 Michael Rubin, director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum. |
PHILADELPHIA, June 17, 2024 – Michael Rubin, director of policy analysis for the Middle East Forum, testified before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the U.S. House of Representatives on June 13, 2024, about the growing problem of human rights fraud perpetrated by major organizations.
Rubin testified that
human rights fraud is epidemic. While boutique human rights organizations might promote and profit from shoddy if not dishonest advocacy, marquee organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch increasingly trade upon reputations built in decades past to cover or give credence to fraudulent work today.
When the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations ignores fraud, waste, and abuse in U.N. agencies, she enables it. To advocate for a clean U.N. by demanding the organization clean house is not anti-U.N. After all, should the U.S. ambassador fight corruption in Mexico, no honest analyst would dismiss this as anti-Mexican.
While many human rights advocates and researchers demand governments and media take their findings at face value, increasingly political and profit motivations undercut their work. An unprecedented crisis afflicts human rights organizations today, made worse by their tendency to circle the wagons, demonize critics, and deflect criticism rather than acknowledge and weed out rot.
Rubin went on to detail three major types of human rights fraud: corruption of methodology, outright falsehood, and pay-to-play schemes.
"Michael Rubin's exposure of the rot within major human rights organizations should be taken seriously by taxpayers, legislators, and anyone concerned with promoting human rights instead of bureaucrats' careers," said Middle East Forum director Gregg Roman. "Policymakers and the public must demand full transparency and accountability from groups that have strayed from their founding missions in pursuit of money and political agendas."
The Middle East Forum, a non-profit organization, promotes American interests in the Middle East and protects Western civilization from Islamism. It does so through a combination of original ideas, focused activism, and funding allies. For more information, visit www.meforum.org.
For immediate release
For more information, contact:
Gregg Roman
roman@meforum.org
+1 (215) 546 5406
