Human Rights Watch

[Smitten Eagle]

As some folks who posted earlier on this thread, I have a somewhat postitive view of HRW, vis-a-vis their other NGO brethren.

In the short term, it seems that the military's and HRWs agendas are divergent in particular and convergent in general. HRW may complain about specific acts of American atrocities, but at the end of the day both groups want a liberal, stable world order.

Thoughts on how to use this to advantage?

[milesce]

HRW did an interesting report following up on the initial phase of Iraq a few years back, focusing on civilian casualties in air-to-ground bombing.

Their conclusion was interesting. They could not find a single case where a pre-planned target caused any civilian casualties, and were very complimentary of both the restraint shown by US forces and the ability to very carefully target leadership targets, building, etc., without causing civlian casualties.

At the same time, they strongly condemned many of the last minute incidents, most of which were targeted at the "55 most wanted", most of which were based on last-minute intelligence, and virtually none of which reached the intended targets, but did cause significant numbers of civilian deaths. On the whole, they are pretty fair -- which means they are going to be critical all around, both of the US and other countries.

[Jedburgh]

HRW did an interesting report following up on the initial phase of Iraq a few years back, focusing on civilian casualties in air-to-ground bombing...

You are referring to their pub Off Target: Conduct of the War and Civilian Casualties in Iraq, published in Dec 03.

......Many of the civilian casualties from the air war occurred during U.S. attacks targeting senior Iraqi leaders. The United States used an unsound targeting methodology that relied on intercepts of satellite phones and inadequate corroborating intelligence. Thuraya satellite phones provide geo-coordinates that are accurate only to within a onehundred-meter (328-foot) radius; therefore, the United States could not determine the origin of a call to a degree of accuracy greater than a 31,400-square-meter area. This flawed targeting strategy was compounded by a lack of effective assessment both prior to the attacks of the potential risks to civilians and after the attacks of their success and utility. All of the fifty acknowledged attacks targeting Iraqi leadership failed. While they did not kill a single targeted individual, the strikes killed and injured dozens of civilians. Iraqis who spoke to Human Rights Watch about the attacks it investigated repeatedly stated that they believed the intended targets were not even present at the time of the strikes.

Coalition air strikes on preplanned fixed targets apparently caused few civilian casualties, and U.S. and U.K. air forces generally avoided civilian infrastructure. Coalition forces did, however, identify certain targets as “dual use,” including electricity and media installations. Human Rights Watch’s investigations found that air strikes on civilian power distribution facilities in al-Nasiriyya caused serious civilian suffering and that the legality of the attacks on media installations was questionable....

HRW also clearly put the blame on the Iraqis for many of the deaths of their own civilians:

...The investigation showed that Iraqi forces committed a number of violations of international humanitarian law, which may have led to significant civilian casualties. These violations included use of human shields, abuse of the red cross and red crescent emblems, use of antipersonnel landmines, location of military objects in protected places (such as mosques, hospitals, and cultural property), and a failure to take adequate precautions to protect civilians from the dangers of military operations. The Iraqi military’s practice of wearing civilian clothes tended to erode the distinction between combatants and civilians, putting the latter at risk, although it did not relieve Coalition forces of their obligation to distinguish at all times between combatants and civilians and to target only combatants....

Overall, it is an interesting read.

I personally feel HRW to be a reliable source of information; their bias - if you want to call it that - is clear and does not distort their reporting, which I have always found to be evenhanded. The one time that I had personal contact with them, when they had a team working in northern Iraq investigating the Anfal, I was very impressed with their professionalism.

[milesce]

I couldn't recall the title of the report, thanks for posting the excerpts!

[milesce]

This just came into my email.

Iraq: Execution of Captive Soldiers Violates the Laws of War

Iraq Insurgent Group Claims to Have Executed Two Missing US Soldiers

(New York, June 8, 2007) - An insurgent group named the Islamic State of
Iraq announced on Monday that it had executed two US soldiers who went
missing last month. If confirmed, this act would constitute a serious
violation of international humanitarian law and those responsible would be
guilty of war crimes, Human Rights Watch said today.

On Monday, television networks around the world showed a video clip
purportedly made by the Islamic State of Iraq, which showed what appears
to be both the missing soldiers' identification cards. In the video, the
insurgent group, which in the past has claimed links to al-Qaeda, claims
that it executed the men.

"Those claiming to hold the US soldiers captive must treat the men
humanely," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights
Watch. "If they have done otherwise, they have committed war crimes."

The two soldiers - Specialist Alex Jimenez, 25, and Private Byron Fouty,
19 - went missing on May 12 when insurgents ambushed their patrol near the
town of Mahmoudiya, 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of Baghdad. In the
Euphrates River, US forces later found the body of Private First Class
Joseph Anzack, Jr., a third US soldier who went missing at the same time.

US forces subsequently deployed some 4,000 troops, backed by Iraqi army
soldiers, to sweep through a large swath of territory around Mahmoudiya in
search of the missing soldiers. In a statement, the US command said that
American troops had detained 11 people and questioned 450 in connection
with the search.

On May 14, two days after the soldiers went missing, the Islamic State of
Iraq issued a statement calling on both US troops and the Iraqi Army to
halt their search if they wanted their soldiers back alive. In the video
clip that aired on Monday, the insurgent group stated that it had killed
the US soldiers because US troops and the Iraqi army had failed to heed
its warnings.

"Fearing the occupying army will continue its searches, harming our Muslim
brothers, we decided to settle the matter and announced the news of their
killing to cause bitterness to God's enemies," a spokesman for the Islamic
State of Iraq said in the video.

Customary international law requires that all captured belligerents be
treated humanely and provides that the murder or willful killing of a
captured belligerent is a war crime.

"No matter what the cause, killing captives violates international
humanitarian law," said Whitson. "Every party to a conflict is subject to
the laws of war, and the requirement to treat captive soldiers humanely is
one of the most basic provisions."

Executing a captured combatant also violates basic precepts of Islamic law
governing the conduct of war, according to most scholars of Islamic law.

Human Rights Watch has documented violations of the laws of war of all
parties to the conflict, including insurgent groups, US forces and the
Iraqi government forces.

To view the October 2005 Human Rights Watch report on violations of the
laws of war by Iraqi insurgent groups, "A Face and a Name: Civilian
Victims of Insurgent Groups in Iraq," please visit:

http://hrw.org/reports/2005/iraq1005/

[goesh]

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

"An international human rights group has called on Iran to stop executing people under the age of 18, saying the country leads the world in the practice.

Human Rights Watch said Iran had executed at least 17 juvenile offenders, eight times more than any other country, since the beginning of 2004, including two so far this year.

Such sentences violate international treaties ratified by Iran that prohibit the death penalty for crimes committed by people under the age of 18, according to the human rights group.

It said Iran's judiciary had repeatedly upheld death sentences for juveniles charged with committing crimes when they were as young as 15. "

[Mooks]

One of the things that I think helps HRW (and something that some who work there express pride in) is that they are not dependent on public donations to the extent Amnesty is. HRW gains most of its donations from fewer but far more generous philanthropists. They would argue that this allows them to play less of an advocacy role than Amnesty has to and focus more on balanced scholarly work that attempts to "inform" the public debate, rather than push it.

Leave None to Tell the Story is a great piece of research by Allison De Forges, its up there with Linda Melvern's and Gerald Prunier works on the Rwandan Genocide. I think though the best recent work (at least to get an issue on the public's radar) was on the 2005 Andijan Massacre piece Bullets Were Falling Like Rain.
http://hrw.org/reports/2005/uzbekistan0605/

[JeffWolf]

Hi,

This may be a bit off-topic, because the discussion thus far seems to have revolved around NGOs with respect to specific events and incidents (e.g., alleged war crimes). However, that said:

This book (http://www.amazon.com/Country-Politi...0175910&sr=8-1) has an interesting roundtable including, among others, Carl Ford (formerly of State INR) and an HRW staffer. I haven't read the chapter in some time, but if I recall, the HRW staffer stated that, at least in assessing general political stability and political risk, he thought NGOs were at an advantage vis-a-vis government intelligence services. His reasoning was that the latter mainly liased with their counterparts, whereas since the NGOs worked with "the truly disadvantaged" (to steal a phrase from William Julius Wilson), they got a more accurate sense of how things are.

I suppose one could extend the argument, as seems to have already occurred in this thread, to different reporting channels, different oversight mechanisms, different incentive structures, and so on, as well as different world views and recruiting mechanisms.

I know some of the people on this board have served as FAOs, attaches, etc. I'd be curious to see whether they agree with the HRW staffer.

Regards
Jeff