Human Rights Watch
INTRODUCTION
"Recognition of the inherent dignity and of equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person."
With these few words, the United Nations has pretty much summed up the mission of Human Rights Watch, an international non-governmental organization whose only aim is to ensure the well being and the inherent rights to life that all human beings are entitled to. By using means such as the media for example, Human Rights Watch sets out to not only insure that all human beings live their lives with dignity but to also bring to justice those who, through merciless dictatorships, suppress the happiness and basic human rights of their people. This paper will first explain briefly the history of Human Rights Watch; second, it will describe a major undertaking, mainly its role in the War on Iraq, past and present, third, reasons of the success of the organization in this undertaking, and finally the implications of the said undertaking in international relations and international organizations.
THE HISTORY OF HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH Human Rights Watch was founded in 1978 and was known first as Helsinki Watch. It was originally intended to enforce the provisions on human rights that were laid out by the Helsinki Accords. It then spread to Central America in the 1980s in response to the countless human rights abuses that were made in many of the civil wars that took place there. Soon enough it began spreading throughout the world, forming different Watch committees through out the world, such as the Middle East, Central America, South America, and Asia, etc. In 1988, all the different watch committees united to form one committee, thus forming Human Rights Watch. Their headquarters are located in different parts of the world, mainly New York, London, Brussels, Moscow, and over 70 countries. In regions where there are
"Recognition of the inherent dignity and of equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person."
With these few words, the United Nations has pretty much summed up the mission of Human Rights Watch, an international non-governmental organization whose only aim is to ensure the well being and the inherent rights to life that all human beings are entitled to. By using means such as the media for example, Human Rights Watch sets out to not only insure that all human beings live their lives with dignity but to also bring to justice those who, through merciless dictatorships, suppress the happiness and basic human rights of their people. This paper will first explain briefly the history of Human Rights Watch; second, it will describe a major undertaking, mainly its role in the War on Iraq, past and present, third, reasons of the success of the organization in this undertaking, and finally the implications of the said undertaking in international relations and international organizations.
THE HISTORY OF HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH Human Rights Watch was founded in 1978 and was known first as Helsinki Watch. It was originally intended to enforce the provisions on human rights that were laid out by the Helsinki Accords. It then spread to Central America in the 1980s in response to the countless human rights abuses that were made in many of the civil wars that took place there. Soon enough it began spreading throughout the world, forming different Watch committees through out the world, such as the Middle East, Central America, South America, and Asia, etc. In 1988, all the different watch committees united to form one committee, thus forming Human Rights Watch. Their headquarters are located in different parts of the world, mainly New York, London, Brussels, Moscow, and over 70 countries. In regions where there are
Bibliography: 1. White, Lyman Cromwell, International Non-Governmental Organizations; Rutgers University Press, 1951 2. Korn, David, Human Rights in Iraq (Middle East Watch); New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990 3. Hayden, Patrick, The Philosophy of Human Rights; St. Paul, MN, Paragon House, 2001 4. Williams, Mary E., Human Rights; Gale Group,1998 7. Buergenthal, Thomas, International Human Rights in a nutshell (West Pub.Co., 1995) 8. Iraq: The Death Penalty, Executions, and "Prison Cleansing": A Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper, http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/mena/iraq031103.htm 11. Janis, Mark & Noyes, John, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Law: Cases and Commentary, 2001 12. Iraq 's Crime of Genocide by Human Rights Watch, Helsinki Staff, Yale University, 1995