Right now, a political opening may be taking place in Burma.  Some political prisoners have been released (though many more remain behind bars) and Aung San Suu Kyi says she is thinking of running for Parliament.  In the 20 years since she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, she has endured long periods of house arrest and also a period of actual imprisonment.  Yet the fact that she has survived and that her country now has a chance to emerge from its long nightmare of repressive rule has a lot to do with the protection provided by the Nobel Peace Prize.  Vaclav Havel was not only the hero of the Velvet Revolution.  He is also a hero of the transformation that is still to come in Burma and in such other countries as Belarus, Cuba, and China, to which he devoted his energies in recent years.

I met Vaclav Havel only a few times.  One occasion that stands out in my memory is when he came to the headquarters of Human Rights Watch in New York, where I was then the executive director, to thank us for our efforts on behalf of Czech dissenters during the period of communist rule.  This took place when he visited New York to attend a meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations not long after he became president.  Visiting our office to meet with the entire staff was a thoughtful gesture that made everyone there feel good about the work they were doing.

My last opportunity to see Havel took place a few weeks ago when I visited Prague to speak at the Forum 2000 conference that he has organized every year.  Because he had been ill, it was not certain that he would appear at his own conference.  Many of the participants knew that it would probably be their last chance to see him.  When he did appear, and expressed solidarity with those still struggling against repression, it provided a palpable thrill that I think was shared by all of us listening to him.  Not inclined to politics, he was more intent on practicing his profession as a playwright.  Yet he had become a central figure in the most important political struggles of our time, always as the champion of those whose cause seemed most hopeless.  His death is an occasion for deep mourning and, simultaneously, for celebration of the triumph of the human spirit.

In early September, I had the honor of co-hosting a reception at Human Rights Watch to call attention to the right to political participation by people with disabilities. During this reception, a young Peruvian woman with Down Syndrome, Maria Alejandra Villanueva, recounted her personal story of being excluded from voting based on her disability.

Maria Alejandra’s story was compelling. When she was a girl, Maria Alejandra watched with interest as her family members talked about their preferred candidates and went to the polls to cast their ballots. During elections, she painted her fingertip with a black pen, saying that she had also voted. At 18, Maria Alejandra began to exercise her civic duty, and voted in every election, selecting her preferred candidates with care.

This all changed in 2010 when Maria Alejandra went to renew her national identity document. During the interview, government employees addressed all questions to her mother, ignoring Maria Alejandra. She recounted how she felt invisible and discriminated against. When the employee asked Maria Alejandra’s mother to sign for her, she protested, explaining that Maria Alejandra had voted in prior elections. “Now she won’t vote,” the official responded. Maria Alejandra and her mother objected, and they were sent to a complaints booth where they were told that government regulations only allow people with physical disabilities, not intellectual disabilities, to vote. In addition, they counseled her mother to place Maria Alejandra under guardianship.

With the support of the Peruvian Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office, Maria Alejandra filed a complaint with the National Identification Registry charging that the order violated Peru’s Constitution and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which Peru ratified in 2008. Just before the registration period for the 2011 presidential elections closed, the Ombudsman’s office called Maria Alejandra to inform her that she had nine days to re-register for inclusion in the voting rolls.

While Maria Alejandra triumphed in her struggle to regain the right to vote, her efforts did little to address the exclusion of more than 23,000 other Peruvians with disabilities whose names had been removed from the voter registration rolls.

Hearing of Maria Alejandra’s story, the Open Society Foundations’ Disability Rights Initiative invited Maria Alejandra to speak at a plenary session at the CRPD Conference of State Parties. Maria Alejandra’s powerful first-person account—on a panel of States’ representatives and CRPD Committee members—helped raise governments’ awareness of the unlawful policies, based on prejudice and discrimination, that are obstacles to the right of the disabled to political participation.

Following her return to Peru, the Peruvian Down Syndrome Society launched a media campaign highlighting Maria Alejandra’s testimony at the United Nations. She was invited to a meeting with the president of the National Identification Registry. Last month, citing the CRPD, the Registry issued an Executive Resolution that all persons with disabilities not under guardianship would be reinstated in the electoral rolls.

While this was a victory for Maria Alejandra, it is only a partial victory for persons with disabilities in Peru. In its Executive Resolution, the National Identification Registry failed to cite CRPD Article 29, which provides unequivocally that all persons with disabilities have the right to political participation. This right, linked with Article 12 on the right to equal recognition before the law, and the CRPD’s general principles of non-discrimination and full and effective participation in society require that the government remove the caveat that only those not under guardianship may vote.

Regrettably, such restrictions on the right to vote and to equal recognition before the law—particularly for those with intellectual disabilities and psychosocial (mental health) disabilities—is more the norm than the exception worldwide.

The upcoming International Day of Persons with Disabilities provides an occasion to think about all those who have been disenfranchised on the basis of their disability. Building inclusive, vibrant democracies depends on the active engagement of all citizens in public life. Policies that limit the participation in political processes of people with disabilities are anathema to this goal.

In our work to promote open and inclusive societies around the globe, we should be vigilant to safeguard the right to civic participation of all in the political process, especially those who are particularly disadvantaged due to state-sanctioned discrimination and prejudice.

Suppression of the right to vote has a long history in the United States. Over time, however, property qualifications for voting were eliminated and the 14th, 15th, and 19th amendments to the Constitution were adopted to end the exclusion of African Americans and women from the ballot. Section 2 of the 14th Amendment also banned other restrictions on the right to vote except by reason of age or participation in rebellion or other crimes.

At least so far as African Americans were concerned, these measures did not suffice, and it has been necessary for the courts to strike down such practices as poll taxes, white primaries, and blatantly discriminatory malapportionment. An example of the last of these was what happened in Tuskegee, Alabama. Until 1957, it was a square-shaped city with about 400 African American voters. That year, the state legislature made it a 28-sided city from which all but fewer than 10 African American voters were excluded. This was upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals but that court was reversed unanimously by the United States Supreme Court.

Half a century ago, in 1961, the United States Commission on Civil Rights transmitted a landmark five-volume report to President John F. Kennedy and to the Senate and the House of Representatives. The 380-page first volume dealt with the right to vote. It focused particularly on abuses in about 100 counties of eight Southern states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

Aside from outright intimidation, which was common in that era, it identified a number of practices that were employed to suppress voting by African Americans. An example was a requirement of a specified number of registered voters to serve as “vouchers” to identify would-be voters. Where no African Americans were registered, this meant that none could vouch for new voters. In most of those places, no whites would vouch for African Americans. To ensure that a few renegade whites could not have much impact, rules were also enforced limiting the number of times a voter could vouch for another.

The Voting Rights Act and strenuous efforts by the United States Department of Justice under presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and the struggles by civil rights workers of the 1960s in which a considerable number were murdered, helped to overcome many such restrictions on the right to vote.

For someone like me, who remembers those struggles well and took part in them (not by front-line participation in voter registration campaigns but by organizing support at a safe distance), it is particularly dismaying that suppression of the right to vote has again become an important factor in circumscribing the democratic process.

Today, suppression is not primarily a practice in eight Southern states. The phenomenon is nation-wide. It reflects the extreme partisanship of our era. Attempts are being made all across the country to exclude African Americans, students and other young people, and new citizens from registering and exercising their right to vote.

Half a century ago, the U.S. Supreme Court could be counted upon to turn thumbs down on the most blatant forms of discrimination. That is not the case today. If there were a counterpart today of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights of half a century ago, it would probably report that suppression of the vote is now as extensive or more extensive, than it was in that era. The struggle required to turn the tide may not have the lethal consequences of that which took place a half century ago, but it seems likely to be at least as difficult.

Children hauled water from one of the few remaining wells in besieged Sarajevo in 1993, exposing themselves to sniper and mortar fire from Serb forces. Photograph © Gilles Peress/Magnum Photos.

To commemorate 20 years of activities in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, the Open Society Foundations have released a report, Building Open Society in the Western Balkans, which contains a historical overview, foundation highlights, and essays on critical issues, including the following by the Foundations’ president.

The Open Society Foundations have never made humanitarian assistance a major part of our mission.  Even so, we have sometimes decided that the best way to promote our mission of developing open societies is to provide such assistance.  That was the case in the western Balkans in the early 1990s.

In 1992, George Soros committed $50 million for humanitarian assistance to victims of the war then underway in Bosnia and Herzegovina.  He had two purposes: first, he wanted to help those who had suffered from the crimes that were being committed in the name of “ethnic cleansing.”  Second, he thought providing the funds would bring nongovernmental humanitarian assistance organizations into Bosnia and their personnel would thereby bear witness to the crimes taking place and inform the world.  Under the guidance of a five member committee of individuals connected to the Open Society Foundations, $36 million was given to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to redistribute to nongovernmental humanitarian organizations; $2 million went to the International Committee of the Red Cross; $2 million went to Human Rights Watch to redistribute to human rights organizations reporting on the conflict; and $10 million was spent through our foundations in the region, mainly for the provision of medicine and medical equipment.

A substantial part of the funding donated through UNHCR went to projects in Bosnia and Herzegovina devised and managed by an extraordinary American, Fred Cuny, operating under the auspices of the International Rescue Committee, and implemented by our foundation there.  Seeing that many of those killed by sniper fire in the besieged city of Sarajevo were hauling water from a couple of wells in the city, Cuny created a new water system for the city.  He designed a 200-meter-long filtration system to purify river water and had it constructed in an old road tunnel under a hill next to the river.  The hill over the tunnel protected the system against shelling by the Bosnian Serb forces commanded by Radovan Karadžić and General Ratko Mladić who were besieging the city.  The filtration system was built in long narrow segments by a company in Texas, Cuny’s home state, and flown into Sarajevo on UNHCR relief flights.

Another project was designed to keep the residents of Sarajevo warm during the bitter Bosnian winter and also allow them to cook their food.  Sarajevo had access to natural gas that was piped into the city (from Russia, through Ukraine, Hungary, and Serbia), but before the war only about 10 percent of the residents were connected to gas in their homes.  Cuny brought plastic pipes into Sarajevo on relief planes and he and the foundation enlisted 15,000 of the city’s residents to dig trenches for the pipes.  Eventually, the project connected about 60 percent of the residents to gas. Cuny designed a small portable heater that could be manufactured in Sarajevo to use the gas to heat a room.  When turned on its side, the device could be used for cooking.

The Open Society foundation in Bosnia and Herzegovina also distributed seeds to Sarajevo residents so that they could grow vegetables on terraces, in backyards, and in parks. Another project increased the city’s supply of electricity by about 30 percent.

Tragically, Fred Cuny was killed in 1995 while undertaking a mission on humanitarian assistance for the Open Society Foundations in Chechnya.  A number of reports have been published on how he died and who killed him, but all of these have speculative components. We cannot say with certainty how he died but we can say that, using the humanitarian assistance funds provided by George Soros, he helped keep the city of Sarajevo and most of its residents alive during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Open Society Foundations also committed substantial funds for humanitarian assistance in Serbia.  During the war in Bosnia, Serbia was subjected to international sanctions.  Unfortunately, one consequence was a severe shortage of pharmaceuticals and other medical supplies.  The Foundations organized a program to determine what shortages were causing particular harm and then purchased those supplies that were needed, mainly in the United States, for shipment to Serbia.  This program required extensive negotiations with the U.S. Department of the Treasury in order to secure permission for the shipment of supplies that were not supposed to be subject to the sanctions.  We also organized extensive humanitarian assistance in Serbia for Serbs from the Krajina region in Croatia who were driven out of the territory by Croatian forces in the summer of 1995.  Also, the foundation in Serbia organized summer camps for children of refugees and the internally displaced.

During the war in Bosnia, the Open Society Foundations organized humanitarian assistance projects in Macedonia and Croatia, including medical supplies, equipment, and ambulances, support for trauma centers, and educational services for refugee children.  We also supported humanitarian assistance programs for Bosnian refugees in Slovenia.

The Open Society Foundations initiated a new round of humanitarian assistance projects in the region when President Slobodan Milošević launched a war in Kosovo in 1998 and when NATO intervened in that war in 1999.  In that period, Serb forces drove more than a million people out of Kosovo, mostly into Macedonia to the east and Albania to the west.  In addition to helping the refugees, we provided assistance when they returned to Kosovo following the war.

At other times, the Open Society Foundations have provided humanitarian assistance in many countries following natural disasters or man-made disasters.  Up to the present, however, the largest amount of such assistance, and the place where the assistance made the greatest difference, has been in the countries of the former Yugoslavia during the wars of the 1990s.

The CUNY decision was misguided and unprecedented. I decided, along with three fellow recipients of honorary degrees from John Jay, to send a letter urging the university to reverse its decision. Otherwise, it risks jeopardizing the very principles for which a university stands: free speech, the exchange of ideas, and tolerance of diversity of opinion.

We decided against returning our honorary degrees because we hold John Jay College in great esteem, and it is not responsible for the board of trustee’s decision.

Read a copy of the letter, and I encourage you to send your own.

More recently there has been a resurgence of anti-Muslim attitudes. The proposed Muslim community center in lower Manhattan near what was the site of the World Trade Center has threatened to become a new rallying point for hate and anti-Muslim sentiment.

I think it is important that a political leader has stood up and taken a firm position on this. A principled stand can make an immense amount of difference preventing demagoguery. I commend Mayor Michael Bloomberg for his calm and dignity in dealing with this matter.

This blog highlights an extraordinary range of work, but it is unified by our mission to build and strengthen open societies around the world. While something of an abstract concept, open society centers on the idea that fresh thinking and broad participation is essential for human progress. Only in an environment that respects diversity and protects a range of opinions can society flourish.

This philosophy has real-world implications. In practice, our work is grounded in a deep commitment to human rights, justice, and the need for citizens to hold their governments to account. I hope the Open Society Blog will bring that work a little closer, enriching the debates already happening online while also giving OSI's experts and grantees a platform to sharpen their thinking and bring underreported issues to light.

Promoting critical thinking and protecting freedom of expression have long been central to our mission, and we hope that many voices will contribute to the conversation here.

The struggle for open society is a global one, and I welcome your thoughts.

It was particularly sad for me to read Robert L. Bernstein's op-ed article last month in The New York Times criticizing Human Rights Watch for its reporting on the Israeli-Arab conflict. Bernstein and I collaborated closely in establishing Human Rights Watch and in making it influential.

Robert Bernstein first approached me in 1978 to join him in founding the Helsinki Watch Committee. Its main purpose would be to criticize the Soviet Union for violating the human rights provisions of the 1975 Helsinki Accords, an East-West agreement signed by 35 countries of Europe and North America. Eleven men and women in Moscow had formed the first Helsinki Committee in 1976. By the time Bernstein called me in 1978, most had been imprisoned. There was a need for a new organization to take up their cause and call attention to their plight.

The reason Bernstein asked me to join him was obvious. At the time, I was Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. Bernstein was then a prominent book publisher. My public reputation was based on my role in dealing with violations of civil liberties in the United States. If I joined him in launching Helsinki Watch, it would make clear that we were not just engaged in a Cold War exercise of bashing the Soviet Union. I could help make the organization credible in defending rights everywhere.

Bernstein became Chairman of Helsinki Watch; I became Vice Chairman. A little later, after I left my post at the ACLU, I also became Executive Director of the new organization. Over the next dozen years, with Bernstein still Chairman, I took the lead in gradually extending our work to other parts of the world and in renaming it Human Rights Watch. By the time I left in 1993 for my present position, HRW reported on violations in every part of the world. We became particularly known for documenting violations of the laws of war by all parties to armed conflicts.

In criticizing HRW's reporting on the Israeli-Arab conflict, Robert Bernstein makes a number of points. He argues that HRW should focus on closed societies, whereas Israel is an open society. Also, he says that HRW has focused far more on Israel than on the "brutal, closed and autocratic" regimes of the region. Another point made by Bernstein is that HRW errs by not differentiating "wrongs committed in self-defense and those perpetrated intentionally." Finally, Bernstein criticizes HRW's reporting on "Gaza and elsewhere where there is no access to the battlefield" and claims that, "Reporting often relies on witnesses whose stories cannot be verified...."

Though Bernstein is right to differentiate between closed and open societies, he is wrong to suggest that open societies should be spared criticism for human rights abuses. The United States was an open society when it practiced slavery and racial segregation and when it interred the Japanese-Americans during World War II. It was an open society when it tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib. A human rights organization that keeps silent on such matters would be worthless. The only way to protect human rights is to hold all to the same standards. Robert Bernstein knew that when he asked me to join him in founding Helsinki Watch. He seems to have forgotten.

The claim that HRW focuses disproportionately on Israel is simply mistaken. When I was Executive Director, we began our work on the Middle East by publishing a book length report on abuses in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. We also reported on Iran, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region. Currently, reporting on abuses by others constitutes about 85 percent of Human Rights Watch's publishing on the region. That reporting on Israel accounts for as much as 15 percent of the organization's work in the Middle East reflects Israel's involvement in armed conflicts, a specialty of Human Rights Watch.

The distinction Bernstein makes between "wrongs committed in self-defense and those committed intentionally" is not made by the laws of war. It is also a dangerous distinction. On such grounds, groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq that murdered tens of thousands of civilians after the American invasion of 2003 could claim excuses for their crimes. In Gaza, both sides might claim self-defense and, thereby, justify abuses.

It is true, of course, that there was no access to Gaza while the conflict was underway. Denial of access was the policy of the Israeli government. As should be obvious, such a policy should not be rewarded by silence. If a government could eliminate human rights reporting in this manner, HRW would never have published accounts of abuses in Saddam's Iraq. Moreover, in the Gaza case, HRW had a consultant there throughout the conflict and sent in a research team three days after hostilities ended. Though witness testimony is often self-serving, it plays a crucial role in judicial determinations of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Cross-checking the details of testimony and consistency with other evidence are essential. HRW has an immense amount of experience in all parts of the world in fact-gathering and getting the story right. That is why its reporting matters.

Robert Bernstein deserves great credit for his pioneer role in establishing Human Rights Watch. I regret that he does not share my pride in its present-day performance.