Soros Donates $100 Million to Human Rights Group

Billionaire George Soros will donate $100 million to Human Rights Watch

Billionaire George Soros announced on Tuesday that he will donate $100 million to Human Rights Watch to help it become a global organization.

“It's an American organization and that has become a drawback because America has lost the moral high ground for promoting human rights,” Soros said in a radio interview. “So I want the organization to become truly international with maybe the American members in the minority.”

Soros and the human rights organization said that during the next decade, Soros' Open Society Foundation will put up a challenge grant that will match up to $100 million the contributions of other donors.

Human Rights Watch was established in 1978 in New York and began by exposing human rights violations in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe following the 1975 Helsinki accords. The group soon expanded to other parts of the world, and creates about 100 human rights reports every year.

The group shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize as a co-founder of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

Human Rights Watch, which has 300 staff, said that they will use the money to beef up staff advocacy offices in key global cities, and to extend its research in countries where human rights concerns are significant.

“In an increasingly multi-polar world, we must ensure that Human Rights Watch's message resonates in the most influential capitals around the globe,” Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch said in a statement. “Ending serious abuses requires generating pressure from any government with clout, including emerging powers in the global South.”

Posted by James Fried on Wednesday September 08 2010, 10:31 AM EST. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Finance. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0