- Person
- Aryeh Neier
- Lived
- b. 1937
- Field
- Human rights
- From
- German-born American
The story
In August 1975 the Soviet Union joined 34 other nations in signing the Helsinki Accords. The agreement included unprecedented human rights provisions, among them a commitment to the right of each individual to know and act upon his rights. In the United States, Aryeh Neier recalls, almost nobody paid attention. The accords only gained significance when a small group in Moscow began to use them.
On 12 May 1976 the physicist Yuri Orlov announced the formation of the Moscow Helsinki Group at a press conference in Andrei Sakharov's apartment. Its eleven members set out to document whether the Soviet Union kept its promises. Within about a year most of them had been imprisoned; according to Neier, seven of the eleven were jailed and two emigrated. The group inspired similar monitoring committees in Ukraine, Lithuania, Georgia and Armenia and Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia.
In 1978, after leaving the ACLU, Neier was asked by a friend to help create a US Helsinki group, and he readily agreed. Helsinki Watch was established that year by the publisher Robert L. Bernstein, with Neier among its founders. Helsinki Watch's first aim was to bring pressure for the release of the imprisoned Moscow monitors. The Ford Foundation gave the initial grant of $400,000, and the group gradually took on more issues.
When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 and turned away from the human rights policy of the Carter administration, Neier saw the chance to build something larger. The young organisation led a successful campaign to block Reagan's first nominee for assistant secretary of state for human rights, and it soon set out to criticise abuses on the right as well as the left. Americas Watch was founded in 1981, followed by Asia Watch and Africa Watch, and in 1988 the committees took the common name Human Rights Watch.
Neier led the organisation as executive director for 12 years. From a modest campaign for a handful of jailed Soviet monitors grew one of the two largest international human rights organisations in the world.
Why it matters
By standing up for a handful of jailed Soviet monitors, Helsinki Watch began the work that grew into one of the world's leading human rights organisations.
About Aryeh Neier
Child refugee from Nazi Berlin who led the ACLU, co-founded Human Rights Watch and for two decades ran George Soros’s Open Society Foundations.
More about Aryeh Neier
- Aryeh Neier co-founded Human Rights WatchAryeh Neier, who fled Nazi Germany as a two-year-old in 1939, led the ACLU, co-founded Human Rights Watch in 1978 and headed the Open Society Foundations.
- Aryeh Neier helped build the machinery of accountabilityAryeh Neier was involved in creating both the Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal and the International Criminal Court, and supported groups that pursue justice for victims.
- Aryeh Neier set up ACLU branches in Texas and OklahomaAryeh Neier's first ACLU job, in 1963, was strengthening its state branches; he organized new affiliates in Texas and Oklahoma, where the ACLU had none.
- Aryeh Neier grew the ACLU and defended the overlookedAs national director of the ACLU from 1970 to 1978, Aryeh Neier helped grow membership from 140,000 to 200,000 and led work on the rights of prisoners and psychiatric patients.
- Aryeh Neier applied the laws of war to every sideUnder Aryeh Neier, Human Rights Watch began monitoring violations of the laws of armed conflict, holding governments and guerrillas alike to the Geneva Conventions.
- Aryeh Neier's NYCLU took up police and asylum abusesAs director of the New York Civil Liberties Union in the 1960s, Aryeh Neier pressed for civilian review of police and began defending people confined in mental institutions.
- Aryeh Neier's team helped uncover the Vukovar massacreA Human Rights Watch researcher working for Aryeh Neier first identified the 1991 killing of more than 200 men taken from Vukovar's hospital, later confirmed by exhumation.
- Aryeh Neier's foundation backed Kofi Annan's Kenya peaceDuring Kofi Annan's mediation after Kenya's disputed 2007 election, the Open Society Foundations led by Aryeh Neier provided a monitoring staff to track the peace agreement.
Sources
- Biographical interview with Aryeh Neier Quellen zur Geschichte der Menschenrechte
- Aryeh Neier Wikipedia
- Helsinki Watch Wikipedia
- Moscow Helsinki Group Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.