Neighborhood Watch
Human Rights Watch’s corporate focus takes on labor rights and corrupt international revenue streams. 
By Danielle Lee
Background
Borne out of Helsinki Watch in 1978, the present form of Human Rights Watch was introduced in 1988 as an investigatory organization publishing accounts of
global-wide human rights abuses.
“Many people don’t understand how it’s possible to protect human rights on the other side of the world,” said Executive Director Ken Roth. “They tend to think of protecting rights as being something that the ACLU would do by going into court and suing the government, but what do you do when there is no court to turn to, or the court has been compromised or silenced through threats and violence?”
In these cases, HRW aims its exposure-based methodology at the executive and legislative levels, primarily through its first-hand reports of abuses filed by researchers in problematic countries. These reports are then used to put pressure on governments and corporations to motivate change.
Recent Successes
HRW has a special program devoted to corporate social responsibility, which works on curbing the complicity of companies in human rights abuses. Much of their current work is focused on the oil, gas and mining extraction industry, an important source of revenue for countries that is sometimes funneled into the purchase of arms and other corruptive practices.
“We try to expose those revenue streams and hold the government more accountable by making it possible for civil society in the country to try to ensure these funds are used for public welfare...rather than to fill the leader’s bank account or pay for his next palace or purchase the next round of AK-47s,” said Roth.
HRW’s efforts in the extraction industry include work in countries like Angola, where they helped ensure international loans ceased until the budget, of which $4 billion of social services funds disappeared, was made more transparent.
Current Initiatives
A similar campaign is underway to stop companies from indirectly funding arms groups in the Eastern Congo through the purchasing of local gold, with global mining company AngloGold Ashanti receiving specific criticism in a 2005 report for their monetary support of the rebel group Nationalist and Integrationalist Front in exchange for gold mine access, a practice that has since ended. Leading gold refinery Metalor Technologies was also exposed as a customer of tainted gold, and while their purchases from Ugandan traders has stopped, Roth said it isn’t clear that they have changed their policies to prevent future problems.
HRW is also the principal group behind the adoption of U.S. and U.K. human rights standards in the extraction industry, endorsed by the largest oil and mining companies in the world, including ExxonMobil, Chevron and Rio Tinto.
They are also currently negotiating similar standards for internet companies operating in China, which will combat online censorship and protect user information from the government. This approach reflects HRW’s current focus on voluntary standards, though if negotiations break down, they will rely on legislative change.
Upcoming Trends
The concept of voluntary standards in the corporate realm has transformed over the years, at least in the attitudes of company CEOs, according to Roth.
“Ten years ago, you’d get the answer, ‘Oh, we’re all for what you’re doing but it’s inappropriate for us to get into human rights issues because that’s a political question.’ No one says that anymore; they’d almost be laughed out of the boardroom because that’s such a dangerous approach,” said Roth.
Public and boardroom judgment is aided by media coverage of the organization’s reports. A recent report focused on Wal-Mart’s undermining of workers’ rights to form unions, an issue that HRW deals in often with its constant pressure on corporations to uphold international labor rights standards. While WalMart’s response to the report is presently “resistant, if not hostile,” companies like AngloGold have ultimately made changes in the wake of a report.
“The best reports we put out are reports where we say we found problem ‘X,’ we talked to the company, and this is how they’re fixing it,” Roth said. “Less enlightened companies will try to stonewall us and hope that we’ll go away and then it’s too late when they start reading about it in The Wall Street Journal.”
Roth also finds a connection between a company’s name recognition and their level of enlightenment.
“Obscure companies are posing a serious competitive challenge by cutting corners by using abusive standards to reduce their costs,” Roth said. “A lot of the major companies are beginning to recognize that legislative standards may be in their interest as a way of holding everybody to the same standard, regardless of their prominence.”