Hosted by Finbar Anderson
Featuring Kenneth Roth
Produced by Finbar Anderson
Listen to and follow The Lede
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Podbean
As executive director of Human Rights Watch for almost two decades for a key period in the organization’s history, Kenneth Roth has plenty of insight into how human rights are viewed and implemented around the world. The veteran activist has set out his case-by-case guide to encouraging adherence to human rights standards based on his real world experiences with major world leaders, politicians and intermediaries in a new book, “Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments.”
Early on, Roth decided that his job was not to convince policymakers of the moral benefit of human rights, but instead how adhering to those standards could be politically beneficial. “What we had to do at Human Rights Watch is to recognize that people have reasons to violate human rights. It’s a way to stay in power. It’s a way to get rid of the pesky opposition,” he tells New Lines’ Finbar Anderson. “Our job was to raise the cost of that repression, to affect the cost-benefit analysis and make it less profitable to violate human rights. So we weren’t trying to conduct some kind of moral conversion of these people. We just wanted to twist their arm to force them to behave better.”
“We weren’t trying to conduct some kind of moral conversion of these people. We just wanted to twist their arm to force them to behave better.”
Another core part of Roth’s strategy was to enlist the support of cooperative governments that, he acknowledges, were often inconsistent in their application of human rights at home. They were nonetheless, he insists, vital allies. “You’re completely right to point out the double standard that infects essentially every government’s foreign policy,” he says. “These governments would of course have much more credibility if they adhere to human rights standards in a consistent, principled way. … At the same time, even these compromised voices can be significant. They’re the votes at the U.N. Human Rights Council that we need.”
Human rights is never going to be a cause adopted by everyone, Roth says. Taking the U.S. as an example, “The people I have to persuade are not everybody in the country,” he says. “I don’t have to go to the deepest Trump supporter. We can focus on the movable middle. … If you get 55% of the people on your side, you can move government policy.”
Roth acknowledges that the standing of human rights in today’s world looks far from certain. “We are clearly in a dark side in the West in the sense that we’re seeing Trump in power, the AfD threatening in Germany, Marine Le Pen a force in France, the Reform Party of Farage a significant factor in the U.K.,” he says. Nevertheless, he counters, “If you look at the world, people who live under autocrats almost uniformly want out, and we’ve seen the evidence of that in these huge demonstrations that occur in country after country where people are seeking democracy.”
Equally, Roth understands why many people across the globe are turning to autocrats. “They feel that government doesn’t speak to them, doesn’t respect them, doesn’t serve them, and that is a weakness,” he says. “These are the people who are ripe for the autocrats’ appeal. I think the job of those who want democracy to survive in the West is to push it to better represent everybody and at the same time fight back against this autocratic sleight of hand.”
For Roth, giving up the struggle for human rights is not an option. “There are always going to be governments who violate human rights,” he says. “But we should keep fighting because I hope I’ve shown it’s possible to win. … The alternative is resignation, just letting the despots win. I don’t think that’s the world any of us should want.”