The Pitfalls of International Human Rights Monitoring: Some Critical Remarks on the 1995 Human Rights Watch/Helsinki Report on Xenophobia in Germany

The euphoria of the opening of the iron curtain in Germany in 1989 and the unification one year later of a country that had been divided since the end of World War II was just abating when the ugly face of xenophobia started to reappear in the country. Pictures of skinheads lashing out at “foreigners,” of shelters for asylum seekers beleaguered by neo-Nazis, and of burned down dwellings housing Turks did the rounds in the international media. Increasingly hostile attitudes and behavior towards foreigners, which occurred amidst a public debate on how to curb the influx of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers into Germany, alerted many observers who were concerned about the situation of foreigners in Germany.

One of the human rights groups that reacted to the dramatic increase of violence against foreigners was Helsinki Watch, now called Human Rights Watch/Helsinki. In October 1992, Human Rights Watch/Helsinki issued its first report on xenophobic violence in Germany (1992 Report). ¹ In April 1995, it released a more elaborate follow-up report on the subject (1995 Report). ² One may suggest that the international reaction to Human Rights Watch/Helsinki’s allegations of a wave of violent xenophobia in Germany both alerted the public to problems in Germany and put pressure on the German federal and state governments to make changes after they had partly given the fatal impression of silently tolerating, ignoring or, at least, belittling the degree of violence against foreigners in the country. However, despite the beneficial effect of evaluations by Human Rights Watch/Helsinki and other groups, ³ the 1995 Report by Human Rights Watch/Helsinki gives rise to a critique of its approach to human rights monitoring—a critique that may, to some extent, be valid for other human rights groups that pursue a similar approach. There are some fundamental problems with the 1995 Human Rights Watch/Helsinki Report itself. In addition, one might voice some objections to the principles that Human Rights Watch/Helsinki voiced in its dealing with Germany, in particular its “hate speech” policy.

The first critique concerns the introductory section of the 1995 Report. Human Rights Watch/Helsinki mentions that Germany has experienced widespread beatings and even killings of foreigners. ⁴ The 1995 Report states that “[i]t is clear that racist attacks and killings are not unique to Germany. Genocide has been committed in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Many violent attacks against foreigners have occurred in France, England, Sweden, and other Western European democracies in the early 1990s.” ⁵ It might be just sloppy language that seems to insinuate that the xenophobic attacks in Germany fall under the same category as the genocides in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. However, it is unwise to start a serious human rights investigation with an overdramatization of the situation. Strong words are warranted to attract the attention of the public to the serious human rights violations that have occurred in Germany, particularly because initially the authorities, as the 1992 Report concluded, ⁶ did not take the violations seriously. However, a comparison between the events in Germany and the genocides in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia is so out of proportion as to cast doubt on the lack of bias in the whole 1995 Report.

The advantage of nongovernmental human rights organizations (human rights NGOs) is that they do not have to feel confined by “diplomatic” usages. Unlike intergovernmental human rights organizations, NGOs are able to speak out and arouse immediate international attention to a specific problem. However, this relative flexibility, which makes human rights NGOs a valuable supplement to “official” and often very inert international human rights organizations, should not be compromised for cheap showmanship. If NGOs in the human rights field were to act like the international media then they could spotlight some situations, but, in doing this they might not be taken seriously by the governments of the countries they were evaluating. It is this type of behavior that could give governments a valid reason not...