A nonprofit that studies global think tanks considers Human Rights Watch to be among the least transparent think tanks in the United States, at least in terms of its funding sources.
According to Transparify, think tanks around the world are becoming more transparent about the sources of their funding and how they put that funding to use. Starting in 2014, the NGO’s team has made yearly visits to think tanks’ websites and issued an annual report based on any publicly available information about major donors.
Published on June 29, Transparify’s 2016 report rated 200 major think tanks in 47 countries, and found that while 98 maintained reasonable standards of transparency, 102 are still relatively opaque about their funding. That’s an improvement from 144 non-transparent think tanks four years ago, when Transparify first began studying the issue.
