Amnesty, Rowling, and NGO Accountability

On 31 July, Amnesty International publicly apologised for publishing an “anti-rights” briefing at the heart of a weeks-long public clash with author J.K. Rowling. The document, “A Growing Threat: The Anti-Rights Movement in the UK,” purported to map a nationwide “anti-rights ecosystem” that included Beira’s Place, the Edinburgh sexual-violence support service established by Rowling in 2022. Transgender-rights activists have long criticised the charity for excluding transgender women from its services.

Rowling was having none of it, and she launched a scathing public attack on an NGO that she said has “become a tyrant that persecutes those who don’t espouse what it decrees acceptable beliefs.” She invited any of the groups named on what she called Amnesty’s “blacklist” to apply to the J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund for legal support. Amnesty quickly realised that it had picked the wrong fight. Its earlier, carefully calibrated expression of “regret” collapsed into a full mea culpa; it withdrew the briefing. The document had been uploaded by mistake, the organisation said, bypassing its established and normally rigorous internal-review processes. An internal investigation was announced, to be followed by an independent external review.

At a glance, Amnesty’s climbdown seems to close a brief but turbulent chapter in the history of one of the world’s most influential human-rights organisations. But if it hopes that its procedural explanation will satisfy critics and end scrutiny of its operations, it is mistaken; it only raises more questions. How, for instance, does a document of this significance—which named more than a hundred British organisations and might have seriously damaged their reputations and funding—reach publication without passing through the oversight that Amnesty claims it applies to all its work? And if that process failed here, why should anyone assume that it has not failed elsewhere?

As senior editor at Human Rights Watch (HRW), I saw the machinery behind major human-rights publications up close. It beggars belief that a complex document like this one about a highly sensitive issue simply slipped out of the door unnoticed. A less fantastical explanation is that it was not a rogue briefing, but the most legally exposed expression of a settled institutional view. In May, Amnesty published a related report titled “Like a Snowball: The Growth and Impact of the Gender-Critical Movement in the UK,” which included comparable characterisations of many of the same organisations and was finally withdrawn on 31 July. Also withdrawn was a parliamentary briefing produced for Pride Month this year that likewise described 51 gender-critical organisations as “anti-trans.”

Amnesty’s approach in the Rowling affair followed the familiar NGO playbook that has allowed human-rights organisations to survive crises for decades to preserve their moral authority and avoid meaningful accountability. First, downplay the incident by framing it as a regrettable breakdown in an otherwise scrupulous system; second, promise an investigation; third, wait for the news cycle to move on. But maybe that won’t work this time. Is it too much to hope that Rowling’s stand-off with Amnesty will finally produce a reckoning for an increasingly unaccountable sector?

A realist might well conclude that there is almost no chance of that. Organisations like Amnesty International—which command budgets that run into hundreds of millions, and even billions, of US dollars—have spent decades surviving controversies and evading scrutiny, even though they exert enormous political and cultural influence. An optimist, on the other hand, might point out that history has a habit of stripping moral halos from individuals and institutions (like the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America) that were once thought beyond reproach. The wheels of accountability may turn slowly, but turn they do.

Last month, the UK Charity Commission opened a compliance case into Amnesty’s handling of the “anti-rights” affair, saying it was “engaging with the charity’s trustees to gather more information.” Public figures have also begun to challenge what they see as the organisation’s ideological direction. “As a former major fund-raiser for Amnesty—I produced the first five “Secret Policeman’s Balls”—I renounce the mob who have taken over Amnesty,” wrote comedian John Cleese on X. “Amnesty used to be about trying to do something about TORTURE.” Iseult White, the granddaughter of Amnesty co-founder Seán MacBride, told the Times that she “would not donate a single penny to Amnesty.” And now, some of those who have spent their working lives in the human-rights sector are also speaking out about the betrayal of foundational principles they witnessed during their careers.

I am one of those people. Shortly after 7 October 2023, I left HRW and co-founded EiGHT, a Swiss-based nonprofit established and staffed by former and current professionals from major global-rights and humanitarian groups. Our mission is to press for greater accountability and external oversight of organisations like Amnesty International, Greenpeace, HRW, and Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF) which have been allowed to wander unchecked through the legal system, the media, academia, and the halls of power.