Soros: US lost moral high ground

2010-09-08 14:08

New York - Billionaire philanthropist George Soros is putting up $100m, one of the largest donations of its kind, to expand Human Rights Watch and help it court more international support.

The financier and major donor to liberal causes said on Tuesday that it's become a disadvantage for the group to be primarily funded by Americans because the US has lost the "moral high ground" when it comes to fighting abuses.

The gift, to be distributed over 10 years, is meant as a dramatic start toward major growth for the group, which documents abuses and advocates for human rights in about 90 countries.

Soros' donation is meant to help Human Rights Watch volunteers around the world entice other donors to give enough additional money to boost the organisation's budget from $48m a year to $80m within five years.

The organisation envisions hiring about 120 more staffers, primarily researchers and advocates, and setting up new offices to encourage such emerging powers as India and Brazil to make human rights a keystone of their foreign policies.

But the money also is meant to make its donor base as international as its outlook.

Diversify income and board

Plans call for Human Rights Watch to draw at least half its income and most of its board members from outside the US within five years.

Now, about 70% of the money and 80% of the board members are US-based.

Soros considers that a liability, one he blamed on a frequent target of his, former President George W. Bush.

"They're basically an American organisation advocating human rights all over the world. But the United States has lost the moral high ground, during the Bush administration, and, therefore, it runs into opposition because there's resentment of American interference," Soros said in an interview in his sleek office in a midtown Manhattan high-rise. "It's a drawback, to be American in this context."

For its part, Human Rights Watch says it feels it's seen as independent of the US government, and should be.

"But it is helpful for our organisation to personify the global values we promote," Executive Director Kenneth Roth said.

Large donation for human rights

While the gift isn't a record-breaker in the annals of philanthropy, those are measured in billions, experts say it's one of the largest in many years to human rights, a cause that in recent years has tended to attract fewer mammoth gifts than such organisations as medical centres and universities.

For human-rights philanthropy, "that is a stunning, jaw-dropping amount", said Doug White, the academic director of the New York University Heyman Centre for Fundraising and Philanthropy.

Soros is among several billionaires who have given up a sizeable chunk of their fortunes to philanthropy.

TV mogul Ted Turner has given $1bn to UN causes. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and investor Warren Buffett have joined forces to advance education, health and other causes around the world with their billions, and are encouraging other tycoons to do the same.

Soros' pledge on Tuesday is his largest-ever single donation to a human-rights group, though his Open Society Foundations give about $100m each year to human-rights-related organisations around the world, including some with a legal or criminal-justice focus.

Soros has donated more than $8bn during his lifetime. His Open Societies Foundations are on pace to give away about $800m this year on causes ranging from education to helping Pakistan recover from its recent floods.

Thirty-two years of involvement

Soros has been involved with the 32-year-old Human Rights Watch for decades. Indeed, he says he cut his teeth as a philanthropist by attending weekly meetings there in its early years.

The group has come under fire in the last two years from critics, including a former chairperson, who feel it has been unfairly harsh toward Israel and favoured Palestinian viewpoints.

"It has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state," Robert L Bernstein, who helped found the organisation and was its chairperson for 20 years, wrote in The New York Times last October. "Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on (the) conflict."

Human Rights Watch says it looks at Israel through the same lens, and with the same intensity, as it does other countries.

Only one of its nearly 300 staffers around the world is dedicated full-time to Israel, Executive Director Kenneth Roth said.

Earlier this year, the group said both Israel and Hamas had failed to conduct credible investigations of alleged war crimes during last year's Gaza war; both have denied committing them.

Objectivity, not bias

Soros, who is of Jewish descent but an atheist, said he sees the group's work on Israel as proof of objectivity, not bias.

"I think the important thing about human rights, if it is to be a universal principle, which it should apply to ‘us’ as well as ‘them’,” Soros said. "And that is why I've been stressing my concern with the behaviour of the United States, and the same applies to Israel. One needs to apply the same standards to Israel as one does to others."

Soros, who has become a lightning rod for conservative critics, declined on Tuesday to detail the policies he felt had cost the US its moral sway on human-rights issues, save to say that he felt the country had violated its constitution and its laws in the war on terror.

Born in Hungary, Soros emigrated to Britain as a youth after surviving the Nazi occupation of his country and later moved to the US.

He runs a hedge fund and is known for his high-profile success in currency trades.

- AP