Taking on the World’s Repressive Regimes: The Ford Foundation’s International Human Rights Policies and Practices

312 Pages·2007·4.594 MB·English

by  William Korey (auth.)

Taking on the World’s Repressive Regimes
Taking on the World’s Repressive Regimes:
The Ford Foundation’s International
Human Rights Policies and Practices
William Korey
TAKING ON THE WORLD’S REPRESSIVE REGIMES
Copyright ©William Korey, 2007.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007 978-1-4039-6171-6
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brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2007 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-52658-1 ISBN 978-0-230-60874-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230608740
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Korey, William, 1922–
Taking on the world's repressive regimes : the Ford Foundation's
international human rights policies and practices / by William Korey.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Human rights. 2. Ford Foundation—History. I. Title.
JC571.K597 2007
323.06'01—dc22
2006103204
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Scribe Inc.
First edition: August 2007
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Diana Marx, my loving and devoted companion.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
1 Origins and Background 1
2 Chile: A Breakthrough in Foundation Policy 25
3 Foundation Policy across Latin America 47
4 The “Human Rights Lobby” 69
5 U.S. Helsinki Watch: The Foundation in Eastern Europe 89
6 The “Foundation for European Intellectual Cooperation” 119
7 Taking Risks on South Africa 139
8 The Rejection of “Fatalism” 161
9 A Historic Role 185
10 Women’s Rights: “A Position of Empowerment” 209
11 From Nairobi to Beijing 229
12 A Stumble and Strides Forward 249
Notes 271
Bibliography 299
Index 307
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A half-dozen years since 2001 have gone into the preparation of this work,
which was preceded by, and, indeed, stimulated by my last human rights
volume,NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was while
researching that work that I learned that the Ford Foundation was the
principal funder of almost all major human-rights nongovernmental org-
anizations.
In the early stage of the current study, I was greatly assisted by Catherine
Fitzpatrick, who was serving at the time as director of the International
League forHuman Rights, having earlier been the research director of the
U.S. Helsinki Watch. At my request, she researched the files of the Ford
Foundation Archives on U.S. Helsinki Watch and Americas Watch and
provided me with a basic overview of their material. In addition, she accom-
panied me on several NGO interviews of Ford Foundation and nongovern-
mental officials.
An invaluable source of background information on human rights gener-
ally and women’s rights specifically was Felice Gaer, director of the Jacob
Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights, on whose Advisory
Council I participated. She has served me well on the current study with con-
siderable advice and suggestions. The fact that she had worked for the Ford
Foundation on human-rights issues in the seventies and early eighties proved
most helpful.
Throughout my research in the valuable Ford Foundation Archives, I was
enormously assisted by Alan Divack, the former foundation archivist, and his
assistant, Anthony Maloney. Divack’s detailed knowledge of the archives can-
not be equaled and I am most grateful for the guidance he provided in expe-
diting my path through the archival files.
Within the Ford Foundation, too, extraordinarily helpful has been Larry
Cox, who served for ten years as the foundation’s principal human-rights
officer. He was unusually attentive in arranging interviews with high founda-
tion officials and he provided me with pertinent documentation.
In prior years, the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation was always an insti-
tution from which I might seek modest funding for research projects. This
was especially the case when Bob Crane was its president. He is no longer
chief executive of that philanthropy, having moved to the Jeht Foundation.
Still, as a board member of the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, he remains
x Acknowledgments
in a position to be helpful. And he has performed that function once again,
and I am most appreciative.
An especially warm and grateful “thank you” is extended herewith to the
gifted and talented typist of this manuscript, Suzanne Garnet, who managed
to juggle the reading of hieroglyphics with rearing a family, including two
lovely, if somewhat noisy, children. I am deeply indebted to her constancy.
C h a p t e r 1
Origins and Background
I
n the West, “Never Again” became the popular slogan, especially of the
young, once Hitlerism and the Nazi war machine were smashed. No one
wanted to experience or witness again the horrors of genocide that had
reached a climactic point in the third and fourth decades of the twentieth
century. Civilization could not tolerate the apparatus of hate, whether the
targets were racial, ethnic, or religious groups. Nor could it countenance
the machinery of discrimination that led to horrendous forms of barbarism.
To shut the door on the various forms of hate and bigotry and their excres-
cences was seen as the fundamental challenge to the international commu-
nity in the post-war world. The challenge found early expression in the
creation of the United National Charter, which was basically a treaty in which
human rights occupied a central place, along with the maintenance of peace
and the promotion of economic progress. Once ratified by the member-
states of the UN in 1945, the Charter prompted the drive for a Universal
Declaration of Human Rights of which Eleanor Roosevelt was the principal
architect. It was unanimously adopted on the historic day of December 10,
1948, encompassing thirty articles that embraced the gamut of the human
rights issues of the day.
The phrase “human rights” would soon be paired with “never again” to
express humankind’s aspiration for a new era. At first, it was only an aspira-
tion, as the phrase was rarely used in political discourse and in press
reportage. Rarely did the phrase appear in the major newspapers of the day.
Nor was much attention paid in the media to the special UN bodies dealing
with human rights—the UN Commission on Human Rights or its Sub-
Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.
The years of the late 1940s through the 1960s hardly, if ever, saw the phrase
“human rights” take on life and meaning, whether in diplomatic discourse or
in the decision-making process of foreign policy.
Of course, certain nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) like the
International League for Human Rights, the International Commission of
Jurists, and the American Jewish Committee, placed human rights at the cen-
ter of their policy concerns, but rarely, if ever, would they find an echo in
public attention. It was hardly surprising, then, that major standard works
2 Taking on the World's Repressive Regimes/William Korey
oninternational relations would not focus on the subject. The principal basic
volume on international affairs in academia well illuminates the silence
embracing the subject of human rights. Hans Morgenthau’s Politics among
Nations never mentioned the phrase, nor even referred to the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights in its first five editions, the last of which was
published in1973.1Not until the book’s sixth edition, published in 1985, after
Morgenthau’s death, was a section of several pages entitled, “Human Rights
and International Morality” added.2 But the new material, in keeping with
Morgenthau’s overall view, insisted upon “the impossibility of enforcing the
universal application of human rights.”3 At the same time, an examination
of the leading American journal on international relations, Foreign Affairsss,
found it to be devoid of academic articles on the subject of human rights.4
Not until the spring of 1967 did this key journal carry a single article on
human rights.
A new NGO, created in 1961, altered the broad international prospective.
Amnesty International, headquartered in London but with member branches
quickly sprouting everywhere, began to expose torture and other human
rights abuses in the hidden crevices of repressive regimes. Its well-researched
reports and documents, calling for the release of “prisoners of conscience,”
began to concentrate public attention on critical human rights issues.5
International recognition was shortly forthcoming. Amnesty International
was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977, a rare acknowledgment of the
work of a human rights international NGO. Earlier that same year, a new
U.S. administration in Washington, DC—the Carter administration—declared
human rights the centerpiece of its foreign policy. Still, the early seventies
would be distinguished less by the advancement of human rights than by its
repression. Much of the last quarter of the twentieth century would be char-
acterized by massive killings, including genocide, torture, disappearances,
and racism, along with ethnic and religious discrimination.
Three vast institutional structures emerged as the powerful expression of
general repression. The oldest and most elaborate political apparatus designed
for repression was the Soviet-dominated totalitarian power in Eastern Europe.
Stalin and his domestic and Eastern European colleagues imposed it, partic-
ularly during and after 1949. With Stalin’s death four years later, a “thaw”
crept through the frozen blocks of society, permitting a certain temporary
easing of harsh repression, but which resumed in its intensity during the late
sixties and early seventies.
Running parallel to the ruthless repression in Eastern Europe were stun-
ning new developments in Latin America where electoral democracies had
prevailed for a long time, even while economic impoverishment held many
in its grasp. To thwart social outbursts, the sixties saw the emergence of
harsh military rule in several Latin countries, a development that reached a
climactic point with the military seizure of power in democratic Chile in
September 1973. Authoritarian right-wing military rule would also embrace
other democratic societies in Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil. The elements