I don’t know if I would trust a gay rights campaign funded by Saudi in the US….I would have to see what kind of results it put forth first, but I would be skeptical because Saudi doesn’t exactly have the best gay-rights record in their own country. And for those reasons, I certainly understand your (and others) distrust of various US-funded intiatives, since you’ve seen very bad results, bad results, and few good ones.

However, I also don’t think the attempt at building better relationships bewteen countries and understanding ideologies is necessarily bad…after all, isnt’t that part of the point of MEY? One ideology being put up against another, and letting the individual choose which one he or she thinks is best based on an informed and educated opinion?

(also, for the record, Saudi did fund a huge addition to a DC university – I believe Georgetown, although it might have been AU. there was some backlash but certainly nothing that reached a wide-scale campaign against it. as long as they followed relevant US laws in the building and regarding education, I really didn’t care. I also certainly don’t believe the Saudis did that just out of the goodness of their heart – they clearly gained something, too.)

Part of the problem here is that human rights issues are political, there’s no way around it. Even education and health – choosing where to put a hospital is a political decision; and as you can see from the Saudi example, this is true of educational initiatives too. This is an inherent problem that faces any country that gives out humanitarian aid. And with regards to having a self-interested stake, again, I would like a utopia where everyone acted for others out of the good of their own hearts….but that’s not reality, so we must all try to find a solution within the realities that exist. That’s why I disagree with your overall reccomendation that the US should stop funding human rights issues because I don’t believe that is a valid solution to the problem. No government is going to act without some sort of gain, even if that gain is only the possibility of winning hearts and minds. If that is effective or not is another story…there’s certainly been a number of complete humanitarian aid failures.

I would also caution against the stereotyping of all state-funded organizations as being fishy – certainly your experience detailed above is unacceptable and I’m sure there are more examples but I disagree that it’s because they are state-funded that they have little respect for your lives. I know many, many people working in the NGO world that have state-funded intiatives and would never, ever treat you in that way. Sometimes people are just stupid. A pattern of stupidity is also not, of course, unique to the US or to NGO workers, state-funded or not. It also goes both ways, as you have no doubt experienced with your many endeavors, what indidviduals expect from NGOs or other orgs is oftentimes laughable. I remember one particular instance where someone that contacted me through an org I used to work for and expected the (human rights, not soccer related) org to pay for the flights and accomodations for multiple US soccer coaches to fly to his home country and watch him try out so he could get paid to move to the US and get on a soccer team. After all, it was his “human right” to be able to play soccer, so we should be providing that opportunity…. !?!?!?!? A while back, you wrote an article about MEY’s comment policy, and how rejecting certain comments is not a violation of free speech. I totally agreed and chuckled about it since what actually defines human rights and how they are enacted seems to be a completely lost concept on some people….even those like NGO workers who should know better.

Anyway, I never meant to demean the risks that so many people all around the world take for freedom by, for example, blogging under their real names while living in unbearably repressive conditions. This is exceptionally admirable. And I am totally ashamed and sickened that my government and my tax dollars went to pay for the torture of others (among other human rights violations).

But I am also extremely proud of the many, many Americans I know personally – who work for (either partially or fully) state-funded non-profit organizations – who have come to areas in the ME, Africa, and elsewhere and risked their lives to implement humanitarian aid initiatives. And no, I’m not talking about missionaries or the military, although both those groups do participate in humanitarian missions….I’m talking about everyday, average people who start to work for orgs simply because they want to help. And you recognized this in your post, but my point is that many of those other people could also be publicly funded and you just may not know. It’s probably more than you think.

Also, this wasn’t addressed in your original post, but it’s important to note that every year the foreign ops funding bills in Congress, which includes all military and humanitarian aids, is a huge fight and an incredibly complicated issue. Part of this is because some of the very governments we all object to have hired lobbyists in DC to get money – both military and humanitarian aid – from the US: http://www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/insights/Africa_s_big_men_mess_up_and_pay_image_cleaners_in_Washington_it_s_that_easy_90445.shtml

It’s up to NGOs or other individual constituents here to try and convince Congress why giving this money is not a good idea, but unfortunately, non-profit orgs have a hard time staying afloat (which brings us back to the first issue of where do they get funding) and according to US law can’t engage in lobbying anyway. It’s a constant uphill battle.

If Saudi Arabia funded a gay rights campaign in the USA, would you trust it? Would you believe the funding is unrestrictive and has the concerns of Americans at heart, or is it just to build a better relationship with Americans to try and win their hearts and minds into a particular ideology?

It is worth noting that things like education and health care are human rights, so when the author argues that the US should spend more money on those types of pursuits instead of “human rights issues” demeans the fact that they are also human rights (according to the UN Declaration on Human Rights). Fighting for freedom of speech and religious freedoms is no more admirable than building hospitals and schools….all are necessary aspects of life and therefore deserve equal attention as human rights.

Just to be clear, I do not actually credit the USA for any advancement in terms of health care or education in the region, because it has thus far contributed very little to these areas thus far (and I’m not complaining about that, it’s not their responsibility.) I’m just noting that if it really does want to make a difference, they should fund these areas and not political ones where they have a self-important interest, and not an interest for the actual citizens.

Getting funding from the U.S government is also commonly referred to as “blood money,” considering its own human right issues such as torture prisons around the world including the U.S-sponsored Bagram prison, where human rights lawyers are still demanding justice for innocent people who have been killed and tortured in it.

Something is very fishy with U.S funding and some of our interactions with State-funded initiatives (one incident quoted above) just shows their true face at times. You can see with how much disrespect they treat us, and how little they fear for our lives or concerns for true, honest freedom, and not the kind with one-sided censorship and political gains behind it.

It is worth noting that things like education and health care are human rights, so when the author argues that the US should spend more money on those types of pursuits instead of “human rights issues” demeans the fact that they are also human rights (according to the UN Declaration on Human Rights). Fighting for freedom of speech and religious freedoms is no more admirable than building hospitals and schools….all are necessary aspects of life and therefore deserve equal attention as human rights.

For so many NGOs in the US, accepting gov’t funding is the only way they can survive as an organization. Of course censorship is not good, but what good work can be done by these orgs also deserves attention, as this article points out because so many of the on-the-ground workers are committed to the cause and are forced to work within constraints since otherwise they wouldn’t be able to do any good at all. There may be undue censorship of some organizations who recieve public funds, but the US as a whole is one of the countries where free speech is practiced and respected to an utmost – although of course not perfect – level.

With all that said, I feel this article ignores a major issue regarding US public funding of human rights issues….it’s what the people of the US want! HR funding began because of public pressure by American citizens for their gov’t to address human rights abuses all around the world, and as a taxpayer, would you want your taxes to go towards the promotion of ideas you find objectionable, racist, or otherwise inflammatory? Of course not! Free speech does have limits in the public sphere, but it should not of course in the private sphere. Endeavors that get public funding SHOULD be careful in order to avoid conflict with the very people supporting it. Think about it – if a privately funded organization made a statement that offended its main donor, that donor would immediately pull his or her money and the org may go under. It’s the same here…..but better since you have actual constituent input! Although the annual reports put out by the DOS on human rights and religious freedoms are not perfect and are conscious of diplomatic ties, I know for a fact that privately funded NGOs also can have great influence, therefore balancing diplomatic and foreign concerns. And it’s often those reports that are cited by major media news outlets and even other orgs as “proof” of human rights abuses.

And no, it’s not just organizations that support the overall policy goals of the US that get funding. After all, if that were true, then no NGO with public funding would be able to survive the twists and turns of administrations that are American politics. To a small degree, orgs supporting special interests have a better chance at funding under certain administrations (funding for absitence programs under Bush, for example, was increased) but overall the changes from year to year/election to election are not astronomical.

Also, a distinction needs to be made between the different types of “aid” given by the US. I totally agree that the US supports some of the ME’s worst dictators, but if people like Hosni Mubarak didn’t buy weapons from the US (which, I might add, is considered “military aid” even though that money is put right back into the US, so it’s a bit of a misnomer) he would certainly buy them elsewhere and potentially from a gov’t that is an even worse abuser of human rights than the US….for example, China, who buys much from (and therefore supports) Sudan and Iran. Yes, the US supports Saudi with all the oil we buy, but doesn’t that in some ways give the US a better platform to argue for human rights advances since we have a bargining tool? It’s a good theory even if it hasn’t been put into conrete action, and the effectiveness of things like economic sanctions are widely debated in human rights circles. The phrase that comes to mind is “keep your friends close but your enemies closer.” After all, the US basically cut off Cuba in all forms of support due to disagreements with their gov’t – trade, aid, tourism, ect – and the situation in Cuba only got worse for the average person. It’s also ironic I haven’t seen a criticism of China’s aid policies supporting ME dictatoriship countries on here….and that’s probably because of 2 reasons: one, China isn’t a democracy and therefore doesn’t have to worry about survival based on public opinion, and two, because aid from China is so small in the grand scheme of things that it is irrelevant.

MEY’s pursuit of freedom of speech is extraordinarily admirable and that is why the site is so popular, and it’s a well-deserved reputation. MEY also deserves great applause for being able to fund themselves without foreign influence, and is certainly right in wishing that is the way it could be for everyone and demanding other orgs/gov’ts to stop using them as a front for politics.

Sometimes, though, as commentor Marian noted; information regarding how the US government actually works as published on this site is misguided. We all want a human rights utopia, and I’ll be the first to admit that the US isn’t perfect in their foreign policy or in human rights – we have a long way to go until perfection – but it is incredibly unfair to expect the US to police the world and support human rights without considering any public opinion or diplomatic issues.

Sami, the US administration is a huge complex of intertwining branches that often compete against one another. It is not a single snake, it is rather a ZOO, whose inhabitants fight over funds.

I think the same applies for any huge political bureaucracy. Less so in totalitarian top-down states like North Korea, more so in states which actually have some divisions of power.