Ethics in Action: An Imperfect Process: Funding Human Rights – A Case Study

U.S. foundations may well be guided by laudable values and visions. Legally, however, they are accountable to neither the public nor the community of groups that receive their funding, let alone the communities that those groups serve, with regard to what they fund. Given the prevailing political climate in the United States, the lack of program accountability to U.S. taxpayers and, indeed, the government may be a good thing; regrettably, international human rights norms do not appear to be at the top of either agenda. In fact, with only a minute percentage of the 68,000 registered U.S. foundations funding in this field in 2004, human rights is barely on the agenda of the philanthropic community itself. Leaving aside who is responsible for this, it suggests that there is something unusual about foundations that fund in this area: a vision, a sense of responsibility or sense of the possible, perhaps? Regardless of the motivation or inspiration, the actual grant-making process is far less agreeable than the world human rights grant makers endeavor to make possible. Those concerned with the ethics of transnational interventions can justifiably ask about the process by which funders in the United States determine what is to be funded around the world. At the most fundamental level, how ethical are funding programs that affect people with no voice in what is funded? Human rights grant makers, although even more removed from the site than the organizations they support, are no less responsible for the interventions they make possible.