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What really is Human Rights Watch?

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DURING our harmonised elections, we found a lot of lies being levelled and peddled against our President in relation to the fact that the elections were free and fair.

Soon after the elections as a country we together with Zambia hosted the United Nations World Tourism (UNWTO) General Assembly conference much to the envy of our Western enemies.

Through this successful conference, we found that one organisation called the Human Rights Watch (HRW) stood fiercely against us as Zimbabwe and outrightly stated that the hosting of the conference in Zimbabwe was a mere farce and an embarrassment to what the United Nations stands for in terms of human rights.

In simple terms, what this organisation was saying was that Zimbabwe did not deserve to host the UNWTO.

I have decided to do a mini expose on this organisation so that people see it and know it for what it really is; another shameful organisation that was formed by the Western nations to destroy development in African nations.

Its very founding as an organisation touches the heart of what Zimbabwe is founded on.

It goes back to communism versus capitalism.

The communist ideology, which was at the very foundation and roots of the Chimurengas that were fought in Zimbabwe was exactly what was being challenged by HRW.

Human Rights Watch was founded as a private American non-governmental organisation (NGO) in 1978, under the name ‘Helsinki Watch’, to monitor the former Soviet Union’s compliance with the Helsinki Accords.

Helsinki Watch adopted a methodology of publicly ‘naming and shaming’ abusive governments through media coverage and through direct exchanges with policymakers.

By shining the international spotlight on human rights violations in the Soviet Union and its European partners, Helsinki Watch contributed to so-called democratic transformations of the region in the late 1980s.

Americas Watch was founded in 1981 while bloody civil wars engulfed Central America.

Relying on extensive on-the-ground fact-finding, Americas Watch not only addressed perceived abuses by government forces, but also applied international humanitarian law to investigate and expose war crimes by rebel groups.

In addition to raising its concerns in the affected countries, it is amazing to note that not much was done in relation to naming and shaming USA.

Asia Watch (1985), Africa Watch (1988), and Middle East Watch (1989) were added to what was known as ‘The Watch Committees’. In 1988, all of these committees were united under one umbrella to form Human Rights Watch.

As can be read from the above, the very founding of this creature called Human Rights Watch was out of ideological differences.

As the Cold War ended and communism collapsed, they have tried to move on from this shaky foundation to try and legitimise their organisations.

Funny enough, with the billions of dollars they have received in funding over the years there seems to be no change.

They have maintained their capitalist stance of putting civil and political rights as more important than all other human rights.

One will never find Human Rights Watch dealing with real issues such as poverty, hunger, housing, health etc.

They are holding onto their old worthless mechanism of naming and shaming and it has really led nowhere except to the entrenching and legitimising of their organisation as ‘necessary’.

They receive funding of approximately US$10 million each year from the George Soros Foundation and their yearly budget expenses amount to US$56,4 million.

Yet not one bridge, not one school, not one road has been built by that organisation.

All they do is name and shame and go around the world on expensive trips and get ‘dirt’ on African leaders and get millions of funding to spend.

That is the world of Human Rights Watch.

They get a lot of funding for programmes that do not really help the world after all and they are one of the most funded organisations in the world.

What does this tell us as patriotic Zimbabweans?

These organisations are not after our welfare at all and honestly what they have to say in terms of the human rights issues in our country should be taken with a pinch of salt.

We are literally back to 1978 when this organisation was formed. That point where there was an ideological war.

Human Rights Watch is a capitalist organisation that does not support the development of our nation at all.

They do not even have offices here in Zimbabwe yet they dare proclaim and speak on our human rights situation based on what? NGOs like them should just be banned from our country and their so- called opinions should not even bother us.

Sadly in Zimbabwe, the NGO sector even after the harmonised elections are busy seeking autonomy and wanting to legitimise their current stay by calling for a Bill to harmonise the requirements for NGOs.

I will look at this more in next week’s article but for now, let us all remember that Human Rights Watch is another toothless bulldog that gets funding every time it barks against an African nation.

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