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Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an independent non-governmental organization that exists on donations of private persons and foundations from over the world. The organization was founded in 1978 in the United States as the Helsinki Human Rights Watch (Now this is the Human Rights Watch Department for Europe and Central Asia) as an answer to the cry for help from human rights organizations in Moscow, Warsaw and Prague, that were created to collect information on the observance of fulfillment of human rights articles of Helsinki Accords. Several years later, the administration of US-president Reagan claimed that violations of human rights by rightist authoritarian regimes were more acceptable than violations of human rights by leftist totalitarian governments. In order to oppose this sort of dual standards the American Watch was founded. By 1987 a number of effective work-methods had been developed: a detailed documentation of human rights violations and campaigns in the media, as well as lobbying for the observance of human rights with governments. These methods were applied all over the world. At present Human Rights Watch is the largest international human rights organization, active in over 70 countries in the world. Over a 100 experienced employees of Human Rights Watch - regional experts, lawyers, journalists and linguists, help to understand the reasons of human rights violations and to find ways to reduce them. The goal of the organization is to force governments to pay with its reputation and legitimacy for the violation of the rights of their citizens. Due to the fact that human rights defence activities require strong local support, Human Rights Watch is establishing close ties with human rights organizations all over the world.
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