Madoff's devastating blow to human rights and independent journalism

The collapse of Bernard Madoff’s financial “castle of cards” has been damaging for other big and irresponsible banks. But the collateral damages are huge in the non-profit sector as well, in particular in the two fields that we are following: the human rights movement and journalism.
Many organizations, like Amnesty International USA, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, the Center for Public Integrity (sponsor of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists), ProPublica (an investigative journalism media), the Center for investigative reporting, had been receiving important donations from foundations that had invested in the Madoff funds.
One of these philanthropic foundations, the renowned JEHT (Justice, Equality, Human Dignity and Tolerance) has announced that it was closing. Most of its endowment came from the Levy-Church family that has been rudely hit by Madoff’s collapse.
The prospect is grim: some of the grantees might have to fold or at a minimum to cancel programmes. That means that key projects, especially in the field of U.S. and international justice, will be affected. Investigative projects, so essential to the work of documenting human rights violations, especially in the area of social and economic rights, are also threatened.