This is a study of the Ford Foundation's support and of funding of human rights projects and NGOs, illuminating its extraordinary role in helping undermine and destroy major repressive authoritarian and totalitarian regimes during the latter part of the twentieth century.

When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted 50 years ago, Eleanor Roosevelt, its principal architect, predicted that a "curious grapevine" would carry its message behind barbed wire and stone walls. This book tells the extraordinary story of how NGOs became the "grapevine" she anticipated--sharpening our awareness about the violations of human rights, "shaming" its most notorious abusers and creating the international mechanisms to bring about implementation of the Declaration. Korey traces how NGO's laid groundwork for the destruction of the Soviet empire, as well as of the apartheid system in South Africa, and established the principle of accountability for crimes against humanity. The notion of human rights has progressed from being a marginal part of international relations a half century ago to stand today as a critical element in diplomatic discourse and this book shows that it is the NGOs that have placed human rights at the center of humankind’s present and future agenda.

A study of the Ford Foundation's support and of funding of human rights projects and NGOs, illuminating its extraordinary role in helping undermine and destroy major world repressive authoritarian and totalitarian regimes during the latter part of the twentieth century.