Human rights organizations see themselves as arbiters of democracy and humanitarian law include Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and their smaller counterparts, as well as the foundations that fund them. But the authorities in India give them too much respect, much more than they actually deserve.
These organizations all too frequently violate their own founding ideals by putting faulty technique and subjective political positions ahead of objective norms. After the exposure of errors, if not illegality, too often analysts deflect criticism and excuse fraud rather than correct mistakes.
Rather than correcting faults after errors, if not illegality, are exposed, analysts all too frequently duck blame and justify fraud.
The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) is one example. In 2019, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was urged to deny Prime Minister Narendra Modi the Global Goalkeeper Award due to “his government’s well-documented human rights abuses” by the official non-governmental organization