission for the sake of politics or cash. The rot at Human Rights Watch has gone so deep that the group has even partnered with and incorporated reporting from a group launched by a designated al Qaeda financier. The problem has grown so bad under Roth that, in 2009, the group’s founder took to the pages of the New York Times to lament how off the rails Human Rights Watch had become. Too many of its reports today are short on methodology and long on ideology.

This brings us to its October 2019 report “’Maximum Pressure’: US Economic Sanctions Harm Iranians’ Right to Health,” which has been increasingly cited to show that the United States should lift its sanctions to help Iran fight the coronavirus crisis.

Let’s put aside that the report predates the start of the Swiss humanitarian channel that allows Iranian leaders to import medicine and other humanitarian supplies. Let’s also put aside the fact that Iranian leaders including President Hassan Rouhani have said that sanctions do not hamper the import of medicine, but they don’t want to let a good crisis go to waste. And also put aside that the report itself is bare bones and does not do much to support its demands for the lifting of sanctions.

Rather, anyone still citing Human Rights Watch should look at the report’s methodology section: “Human Rights Watch requested permission to travel to Iran to conduct this research. Iranian authorities did not respond to Human Rights Watch’s request to visit Iran or subsequent requests for information.”

Accordingly, over the course of a year, the group “interviewed six Iranian medical professionals,” either from afar or while they traveled abroad. It also spoke with “four other experts on US government policymaking on Iran.” Given that such policymaking has been the subject of great partisan debate for four decades, it might be useful to know with whom Human Rights Watch spoke, in this case, as none would face jeopardy for talking. Did they represent an ideological spectrum, or did Human Rights Watch just speak to Whitson, who might be guided by her latest funder?

The Islamic Republic’s nuclear program is a matter of life and death. So too are Iran’s efforts to fight the coronavirus. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians have also died over the Islamic Republic’s 40 years because of the regime’s corruption and ideological prerogatives. It is important to consider and debate such weighty matters to their fullest. But no argument can be won when relying on an organization that coasts on its reputation but has repeatedly proven itself to pride partisanship and policy prerogatives over objectivity and adherence to its founding principles.

Perhaps when Human Rights Watch has new leadership, it can restore itself to its moral and academic high ground. Until then, however, it should have no weight in the U.S. and human rights policy debates.