advocacy campaign to get those nations on board the treaty. we want to get the past users, abusers, stop theiler's, producers, to join the treaty. -- stockpilers to join the treaty. president obama signed legislation that makes it illegal for the u.s. to transfer cluster bombs anywhere else. that is great news. . .

senator feinstein has not put in a bill, if signed into law will make illegal the u.s. using cluster munition then less than a 99% success rate. if more than men when% to work, then you cannot use it. in the 1 billion stockpile that we have right now, only 30,000 meet that standard. most of our new additions would be outlawed if this passes into law. if that happens, it is a short journey for the obama administration to sign on. that is what we are pushing.

i ask all of you to get into contact with your senators and representatives to support. the cluster ban treaty is one of the greater successes that we have had and something that i am proud of having participated in. we have very good relations with many of the military's. i am going to west point next week, and will be speaking their at a large panel. we have a good working relationship with the u.s. military. many of the nato militaries have me and others from human right swatch come to them. they are close to our people in afghanistan and iraq. we have a working relationship

with the israeli defense forces, which i am proud we are able to sit down with them, meet with their lawyers and operational people and understand from their perspective what they are doing at any given time. other militaries we have a fairly adversarial relationship with. if you look at the russian military at this point, we are not as popular with the russians. the burmese junta, we do an awful lot of work trying to expose what is going on there. that is to give you an idea of our relations with militaries' worldwide, we believe is important to engage with the military's. they are the ones who are at the pointy end of the spear. what are we doing when we go into a war zone. we are trying to look at all factors. we are looking at government, military's and other factors.

although we have a good relationship with militaries, we are looking at bringing out abuses and the abusers do not want us to publicize. whether they are a government, or a corporation, it is in their interest to hold us back. to give you an idea of the breadth of the work, conflicts, maybe about one-third are actual work. while that may get some of the publicity because it is current , it should not minimize the incredible work that the rest of our researchers to do. we have had reports from our american division that focuses on actions by companies such as wal-mart, in their practices with unions. we have had reports of the meatpacking industry here in the u.s., and the feelings between

the meat packing industry and their employees regarding treatment and access to medical insurance. there are all -- there are a wide variety of issues we are covering. it conflict as a small and narrow part of our world. i would like to and, before i open it up to general discussion, with a little bit of information about my most recent work. i know many of you may be interested in my most recent mission into gaza and israel. i have been into israel three times. i have to say as beautiful as they may be, it is tragic and heartbreaking whenever i go there. i have been on both sides of that border. i have been there when the rockets fly over, i have had to run into the bunkers.

i was at one man's home, right on the other side of the northern border of gaza. i am interviewing this man in 2006, when we were writing the report. as i am interviewing him, all of a sudden the alarm goes off and his german shepherd leaps up and runs into the bunker in his house and when an alarm goes off. this type of daily whorl of living. then to go into gaza, and to experience the attacks in gaza, whether it is artillery strikes,

bombs, the blockade of goods and services, it is a difficult place to work. sometimes these work operationally, for example, there is a story of a doctor. the he has an apartment. he is a palestinian doctor, but he works in israel. his house -- his apartment was hit by an israeli tank shell. his daughter was sitting at the window. two daughters came in to find out what happened to the sister. the next show comes in and kills the two of them. there was some controversy and rumblings about that it was not the actions of the isralei is -- defense force, that it was a record that had come in and kill them. i want with bbc to do an

investigation. using my knowledge and understanding of the weapons, this is very difficult to have two little girls, to walk into this gentleman's living room and the brains of his daughter were still on the ceiling. very difficult for me. i can hardly imagine for him. but then to stand there and figure out where the tank had then, looking for the debris, trying to understand how we think when we go someplace. i am looking for evidence, forensic evidence. part of our work is to do interviews, speak to the people, take those interviews and bounce them off of other interviews that we do, so no one will interrupt each other, corroboree information with hospital records, etc. but for me it is

forensic evidence appears i was looking for evidence of a show. if you know anything about tanks and ammunitions, a lot of kinetic energy going. it is made to go into an armored vehicle. kinetic energy has to go someplace. there is nothing here in this house. let's go next door. in the next building we found pieces, started to pull it apart, pulled it out of the walls and put together the 120 million -- mm tank shell. that is what i do. i go in and i look for that forensic evidence. i watched the fighting, there were questions and concerns

about whether they were keeping --. find the american manufacturer white phosphorous shell, to show that they had been used, that we had eight un facility hit and burned. we also look at evidence of hamas, were they shielding? were they operating in areas that were endangering civilians? i would like to point all of -- that in two weeks god willing, we will have a report that is being published specifically on the shielding issue of hamas. we have recently put out a report on one of the things that hamas uses during the war. they use the war in the wake of the shield. as a shield for them to perpetrate the past abuses, where they went around gaza and

met with many thousands civilians who either had family members kneecaped, or killed. they were believed to have either assisted the israelis, were to have been part of the top. -- then a part of fatah. hamas held a press conference to denounce our report. whatever. we go into, we are always looking at how the actors are performing, what they are doing, so that we can report on any abuses of humanitarian law. i would like to close with just one glimmer, to lift us all up. sometimes people ask me, how do you do it? how do you keep going on?

there are two things here. one is, i look at soldiers, and the other is a lot of civilians. american soldiers for example, they are there for a lengthy tours, multiple tumors. the civilians, they live there. some of them cannot even leave where they live. i look at them, and their hope when we come to report on issues that are concerning them, and how they respond to us, they have a fantastic energy, tell their stories, so that we can be the filter. in the final analysis, it is human rights watch, it is that human energy that we really lean

upon. i want to thank you all for coming and listening to me this evening. i welcome any questions. and [applause. ] >> we can take questions. you talked about putting the pressure on governments to end the set of weapons. a lot of these are sold by illegal arms dealers. do you read any leverage with them? >> we have a group within human rights watch, it is the business and human rights division. they do more than just business. they tracked arms munitions. we work with people out there who are tracking the movement of small arms.

we try to name and shame. if at any time we are able to put pressure, in which we can name those individuals who are moving weapons, or assist in the tracking of weapons, we do that. one of the problems we face is we are rather thin when it comes down to it. where do you put your resources? we are not heavily resource in this area, it is something that we follow when we are able to. >> who are the largest donors to human rights watch? >> one of the questions i failed to answer is where do we receive our money from? human rights watch takes no money from any government. we have made a decision to take on from the government would make us be holding to that government that we are doing their bidding. we take money from foundations

or from individuals. we receive money from the ford foundation and others. we also receive quite a bit of money from individual donors. i would hope that all of you would like to join those ranks. >> do you have any access for influence in our further proof that we have, for a very long time to work on the are for -- darfur. >> one of the problems that we have operating there is it is very difficult environment. our teams will go to the refugee camps and interviewed the refugees and try to understand what is happening. we are able to get into darfur.

we have numerous reports on our website. i invite you to look at it. with that -- we try to push for things like no-fly zones, the government is not able to go in and bomb the civilian population from helicopters or planes. if you will allow me, one of the things i personally find difficult is oftentimes with regard to africa human rights abuses are reviewed three races lens. i have found, you look at how the united states responded to the crisis in kosovo when albanians were being killed. nato when in with troops, bombs were dropped, we have occupied the nation now for many years.

i think that is something that we need to get past. human rights watch, we worked there, if there is a bad spot in the world, we will be there. the only place that we have a very hard time operating is north korea. that is very -- fairly up -- obvious why. >> are there any more dilemmas that you face? >> one is accessed, every time the people want you to go in, we will be there. you cannot always go on a visa. sometimes you have to find more interesting ways to get into the country. another problem is, look at what happens when your access is restricted, or potentially you could be taken into custody. you saw the video on georgia. the russians had set up many

checkpoints, and there were not going to let us go into us gues the gori district. i was told there was a road over the mountain, but we will get into gori with no problem. after driving over this goat trail for three hours, we finally get to the gori district and there is another russian checkpoint. here we are facing this russian checkpoint. what do you do? you try to find that checkpoints that will let you through, and eventually you'll be able to get into an area and see what you need to see. but then there was fighting going on. at that point, we were wearing vests during that conflict.

it depends on what the level of danger is. i look at lebanon in 2006. i was there when the bombs were falling. there are obviously, physical strength that we have. then you worry about some of the other actors. do we have security problems. then there is the issue of when you are doing your work, if i am interviewing a civilian, and all of a sudden has a lot shows up, that will influence that interview. -- and hezbollah shows up, they will influence that interview. get back if you can, try do -- determine if it is a poison interview. it can be dangerous work.

>> to what extent is your work affected by the ban on journalism gaza? >> that is a perfect example of lack of access. not only was the press not getting in, but human rights monitors were not getting in. i was able to stand there on the line and watch the fighting. we could see white phosphorus and, to the press. it was nice that you had bbc there, and explained what was going on. for me, it was interesting looking at, what helicopters were flying, what aircraft. what munitions were they carrying? once you go in, you then had a feeding frenzy with the press and human rights monitors.

we did have the luxury of having a palestinian works for us pretty lives in gauze a, and was able to -- he lives in gaza, his wife was pregnant, and he was concerned about getting to the hospital. it was a very difficult time for him. >> you said you were tasked with determining if there's a link between 9/11 and so on. >> there was never overt pressure made as far as i was concerned. there was a feeling that yes, we are going to war. whatever you do, it will fit that model. it was never stated. it was -- there was discussion

among the analysts. my counterpart at the cia on a secure phone, talking to her about why are we doing this ps? there was discussion, but it was never over. >> please describe your relationship with the international court of justice an international criminal court. have you ever provided in the security? >> you are looking at my security. the human rights watch was an organization, a real hallmark of our work. we have people that work closely

with the icc, not only that, but other bodies, such as the icpy. we have people who have testified. at times, we are called upon to testify as witnesses, and to bring evidence before the world court. >> why did the usa performed so badly in organization of iraq in your opinion? them if i can put you all to a fine film called "no end in sight." it wasn't a cut -- academy award film, sadly, it did not win. it does a fine job of going through what the occupation failed, and why the insurgency came to be. it points to some decisions that were made, such as expanding the

army, the failure to have security from the beginning, to have enough forces on the ground. it is very non-partisan and a factual account. i recommend this movie to all. >> what is your position on indiscriminate use is of rockets on civilians? and using hospitals and mosques as military bases? >> any use of indiscriminate rockets, whether they would be hezbollah used during the war in 2006 or rockets fired in the last eight years that are illegal are were crimes. we have consistently put out press releases. in two weeks we will have another report about this fire against israel.

i would like to make the point that, no matter what the actions are -- the illegal actions, it does not absolve the other actors were from the necessity to an ear to the geneva convention. >> how was human rights watch founded? >> it started out as helsinki watch, which looks at the old soviet union, and help people were being treated there. if you look at our website, you can find out more about it. >> what is the name and number? it is outside on the paperwork. it simply states that the u.s.

can only employ cluster munitions in areas that are not populated by civilians, and must have a scud rate of 1% or less. they have to work 99% of the time. it gets us about 90% of the way to the current treaty. if i may add, with germany and canada and the u.k., it is not just the industry. >> in iraq, can you tell us about the situation now about water and electricity and daily living? is human rights watch or you working with the obama administrations on conditions on guantanamo? >> we have people who work in iraq. i don't know the specific conditions now as far as electricity and water.

as far as working on guantanamo bay, we have had people in guantanamo bay at the hearings since this began, sitting in on the hearings during all of them as far as we were allowed. we have been very active in that. just to think about the current situation with torture, and the question about whether or not we should just say okay, we understand it was bad things that were done and we need to move forward. we have four torture mammals are right now. we believe that is the alter layer of it. you cannot move forward, on the issue find out what happened and the past, and insure them that things will not happen again. if there have been individuals that have perpetrated illegal acts, they have to be held accountable. we are a nation of laws. what would it have been in any

human rights abuses, we would have said that was really bad back then, but let's get past it. you look at the war in argentina, you cannot say that. you look at the holocaust, what would have happened if we said, turned the page and forget about it. >> do you have any people working for reporting from iran in any way? panama we do report on iran. we have done work on the limited access oft ns

we do quite a bit of reporting on that. i welcome you to look at our web page. >> i like to close within up be questioned. when investigating human rights violations, have you ever observed humanitarian acts by the parties involved? >> yes, absolutely. i was in iraq, standing in a hospital. we had gone in because we had information that there were some iraqis that had been injured by air strikes in the war in 2003. i must have been there in june of 2003. we are standing there with the head of the hospital, just at