Introduction

When Cyrus the Great conquered the city of Babylon in 539 BCE, he did the unexpected — in that era — when he freed all slaves and granted the people the right to choose their religion. These two actions were followed by the creation of the Cyrus Cylinder, a clay tablet containing his statement, which constitutes the first-ever human rights declaration in history.

The fundamental concept of human rights organizations:

The concept of human rights, as envisioned by Cyrus, quickly spread to India, Greece and eventually Rome. Since the time of Cyrus, there many instruments that address the issues of human rights. These include; Prophet Mohamed’s Farwell Address (632 AD-Prophet Mohamed’s assertion of equality between all people of all races), the Magna Carta (1215 AD-asserted the people’s rights and made the king of England subject of law), the Petition of Rights (1628 AD), the United States Declaration of Independence (1776 AD-proclaimed the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness), the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789 AD-A product of the French National Constituent Assembly amid the French revolution that stated that all citizens are equal under the law), and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948 AD-The first document listing the 30 rights to which everyone is entitled). The ideas set out in these instruments played a major role in igniting the spark of the modern human rights era in the 1960s following Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s-lead Civil Rights Movement.

Following the 1960s, the interest groups that operate in the field of human rights groups have grown exponentially, with the current landscape being a loose coalition of international organizations, national organizations, and international networks that include thousands of domestic and international groups. Eventually, these interest groups  to see themselves as advocates of a fundamental and often forgotten dutythat is the protection of the fundamentals of human. Alas, in the largest sense, they merely undertake to resolve policy issues. This very task resulted in many organizations relying on public support to expose human rights violations by targeting ‘oppressing’ authorities.

In this paper, I will first explain the snowball effect of the funding issue, which results in a shift in the human rights groups and politicizes it. Second, I attempt to explain special interest groups descend into funding-induced politics. Finally, I will detail how do interest groups play a political role, and demonstrate through practical examples the suspicious action of these organizations that deviate from the role of protecting human rights.

This paper showcases the historical development of the concept of human rights and the inevitable role of protection that is required in order to prevent the violation of human rights. In addition, this paper provides a wide-ranging exploration of well-known non-governmental organizations with focus of the impact of politics on human rights organizations and the role they are bound to play once they accept the ‘political funding’.

Non-Governmental Organizations, Their Role, and Needs:

Non-governmental organizations (“NGOs”) IS the common form of a group of citizens grabbing the attention of the international community on human rights issues. NGOs often overstep their roles as watchdogs who monitor the actions of governments. This results in the NGOs engagement in a seemingly opposing role against world governments for demands and claims for abiding and respecting human rights principles.

Nevertheless, when examining some groups of interest such as Children’s Defense Fund, Human Rights Watch, and Huan Rights Action Cneter, it became clear that each one of them adopts different tactics to realize its demands, based on the area of human rights that it addresses.

An example could be drawn from Amnesty International, a global movement of people who defend the universally recognized human rights of all people. With more than 2.2 million members and supporters in over 150 countries, the organization seeks to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated[1]. To that end, Amnesty International is known for adopting a legal-focused approach to defending and representing prisoners of thought. Focusing on the safety and security of key human rights defenders.

Moreover, The Children’s Defense Fund (“CDF”), a children’s advocacy organization that aims to create a level playing field for all children, adopts a more social-political role of advocating for regulations and programs that help children living in poverty, protecting them from abuse and neglect, and ensure their equal rights to assistance and education, a remarkable departure from Amnesty International’s approach.

There is also the Human Rights Action Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization led by the world-renowned human rights activist and pioneer Jack Healey. The organization works on the issues of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and uses arts and technology to innovate, create and develop new strategies to end human rights violations.

The highly regarded, and often controversial, Human Rights Watch (“HRW”) investigates, exposes, and “brings to justice human rights violations,” and demands that governments and those in power end human rights violations and comply with international standards. The very broad spectrum of demand that HRW leads implies a wide scope of tactics that is borderline aggressive.

Finally, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish-focused human rights organization dedicated to confronting antisemitism, hatred and terrorism, supporting human rights and dignity, standing with Israel. Defending the safety of Jews worldwide and teaching future generations the lessons of the Holocaust often adopts lobbying to present and impose its demands on national and international decision-makers.

Accordingly, examining these groups’ actions and methods, it becomes clear that for these groups to make progress towards achieving justice and protecting human rights, they must operate independently from governments. An element that is generally regarded as an essential component of their credibility and effectiveness. However, there is a critical downside to that independence, as these groups must be financed so they can operate, given that expenses and leveraging of expertise for operations are very expensive on every scale.

1. The Snowball Effect of Funding: The Actual Cost Of Being Financed:

The issue of funds and finance comes from its basic nature and edge in the 21st century.   That is, it is a critical and balancing-shifting tool created by a global exploitation system that is distinguished by its establishing power by limiting and linking tools necessary for prosperity to the interests of those who pose such tools. Bleak as it is, this is a fact that human rights defenders will always experience whenever they seek a tool that is created by a spectrum of interests that is on the other side of theirs. Eventually, by seeking finance from the ‘enemy’, one can always ask a question; what is the actual cost of funds obtained by human rights defenders?

Before answering the question, I must explain the necessity of obtaining funds. Human rights interest groups operate, like any institution, operate based on an annually set budget. An annual budget is set out in one of the many assemblies of the group. These assemblies are also made for collecting donations that comprise the majority of any group of interest’s (especially NGOs) budget.

Moreover, donations usually come from three main sources: donations from individuals; donations from other groups of interest or organizations; and state donations. Hence, a group’s capability to get funded determines its capability to implement more of its demands. Accordingly, the more the source of finance is’ complex ‘and inconsistent with the views of the group, the more the groups’ credibility is questioned. This makes funding a double-edged weapon and the sole determining mechanism of how and when a game of politics is played by a group.

Moreover, the powers and status of the donating party contribute to the complexity of funding, pushing the edge of credibility forward (or backward) into the game of politics. A prime example is set in the case of the billionaire George Soros, the head of the American financial magnate’s Open Society Foundation. Soros had set up a system of influencing strategies that relied on his image as a man of civil society. He endowed it with colossal means to achieve geostrategic and economic objectives, intimately linked to the circles of American power. Soros simply built his colossal fortune in finance and traded a considerable amount of his fortune for the image of a philanthropist with overflowing humanity. As a result, it became necessary for each human rights organization to receive a donation from Soros’ generous vaults to demonstrate how just their cause is.

Nevertheless, a pattern of inconsistencies emerged in the life of George Soros. In 1993, he declared that he would not invest in countries where his foundation operates for transparency and impartiality, but did the exact opposite the following year. He is a strong believer in denouncing corruption and illegal practices and advocates transparency. A remarkable example is him funding NGOs such as Transparency International, while he has an equally remarkable history of avoiding tax audits. He also invested in the coal mining and the oil sectors but espouses the cause of environmental activism.

Soros was dubbed “The Puppet Master” by Margaux Krehl in an article dedicated to him on Vanityfair.fr on October 25, 2018.In her article, Margaux (2018), as I also share her view, wonders whether he is the manipulator that his opponents claim, given the fact that his foundation is associated with many NGOs that operate with the billions he has to offer, and they are many. Since 1984, he has injected more than 30 billion dollars into the Open Society Foundation with the stated ambition of promoting “democratic governance, human rights, and economic, social and legal reforms.” Investigating the “Soros Connection” is like unwinding an endless ball of yarn and realizing the multitude of relays set up by large “flagship NGOs”, which themselves finance, stimulate, and supervise other relays on the ground. HRW is a major beneficiary of Soros’ philanthropy, having received no less than $100 million from Soros’ foundation between 2010 and 2020. HRW is regularly criticized for its close ties to governments and “publications that reflect a lack of professional standards.” HRW also made a revenue of $92.1 million in the 2017-2018 fiscal year, just a year before the death of its founder Robert Bernstein, who served as its president in the Cold War from 1978 to 1988. The very man published an op-ed in the New York Times denouncing his own organization as “morally bankrupt”. HRW ideological biases and moral bankruptcy are the mere products of the many ‘Soroses’ who funded this group. 

No one can accuse these groups of playing a political rather than a humanitarian role. But the fact remains that they bargain for financing with entities with declared “borderless” projects and operate on the ground in several countries with a “free pass”, or even the security of multiple governments. 

With such a stain on the money, any group that is funded by individuals, states, or other organizations that have their own agenda and interests in front, is eventually bound to pay the price of the funds they have received. This is the moment where human rights defenders and groups find themselves bound with a role in the domestic and foreign politics of governments with interests, regardless of whether the rights they defend are actually defended or not.

• How Interest Groups Descended Into Funding-Induced Politics: Distorted Truth:

A group of interest’s descent into the political game does not occur overnight. There are signs that a group of interests has already been poisoned, which usually revolve around the gradual abandonment of the task they hold dear. These signs sound the alarm that a group of interest is on the path of becoming a mere political tool. 

In groups whose work focuses on reporting and acting as watchdogs, a very critical sign is the distortion of reality.Given that situations where credible information may not be available are always present in their scope of work, this is the main characteristic of poisoned humanitarian and human rights-focused NGOs. Naturally, distorted realities are bound to diminish the credibility of groups of interests, with the most famous case being that of Amnesty International’s reporting of the 2019 Iran protests. When reporting the demonstration, Amnesty International reported that “at least 106 demonstrators in 21 cities have been killed, according to credible reports.” However, “reports suggest that up to 200 (people) were killed,” implying that “the true death toll could be much higher. “Amnesty International further issued other press releases as of November 2019 claiming a death toll of 304 over the weeks. As brave and righteous as it seems, the clue of Amnesty’s corruption saw light with its final report released a final report on May 20, 2020, which explicitly stated that Amnesty does not have a list of 304 names, but only 232. Also, the report “used primary sources (friends, relatives, eyewitnesses to each person’s death) in only 127 cases.” A deeper analysis of the report also suggests that Amnesty International only used “eyewitness accounts of each person’s death in only 127 cases, with the remainder consisting mainly of statements by anonymous journalists/activists, most of which were not factual. [1]”

Another example lies in the FEMEN movement’s controversies. Femen, a feminist group of Ukrainian origin founded in Kyiv in 2008 by Anna Hutsol, Oksana Chatchko, and Oleksandra Shevchenko, was the first to protest by stripping naked in the street in front of religious institutions, anywhere.

When Femen decided to take their campaign against Arab Muslim countries in 2013, they began to bombard the “countries with naked women, without reason.” The unfortunate natural outcome was the hyper-sexualized woman object that utterly distorted the global feminist quest and its noble cause. The distortion of reality by FEMEN extends to their effort to cement the status of those who do not share their hyper-sexualized efforts as fascists. This highlights the disparity between the FEMN and the actual feminist quest, as seen when comparing “feminism of the 1970s for women’s sexual freedom” and “feminism of the 2000s for equal pay, parity, and the fight against stereotypes.”Both periods do not claim hyper-sexualization as the scope of both periods’ efforts. 

There are other examples of other NGOs and entities. Nevertheless, the issue remains the same. The capability to distort reality does not stem from mere moral flexibility, but rather from the interest group’s slow descent into funding-induced corruption. It may not always be clear, but the lack of a determined goal or result-orientation is a strong indication that an interest group is a mere puppet in the hands of its finance sources. 

To put this in perspective, I must state that “one feature of activism is that it is distinct from partisan activism. While the former manifests itself episodically and unexpectedly, activism necessitates long-term action within a tightly held hierarchy; while the former defends a specific cause whose legitimacy is self-evident, the latter necessitates adherence to a political ideology that outlines a path to take; and while the former does not pursue any project of radical change of the system of domination, the latter does.When considering these characteristics, it is apparent that corrupt interest groups lack the integrity that comprises any of the types of activism. One can only attribute this lack of integrity to the length they go to fulfil the ‘terms’ of their financing.

• Fulfilling The Terms Of The Agreement: How Playing A Political Role Demotes Human Rights:

Once a group’s image has been completely shattered and its credibility has been shattered, the only remaining action is to move forward and accept the role that the financing sources impose on the group based on interest.

While it could be argued that lack of credibility should end all endeavors of an interest group. One can not deny the role of any interest group in terms of shaping ideologies and presenting facts. To put it in simple terms, discredited groups can still be held as martyrs if they have considerable support from those who can not see beyond their political role. 

A political role, for the purpose of this paper, means using the cause that a group of interests adopts as a pressure tool to indirectly impose the will of the funding sources rather than realizing that goal in itself. The Palestinian cause is a great example to be explained further in this paper.

• The Palestinian Cause:

The latest aggression by the Zionist occupation of Sheikh Jarah has seen many NGOs, states, and individuals calling for action and flooding media channels with stores of heroic actions made by Palestinians, as well as gruesome and horrendous acts committed by the Zionist forces. Nevertheless, many groups of interest showed their true colors when it came to taking a stance on the cause.

I can point out a clear sign that a group is playing a major political role. That is, ‘describing the conflict’. Specialists recall that the expression “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” is “very often mentioned in United Nations resolutions” and is “generally very favorable to the defense of Palestinian rights, for example, those that reaffirm the rights of the Palestinian people.” The International Court of Justice, and its 2004 ruling on the illegality of the wall built by Israel, clearly stated that there was an ‘occupation’. 

Bearing that in mind, it is clear that the cause is being demoted by using generic terms that say nothing about the substance and the horror within the situation. It may be argued that “In practice, this generic aspect is very useful. The term “conflict” is very global and effective in terms of understanding the general theme addressed”. However, these generic terms, by all means, have caused the international community to fail to fathom the reality of the Zionist invasion. This was amplified by interest groups who (either due to their political role or due to unforgivable ignorance) helped cement these weak terms as perceived by the public. Allowing pro-Zionists to profit from a 70-year-old misconception.a misconception that is partially ‘funded’ by those who appreciate the effectiveness of interest groups, whether honest or crooked.

Moreover, the pro-Israeli discourse goes in the direction of inducing the perception of ‘Hamas wanting to attack Israel’. In this regard, and when I investigated Amnesty International’s role in the Palestinian cause, I discovered that it does not discuss it. I also noticed an interesting aspect of Amnesty International’s naming of the cause. Rather than naming it an “Israeli-Palestinian conflict”, it prefers the title “Israel-Occupied Palestinian Territories”: In reality, both terms fail to capture the essence of what is really going on as we only use the term ‘conflict’ when “we refer to armed hostilities”, as explained by Philippe Hensmans, director of the French-speaking Belgian section of Amnesty International. So when there is massive use of weapons, as is the case now in Gaza with rocket fire or airstrikes. This very statement can showcase the bias of Amnesty International, as it refuses to admit that the situation in Palestine is an actual genocide rather than an armed conflict (a term that implies a hint of proportionality between the belligerents). Painting a more realistic picture, I  must note that in relation to the situation in the West Bank, for example, a genuine piece of news can not call any of the events where the Zionist forces obliterate the Palestinian residents an armed conflict as “When there is an armed conflict, the legal framework becomes international humanitarian law, that is to say, the law of war, and therefore the Geneva Conventions.

But when there is an occupation, much broader and more binding human rights apply. It obliges the occupying power to try to arrest rather than kill members of the armed groups who are suspected of carrying out attacks. And to use the minimum necessary force to ensure security. But if the situation turns into an armed conflict, then the law of war applies. ” These very words, true as they are, are still overshadowed by the speaker’s actions (as a representative of Amnesty International) to keep the world from knowing the true horrors experienced in Palestine.

Therefore, it is understandable that for Amnesty International, the choice of words is closely related to its field of action for the defense of human rights. Should or can we use this as a guide for our articles? Would it make sense?

By examining the words of Mehdi Khelfat, an editor of RTBF, I can agree with the fact that: “Amnesty is an NGO that is not supposed to be neutral, it fights for the defense of human rights, that is its role. We are there to tell the facts, to be observers. That’s the big difference between us and her. We are not there to interfere in a conflict. A conflict is what opposes two actors. There is no value judgment. Afterward, we can talk about the reality of the facts as they are, talk about the blockade, make the people who suffer from it testify”[2]. It is very clear that Amnesty International has long forgotten its role as a human rights defending group and decided to imply the oppressing zionist policy of demoting action and spreading ignorance of the situation.

Conclusion:

The loop of politics will never end, so long that the governments and individuals who suffer from the ‘funding poison’ are incapable of taking swift and critical actions to protect themselves from the corruption of ‘funded’ organizations. This protection represents an advantage over unknown monetary funds, but it also has its disadvantages.

One of the countries that had a debate about foreign funding of organizations in Egypt where precautions based on the fact that these human rights organizations are politicized, were taken. These precautions have led to a great discovery of how humanitarian and philanthropic work is deemed meaningless if politicized. Egypt’s precautions sparked a non-formal debate between activists, journalists, and the government, which is very concerned that the organizations determine their funding because it is clear that if an interest group’s funding becomes fragile and pervasive, there is a high possibility that their political role will cease.

I must note that it is currently impossible to discuss the subject of human rights NGOs in Egypt without someone mentioning the word funding.

Many opinions are put on the table, as the government does not deny humanitarian activities, nor does it directly deny funding. The problem lies in the identity of those who provide funds (i.e. organizations located in the West) and Egypt’s relationship with them.

The suspicious foreign base of human rights organizations puts them in the circle of accusation and creates a barrier between the NGO itself and its essential purpose, the protection of human rights.

Finally, I must note that to protect themselves and their citizens, governments are obliged to refuse any action on their territory, which may be unknown and suspicious.

The concept of human rights is not of moral origin, but a specific modality of the modern concept of subjective rights. These human rights have by nature a legal character. To protect this right from any violation, it is necessary to monitor the supervisors as we can never eliminate groups of interests who fight for human rights, but we must ensure that they never become the tyrants they seek to overthrow.

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[1] https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-93996-4_303
International Encyclopedia of Civil Society
2010 Edition | Editors: Helmut K. Anheier, Stefan Toepler

[2] https://cercle-condorcet-de-paris.org/
Analyse de Mehdi Khelfat (JT du 06/11/2020).