Sunday, June 24, 2007

NGOS NEED A CREDIBILITY CHECK: NGO MONITOR.COM

International NGOs must have their credibility checked.

FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL!

Powerful international NGOs have a far greater influence than they deserve and too much credibility. Accountable to no one, independently funded, no one really knows or can assess whether they are biased or not in each of their reports. While some like Amnesty and HRW may research their material and appear to be neutral in their assessments every time, no one can really evaluate their impartiality unless one sets out to investigate their background funding, behind-the-scenes researchers and the influences under which they operate. Human Rights Watch is no better than the UN Human Rights Committee,- better dubbed the “ UN Human Wrongs Committee”.
What do some of these supposedly ”human rights watching” NGOs have in common? They follow the Arab propaganda line of seeking out to demonize one country above all others: Israel. Never mind all the atrocities being constantly perpetrated in Africa and Asia nowaday.
One organization that does try to bring to our attention their deficiencies and lack of credibility vis-à-vis Israel, is NGO Monitor. www.ngo-monitor.org

Here are just two of their recent reports re Amnesty and HRW.:

Double Standards: HRW/Amnesty/Christian Aid Statements on the Conflict between Fatah-al-Islam and the Lebanese
July12.
Powerful NGOs such as Amnesty International have major political impacts, and often promote narrow agendas that are inconsistent with universal human rights. As part of NGO Monitor's continuing assessment of this bias, we have systematically analyzed the relative emphasis on Israel in comparison to other countries in the Middle East in 2006. NGO Monitor has applied a quantitative framework to measure the financial and human resources devoted to addressing events and occurrences in these countries. (The same methodology was used to examine the agenda of Human Rights Watch.) This carefully documented research clearly demonstrates that in 2006, Amnesty International focused disproportionately on condemnations of Israel, far beyond any reasonable distribution of resources in a region marked by fundamental human rights abuses by many repressive regimes and sources of violence. This study, which also includes a qualitative section focusing on the language used in reports, shows that Amnesty singled out Israel for condemnation to a far greater extent than Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, Egypt, and other chronic abusers of human rights. This evidence of a clear political agenda is consistent with other studies and examples of Amnesty International's bias and lack of credibility.

HRW/FIDH/OMCT statement on NGO official linked to PFLP

Summary: On May 2 2007, three major NGOs -- Human Rights Watch, FIDH [1]and the World Organization Against Torture (OMCT) -- published a joint press release [2]calling on Israel to lift the travel ban placed on Shawan Jabarin, the General Director of Al-Haq[3]. Al Haq, an affiliate of the Geneva based International Commission of Jurists, is a highly politicized Palestinian NGO, active in the 2001 Durban conference that adopted a strategy of demonization against Israel. The statement alleges that Jabarin was barred by Israel from attending the annual Congress of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) in Lisbon on April 19, 2007, and that "Israeli authorities have not explained why the restrictions are in place."

No comments: