The Foreign Service Journal, June 2023

44 JUNE 2023 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL HB: Obviously, there are all kinds of human rights activists with all kinds of approaches. Regarding information gaps, well, unlike you, we don’t have access to an intelligence agency! We are very thin on the ground. Human Rights Watch usually has one researcher per country and maybe one or two research assistants. Some of our research- ers cover several countries, and many work on thematic issues across a whole region or even globally. So those are real con- straints, no matter how connected, knowledgeable, and hard- working someone might be. But my organization and many other organizations and activ- ists pride ourselves on being incredibly careful to have our facts right. Our reputation is our greatest asset, and if we wreck it by being wrong, we can’t fix that. Behind the need to get things right is a whole structure at Human Rights Watch of fact-checking and a pretty heavy review process—I have had documents I’ve writ- ten reviewed by more than 20 people, including specialists on any country or thematic area that is mentioned, external experts, and always the legal and policy department. That process will not allow us to publish information that is not supported by mul- tiple credible sources, and we get asked a lot of questions along the way to ensure that that is the case. We have discussions over the meanings of everyday words like “pervasive,” “routine,” or even “massacre,” and tough, careful, and sometimes very long internal discussions about legal terminology like “systematic,” “apartheid,” and “genocide.” We try to stick to using technical terms with their technical meaning—not the more common use of the term—and err on the side of caution with respect to the facts. We hope that the benefit of being so careful and measured is that people we see as advocacy targets, such as U.S. diplomats, will see the information we collect as credible and feel that it is appropriate to incorporate it into their analysis. Our work can be most effective when we are able to build relationships with insiders within governments or institutions who see value in working with us to promote common goals. I hope our conversation today helps those relationships take shape, the way ours has! n