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This collection contains the records of the United States based human rights organization, Human Rights Watch. Materials include correspondence and e-mail communications, professional and personal field notes, testimonies and interviews, advocacy, policy planning material, and briefing papers.

Record Group documents Africa Watch's (AFW) three-pronged strategy to curb human rights abuses on the Continent through reports, missions and cooperative efforts with other NGOs. First, AFW monitored abuses and produced such comprehensive reports during war as Evil Days: Thirty Years of War and Famine in Ethiopia, and Conspicuous Destruction: War, Famine and the Reform Process in Mozambique. Second, although access remained difficult in many African countries, Africa Watch was still able to conduct missions to investigate human rights conditions in Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe and South Africa. AFW circumvented this predicament by exchanging information gathered by local in country monitors with other NGOs. Third, besides engaging in collaborative monitoring activities, Africa Watch engaged in many joint documentation projects and lobbying efforts geared toward ending political and ethnic violence in Africa. Finally, other documentary materials include correspondence and e-mail communications, professional, personal and monitoring activity, field notes, testimonies, interviews, advocacy, policy planning material, and briefing papers.

Record Group 6 documents Asia Watch's (AW) three-branched program of documentation, campaigning, and lobbying in order to promote the observance of internationally recognized human rights norms throughout the region. Utilizing this paradigm, for example, AW tackled such difficult issues as economic aid and democratization efforts; the plight of political prisoners and refugees; the advancement of the freedom of expression, the suppression of political violence in Indonesia and Sri Lanka; and the effect of AIDS and prostitution on women. In the late 1990s, AW expanded its mission by seeking allies within the NGO and business communities in Europe and Japan in order to bring more direct pressure on human rights offenders.