In 2010, the nongovernmental organization Human Rights Watch published a report on Saudi Arabia that included criticism of Mohamed bin Issa al Jaber’s business practices, such as gross mistreatment of employees and other rights violations. One year later, al Jaber gave the organization a $470,000 gift, negotiated by HRW’s executive director, Ken Roth, who also agreed to limit the group’s gay advocacy in its Middle East activities.
Nine years later, when the details of this deal were leaked, some asked how Roth and HRW, held up as paragons of virtue, selflessly and fearlessly fighting the good fight for human rights, could have betrayed basic ethical principles.
But for those who have followed Roth and his organization over the years, the revelations are not surprising.
In 2009, a newspaper in Saudi Arabia published a short item on what was supposed to be an unpublicized (secret) visit by HRW’s Middle East director, Sarah Leah Whitson, and Hassan Elmasry, a member of the board of directors. In the Wall Street Journal, professor David Bernstein highlighted the hypocrisy of going to a country with one of the worst records on human rights in order to solicit donations for countering the “pro-Israel pressure groups.”
For HRW’s obsessive anti-Israel campaigns, no source of funding was off-limits. HRW was and remains a leading NGO advocate of boycotts, blacklists, and legal cases targeting Israel through “war crimes” allegations. Jeffrey Goldberg at the time referred to “the queasy-making image of a human rights organization venturing into one of the world’s most anti-democratic societies to criticize one of the Middle East’s most democratic states.”
HRW suddenly hid its list of major donors and denied receiving any “government money” from the Saudis. Whitson had also traveled to Libya, embracing the Gaddafi family as “human rights reformers” and helping their “Tripoli Spring” propaganda campaign. This raised even more suspicions regarding other sources of soiled megagifts. When the heads of the prestigious London School of Economics sought to justify a large gift from the Gaddafis (accompanied by a doctorate awarded to the dictator’s son, Saif al Islam), they referenced HRW.
Not all of HRW’s dirty laundry is public, but the al Jaber revelations are enough to demonstrate the organization’s deep hypocrisy and the complete absence of any system of checks and balances. Powerful NGOs such as HRW, with annual budgets of close to $100 million (the smooth-talking Roth is a very successful fundraiser), form a major global industry. Amnesty International is another example, with an annual budget estimated at three times that of HRW. In what is known as the NGO “halo effect,” these organizations are seen as unconditionally pure and therefore function without oversight or even critical examination by most journalists, for whom NGOs are often close allies.
The single major exception took place in 2009, when HRW founder Robert Bernstein realized that Roth and Whitson had betrayed the principles on which the organization was founded. Bernstein denounced them in public lectures and in the pages of the New York Times. Many of the donors who had previously supported HRW pulled their money. But Roth survived, thanks in part to George Soros, as well as al Jaber and other wealthy donors.
After freezing out Bernstein and appointing easily controlled board members to serve as rubber stamps, Roth had no one to rein him in. Although the board explicitly prohibited funding from a company that is “itself a focus of Human Rights Watch work,” or when “the solicitation or acceptance of such funds might undermine Human Rights Watch’s credibility, independence, or reputation,” these were empty words.
Nine years after the al Jaber deal, disgusted staffers within the organization (according to The Intercept) leaked the details, forcing the board to reprimand Roth. In parallel, Whitson suddenly and without explanation departed HRW in January 2020, after 16 years. Roth, for his part, lamely told The Intercept that the issues were discussed “with the employer, who pledged to address them and later provided documentation to that effect. HRW and the employer then discussed a possible gift to HRW’s work, pending confirmation that the abuses had been resolved.” Roth went on to claim that “the fallout from returning the donation has not impacted his management role at Human Rights Watch.”
Similarly, like the press spokesperson of a third-rate politician caught accepting bribes, the board declared: “Ken Roth, the most senior person at HRW involved with soliciting this pledge, accepts full responsibility for this mistake.” HRW also posted a short statement repeatedly expressing its deep regret, but announcing no changes to punish those responsible (particularly Roth), to provide full transparency in funding (including similar secret deals with donors that might have been made), or to prevent future sell-outs.
Until there are consequences for such actions, the reputation of the NGO industry will only sink lower.
Gerald Steinberg is a professor of political science at Bar Ilan University and the president of NGO Monitor in Jerusalem.
