George Soros to Give $100M to Pro-Abortion Group Human Rights Watch
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 8, 2010
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — The liberal group Human Rights Watch, which advocates for "gay rights" causes but also actively promotes abortion, will soon be a recipient of $100 million from left-wing activist George Soros. The billionaire announced yesterday he is donating the money so HRW can expand its efforts globally.
The donation is the largest political one Soros has made and it is the largest donation HRW has ever received.
Soros told the New York Times that the gift is just one of many hefty political donations he plans to make that will likely continue benefiting groups on the pro-abortion side of the debate.
“This is partly due to age,” the 80-year-old said about his plan to begin giving away vast sums of money from his fortune.
“Originally I wanted to distribute all of the money during my lifetime, but I have abandoned that plan. My foundation should continue, but I still would like to do a lot of giving during my lifetime, and doing it this way, with such size, is a step in that direction," Soros added.
Human Rights Watch said it will use the money to hire an additional 120 staffers to the current group of 300 it fields around the world.
Soros told the newspaper he gave the gift in part because HRW allowed him to be involved in executive meetings and decision-making.
“Every Wednesday morning at 8 o’clock, a group at Human Rights Watch got together and discussed issues with the managers,” he said. “I was an active participant in that group, and human rights remains an important element of my foundation’s current activities.”
Although the roups supposedly fights for human rights, it denies those rights to unborn children and aggressively attacks countries that protects them.
In January, the New York-based organization released a document attacking Ireland’s pro-life laws. It claimed Ireland is in breach of its international human rights obligations for not allowing legalized abortion in this country.
Dr Ruth Cullen of the Pro-Life Campaign told LifeNews.com she was disappointed that a foreign group would attack Ireland’s desire to protect women and children.
"Human Rights Watch cannot credibly claim to be a human rights organization while at the same time denying the rights of unborn children throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy. Any authentic vision of human rights has to include the right to life. Otherwise it is meaningless," she said.
Just weeks ago, HRW released a report promoting abortion in Argentina and criticizing it for not complying with international law.
The report was criticized for erroneously citing several international human rights treaties and committees, including the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), for its claim that international law requires Argentina to provide abortion-on-demand. In fact, no international human rights treaty contains a right to abortion.
When CEDAW and ICCPR were negotiated, many of the negotiating countries had pro-life laws on the books that still remain in place today.
HRW has awarded abortion activists, was criticized for deceiving Hispanic nations on abortion, and it took a pro-life Nicaragua law to court in an attempt to overturn it.
Patrick Rooney, the executive director of the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University told the New York Times that just one other person has made a donation that large this year and it came when a benefactor gave $200 million to Baylor University.
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