FRANCAISFédération internationale des ligues des droits de l’homme - Comments
5) Public Relations
-Though financial balances are regularly put on line on its website, the FIDH only circulates an institutional activity report once every three years. This report is rather brief, and does not detail all the investigation missions in the field, maybe in order to be discreet and to protect the sources of information and financial backing. Out of 34 FIDH investigation reports studied by Hans Thoolen and Berth Verstappen, only one revealed its funding. A newsletter, available free on Internet, La Lettre de la FIDH is more complete. Nevertheless, the three-yearly reports of the FIDH say little on the correspondent or affiliated organisations, whose activities and budgets are still quite hard to get, probably because they have not been centralised. In fact, the Federation seldom back its partners and relies on its own separate financial resources. Moreover, the different components of the movement (affiliated members in the third world or regional sections in developed countries) have a great autonomy of action and expression, in the limit of the common positions they adopt in congress. The local sections of the French LDH, for instance, have their own bank accounts, and administer their expenses under the authority of the head office in Paris, which is legally responsible.
