NGO's and Selection Bias

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Brooklyn, New York, United States of America (Free-Press-Release.com) December 27, 2011 -- One of the main criticisms that you will come across of both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch is their selection bias and the criteria that they employ when choosing which countries to report on. In fact, in a response to a paper written by Andres Ballesteros in 2007 Amnesty International even admitted that it reports disproportionately on relatively more democratic and open countries.

Likewise, in an article published by The Times in March of 2010 Human Rights Watch was accused of “imbalance” due to the fact that it simply ignores many of the worst human rights abusing regimes while “intensely” covering other zones of conflict. As an example, HRW published 5 detailed and lengthy reports on Israel in just a 14-month period; meanwhile, they only produced a meager 4 reports on Kashmir over a 20-year period despite the fact that there have been over 80,000 conflict-related deaths over that same period and that “torture and extrajudicial murder have taken place on a vast scale”.

The question then becomes why? Why is it that some of the world’s largest NGO’s choose to focus on progressive, openly democratic societies as opposed to the full on repressive regimes that exist in other parts of the world? Why did HRW not even bother to issue a report on the post-election violence and repression in Iran, but instead prefer to focus on developed countries like Israel with its fully elected government and a legal system with which its citizens can engage freely to sort out its own problems?

To put it simply: NGO’s focus on countries where the information is either readily available or at least more easily attained. They tend to focus on states rather than organizations such as Al Qaeda or ETA, simply because states have a responsibility to its citizens and are more easily held accountable. Basically, states and countries are easier targets.

Another example is that of Equatorial Guinea. This is an openly democratic country with an elected president. They are building hospitals, hotels, schools and roads at a blistering pace yet they are still rated as one of the most corrupt regimes on the planet according to Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Transparency International. Not so corrupt mind you that the president of Transparency International didn’t seem to mind serving as Chairman of the Board for a company called TECHNIP while it signed a lucrative exploitation agreement with Equatorial Guinea back in 2010.

The point here is that NGO’s have a large impact on public perceptions and with that type of power they have a great responsibility. So the real question is why would they choose to focus on a country that appears to be already heading in the right direction when there are so many other countries out there doing far worse and going largely unnoticed?

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