- Person
- Aryeh Neier
- Lived
- b. 1937
- Field
- Human rights
- From
- German-born American
The story
Aryeh Neier became the founding president of George Soros's Open Society Institute, later the Open Society Foundations, in 1993 and led it until 2012. He brought long experience to the post, having spent 15 years at the American Civil Liberties Union and 12 years leading Human Rights Watch, and he had known Soros since bringing him in as an early donor to Human Rights Watch. Under Neier the philanthropy supported human rights, accountability and civil society around the world, as well as programmes such as early childhood education.
Kenya was thrown into crisis after its elections of 2007. Former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, by then out of office, became the mediator between the rival parties and negotiated a peace agreement. Neier, who had a good relationship with Annan during his years at the UN, later credited him with preventing Kenya from falling apart in a Rwanda-like catastrophe.
Neier said his foundation cooperated closely with Annan in that effort. It provided him with a monitoring staff so that he could see what was happening on the ground and judge whether the parties were complying with the peace agreement he had negotiated. It was a case of a private foundation putting practical resources behind international mediation.
Neier has been frank about the questions such influence raises. A foundation is not subject to democratic accountability, he acknowledges, and its money gives it power. His answer is that the Open Society Foundations operate transparently, so that people can see what they do and criticise it, and that the foundation tries to stay open to debate about whether its programmes are the right ones.
He has said that cooperation with the United Nations varied with who held office: there was none, for example, under Boutros Boutros-Ghali, while the relationship with Annan was close. Neier is now president emeritus of the foundations.
Why it matters
Practical support for monitoring helped Annan's mediation at a moment when Kenya's stability was at stake.
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.
- Helsinki Watch began as a fight to free Soviet monitorsAryeh Neier co-founded Helsinki Watch in 1978 to press for the release of the Moscow Helsinki Group, whose members had been jailed for monitoring Soviet human rights promises.
- 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.
Sources
- Biographical interview with Aryeh Neier Quellen zur Geschichte der Menschenrechte
- Aryeh Neier Aurora Humanitarian Initiative
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