Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch (HRW) is a global non-governmental organization that carry outs research and advocacy on human rights. HRW head office are in New York City with offices in Amsterdam, Beirut, Berlin, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Nairobi, Paris, San Francisco, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto, Washington, D.C., and Zurich. As of June 2011, the organization’s yearly expenses amounted to $50.6 million.

History 

Human Rights Watch was established as a clandestine American NGO in 1978, under the name of Helsinki Watch, to watch the previous Soviet Union's conformity with the Helsinki Accords. Helsinki Watch accepted a practice of openly "naming and shaming" obnoxious governments through media exposure and through direct connections with policymakers. By shining the worldwide spotlight on human rights breach in the Soviet Union and its European partners, Helsinki Watch contributed to the democratic revolutions of the section in the late 1980s.

Americas Watch was established in 1981 while bloody civil wars swallowed up Central America. Relying on broad on-the-ground fact-finding, Americas Watch not only tackled alleged abuses by government forces but also functionalized international humanitarian law to scrutinize and depiction war crimes by rebel groups. Additionally raising its apprehensions in the affected countries, Americas Watch also observed the role played by foreign governments, mostly the United States government, in providing military and political support to abusive governments.

Asia Watch in 1985, Africa Watch in 1988 and Middle East Watch in 1989 were additional to what was well-known as "The Watch Committees." All of these committees were amalgamated under one umbrella to shape Human Rights Watch in 1988.

Originally known as the Helsinki Watch, the Human Rights Watch was first considered in 1978 as a support group for populace of the Soviet bloc. Their founding aim was to assist these citizens in screening government conformity with the Helsinki Accords of 1975, which was called for courteous and cooperative relations between the West and the Communist bloc. The Helsinki Watch used media exposure, plus connection with policymakers, to utilize methods of openly “naming and shaming” offensive governments. This way, the organization was enable to get global attention to corruption and exploitation in Soviet and Eastern European governments, acting as a foremost force in the dramatic reach of democracy of the 1980s. Each were created in the same resemblance of the Helsinki Watch, although Americas Watch was the primary to take it a step further as their Central American civil wars were intensely on, and apply global humanitarian law to their efforts towards the inquiry and elucidation of war crimes by various rebel groups. Additionally, they studied into, and were serious of, the parts that foreign governments may play in supporting abusive systems, whether financially, politically, or militarily. These novel strategies became lasting policies of the organization as a whole, and in 1988, the compilation of Watch Committees decided to unite under one comprehensive title, calling themselves the "Human Rights Watch".

Publications

Human Rights Watch circulates reports on several different topics and assembles an annual World Report presenting an outline of the universal state of human rights. It has been available by Seven Stories Press since 2006; the recent edition, World Report 2015, was released in February 2015, and covers trial of 2014. Human Rights Watch has detailed extensively on topics such as the Rwandan Genocide of 1994, Democratic Republic of the Congo and US sex offender registries because of their over-breadth and application to adolescents. During summer of 2004, the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University in New York became the reservoir institution for the Human Rights Watch records, an active compilation that documents decades of human rights investigations throughout the world. The records were shifted from its former location at the Norlin Library at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The archive comprises administrative files, public relations documents, plus case and country files. With some exceptions for security concerns, the Columbia University community and the public have right to use field notes, taped and transcribed interviews with suspected victims of human rights violations, video and audio tapes, and other materials documenting the organization’s activities since its establishment in 1978 as Helsinki Watch.