To paraphrase Golda Meir, so-called human rights organizations will be useful when they learn to love human rights more than they hate the US and Israel. Or to paraphrase someone else--they're not in favor of human rights, they're just on the other side.

We need to either reform them (unlikely--it would require a housecleaning so thorough there would be little left) or form some new ones that could be more credible.

You omit the null option -- dump them altogether. Given the records of such entities, it's hard to see that it would be any worse for the world.

You can't reform them, and you can't dump them. They're private property.

All you can do is work to discredit them.

As I have discussed here in my blog the left seems to think that nobody notices the double standards they promote when they issue their reports. In the end they discredit themselves.

Steven is right -- they need discrediting. But that means the pro-freedom folk, perhaps like those doing the Heritage Fredom Index, need to do a Human Rights Index, and explicitly quantify and criticize the bias of AI and HRW.

Hacklehead says "...the left seems to think that nobody notices the double standards they promote...".

The left don't notice that they have double standards, that is the true problem. They believe that so long as their feelings are good then they must be on the side of the angels. When the right appeals to logic and a respect for reality (the true meaning of `prudence'), they are condemned of the sin of heartlessness.

canker wrote: The left don't notice that they have double standards, that is the true problem.

The Left doesn't have double standards because "reality has a well-known liberal bias."

As any correct-thinking independent-minded person worth his/her NPR tote bag knows, this doesn't merely mean that the Left has a better sense of reality than the Right does.

Instead, reality's "well-known liberal bias" causes it to actually transform itself to conform to the pre-existing beliefs of liberals. Nothing that liberals believe can ever be wrong.

"All you can do is work to discredit them."

Competition would be a good thing. New NGO's with catchy names and a non-lefty viewpoints could compete with the lefty NGO's for mindshare.

"Or to paraphrase someone else--they're not in favor of human rights, they're just on the other side."

You're right, Rand. Human rights organizations are on the other side--from you.

Yes, me...and the rest of western civilization.

"Yes, me...and the rest of western civilization."

No, just one corner of it in the 1930s.