Philanthropist George Soros makes 10-year, $100 million grant to Human Rights Watch

George Soros gives $100M to Human Rights Watch

NEW YORK — Billionaire philanthropist George Soros is putting up $100 million, 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 Tuesday that it’s become a disadvantage for the group to be primarily funded by Americans because the U.S. 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 organization’s budget from $48 million a year to $80 million within five years. The organization 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. Plans call for Human Rights Watch to draw at least half its income and most of its board members from outside the U.S. within five years. Now, about 70 percent of the money and 80 percent of the board members are U.S.-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 organization 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 U.S. government, and should be.

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

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 organizations as medical centers 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 Center 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 $1 billion to United Nations 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 Tuesday is his largest-ever single donation to a human-rights group, though his Open Society Foundations give about $100 million each year to human-rights-related organizations around the world, including some with a legal or criminal-justice focus.

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

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 chairman — who feel it has been unfairly harsh toward Israel and favored 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 organization and was its chairman 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.

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 priniciple, that it should apply to ‘us’ as well as ‘them,’” Soros said. “And that is why I’ve been stressing my concern with the behavior 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 Tuesday to detail the policies he felt had cost the U.S. 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 United States. He runs a hedge fund and is known for his high-profile success in currency trades. He declined Tuesday to discuss the economy or markets at all.

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Associated Press Researcher Monika Mathur contributed to this report.