History Human Rights Watch was co-founded by
Robert L. Bernstein,
Jeri Laber, and
Aryeh Neier as a private American
NGO in 1978, under the name
Helsinki Watch, to monitor the
Soviet Union's compliance with the
Helsinki Accords. Asia Watch (1985), Africa Watch (1988), and Middle East Watch (1989) were added to what was known as "The Watch Committees". In 1988, these committees united under one umbrella to form Human Rights Watch. In April 2021, HRW released a report
accusing Israel of apartheid and calling on the
International Criminal Court to investigate "systematic discrimination" against Palestinians, becoming the first major international rights
NGO to do so. In August 2020, the Chinese government
sanctioned HRW executive director Kenneth Roth—along with the heads of four other U.S.-based democracy and human rights organizations and six U.S. Republican lawmakers—for supporting the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement in the
2019–20 Hong Kong protests. The five organizations' leaders saw the sanctioning, whose details were unspecified, as a tit-for-tat measure in response to the earlier U.S. sanctioning of 11 Hong Kong officials. The latter step, in turn, had been a reaction to the enactment of the
Hong Kong National Security Law in June. In October 2021,
The New York Times reported that HRW left Hong Kong as a result of the Chinese sanctions, with the situation in Hong Kong henceforth to be monitored by HRW's China team. The decision to leave came amid a wider crackdown on civil society groups in Hong Kong.
Activities Pursuant to the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Human Rights Watch opposes violations of what the UDHR considers
basic human rights. This includes
capital punishment and
discrimination on the basis of
sexual orientation. HRW advocates freedoms in connection with fundamental human rights, such as
freedom of religion and
freedom of the press. It seeks to achieve change by publicly pressuring governments and their policymakers to curb human rights abuses, and by convincing more powerful governments to use their influence on governments that violate human rights. Each year, Human Rights Watch presents the
Human Rights Defenders Award to activists who demonstrate leadership and courage in defending human rights. The award winners work closely with HRW to investigate and expose human rights abuses. Human Rights Watch is a founding member of the
International Freedom of Expression Exchange.
Cuba,
North Korea,
Sudan,
Iran,
Israel,
Egypt, the
United Arab Emirates,
Uzbekistan and
Venezuela are among the handful of countries that have blocked HRW staff members' access. HRW's former executive director is
Kenneth Roth, who held the position from 1993 to 2022. Roth conducted investigations on abuses in
Poland after martial law was declared in 1981. He later focused on
Haiti, which had just emerged from the
Duvalier dictatorship but remained plagued by problems. Roth's awareness of the importance of human rights began with stories his father had told about escaping
Nazi Germany in 1938. He graduated from
Yale Law School and
Brown University.
Tirana Hassan was the group's executive director from 2023 to February 2025.
Comparison with Amnesty International Human Rights Watch and
Amnesty International are both international non-governmental organizations headquartered in the North Atlantic
Anglosphere that report on global human rights violations. HRW's documentation of human rights abuses often includes extensive analyses of conflicts' political and historical backgrounds, some of which have been published in academic journals. AI's reports, on the other hand, tend to contain less analysis and instead focus on specific rights abuses. In 2010,
Jonathan Foreman wrote that HRW had "all but eclipsed" Amnesty International. According to Foreman, instead of being supported by a mass membership, as AI is, HRW depends on wealthy donors who like to see the organization's reports make headlines. For this reason, according to Foreman, it may be that organizations like HRW "concentrate too much on places that the media already cares about," especially Israel.
Funding In 2023, HRW had revenue of $94.2 million. The donation, the largest in HRW's history, increased its operating staff of 300 by 120 people. In 2020, HRW's board of directors discovered that HRW accepted a $470,000 donation from Saudi real estate magnate
Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber, owner of a company HRW "had previously identified as complicit in labor rights abuse", under the condition that the donation not be used to support LGBT advocacy in the Middle East and North Africa. After
The Intercept reported the donation, it was returned, and HRW issued a statement that accepting it was "deeply regrettable".
Notable personnel and the Prime Minister of the Netherlands,
Mark Rutte, February 2, 2012 Notable current and former staff members of HRW include •
Neil Rimer, co-chair, board of directors •
John J. Studzinski, vice chair emeritus of the board of directors •
Marc Garlasco, former staff member, resigned due to a scandal involving his
Nazi memorabilia collection •
Tejshree Thapa, former Senior South Asia researcher •
Habib Rahiab, former field researcher in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Publications In the summer of 2004, the
Rare Book and Manuscript Library at
Columbia University in New York became the depository institution for the Human Rights Watch Archive, an active collection that documents decades of human rights investigations around the world. The archive was transferred from the Norlin Library at the
University of Colorado, Boulder. It includes administrative files, public relations documents, and case and country files. With some exceptions for security considerations, the Columbia University community and the public have access to field notes, taped and transcribed interviews with alleged victims of human rights violations, video and audiotapes, and other materials documenting HRW's activities since its founding in 1978 as Helsinki Watch. Some parts of the HRW archive are not open to researchers or to the public, including the records of the meetings of the board of directors, the executive committee, and the various subcommittees, limiting historians' ability to understand the organization's internal decision-making. == Criticism, bans and restrictions ==