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WORK TITLE: Righting Wrongs
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PERSONAL
Born September 23, 1955, in Elmhurst, IL; son of Muriel T. Roth and Walter S. Roth; Married Annie Sparrow (a pediatrician), 2011.
EDUCATION:Brown University, A.B. (history; magna cum laude), 1977; Yale Law School, J.D., 1980.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Nonprofit executive, attorney, educator, and writer. Former federal prosecutor in New York, NY, and Washington, DC; Human Rights Watch, deputy director, 1987-93, executive director, 1993—2022; Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, MA, senior fellow at Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Princeton School for Public and International Affairs, Princeton, NJ, Charles and Marie Robertson Visiting Professor.
AWARDS:William Rogers Award, Brown University; Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award, Tufts University; Athens Democracy Award, 2016.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Guardian, New York Review of Books, New York Times, and Washington Post.
SIDELIGHTS
[open new]In his three decades leading the global accountability organization Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth brought essential attention to humanitarian causes not only in areas afflicted by tyranny, war, and civil strife but in halls of power and justice around the world. He was raised in Deerfield, Illinois, in a family that could not help but be conscious of the threat posed by nefarious national polities: the father hailed from a Jewish family that had operated a butchery near Frankfurt, Germany, and fled the Nazi regime when he was twelve. In America, Roth and his three siblings were encouraged to become conscientious participants in their world through weekly family meetings. As described by Beth Schwartzapfel in Brown Alumni Magazine: “The Roths took Family Council very seriously. Any arguments during the week, no matter how small—tiffs over television shows, bedtimes, allowance—were referred to Family Council for resolution. There was a rotating chairmanship, and motions were all logged into a book and numbered.” Since the children outnumbered the parents, they could wield majority power and acquired the habit of lobbying each other prior to council discussions, becoming “little politicians.”
Roth concentrated on history as an undergraduate at Brown University and went on to earn a degree from Yale Law School. After a stint as a federal prosecutor whose assignments included the Iran-contra scandal, Roth joined the collective of regional oversight bodies that became Human Rights Watch as a deputy director in 1987. He was named executive director six years later. The organization has credited Roth with overseeing its transformation “from a small group of regional ‘watch committees’ to a major international human rights organization with global influence.” Over the span of his tenure, the annual budget grew from $7 million to nearly $100 million, and Human Rights Watch shared in the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to ban antipersonnel mines, cluster munitions, and child soldiers and to establish the International Criminal Court. Global challenges faced under Roth included the division of Yugoslavia, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, and genocide in Rwanda. Specially appointed researchers visited areas of conflict to documents human rights abuses in real time, generate global awareness, and help bring perpetrators to justice. Other issues addressed by the organization, often in collaboration with the United Nations, included LGBT discrimination, the plight of refugees, poverty and equality, and corporate social responsibility. Human Rights Watch helped expose the use of torture by the United States’ CIA while interrogating suspected terrorists after 9/11. Roth personally met with everyone from local communities affected by abuses to numerous foreign ministers and heads of state. For his dedication to truthful reporting and advocacy on behalf of the oppressed, Roth has aggravated Israel, been sanctioned by China, and been denied entry by Egypt, among other international dustups.
Concerning Roth’s decades of work at Human Rights Watch, the organization cited Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, as declaring: “Ken Roth turned Human Rights Watch into a juggernaut for justice. He has inspired a generation of human rights defenders to fight for a better world. … No organization and no leader have had a greater impact in human rights on a global scale.”
Roth made his debut as an author with the professional memoir Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments. Roth recounts his personal efforts at the helm of Human Rights Watch vis-à-vis China’s Xi Jinping, who favors the tactic of denying entry and access to oversight organizations; Russia’s Vladimir Putin, whose cooperation was needed to achieve a cease-fire in Syria; Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, who invited Roth to visit to confirm the abandonment of a nuclear-weapons program that might have led Qaddafi to the same fate as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein; and Mexico’s Felipe Calderón, who accepted evidence of military abuses in the form of disappearances and executions in the nation’s war against drug cartels.
In Booklist, Carol Haggas commended the “singular insights” in Roth’s “expansive” memoir, affirming that his “candor and clarity provide inspirational wisdom and practical advice for rights advocates everywhere.” A Kirkus Reviews writer observed that, “having retired, Roth is now free to name names in sometimes less-than-diplomatic ways,” with targets including Saudi Arabia’s ruling family, at fault for abuses in Yemen, and U.N. secretary general António Guterres, who has declined to use his office and voice to stand up for human rights in places like Gaza. An Economist reviewer proclaimed, “The world needs more watchdogs like Mr Roth: principled yet worldly, insanely hard-working and resolutely non-tribal.” The reviewer related, “Rather than nitpicking about the minutiae of international law, he tells human stories … that shock the listener into fury. It is stories, more than theories, that help humans comprehend tyranny. And as the mighty fill the world’s small screens with falsehoods, someone needs to tell true tales.” “Given the never-ending assault on human rights,” the Kirkus Reviews writer concluded, Righting Wrongs represents “a valuable call to fight back.”[close new]
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, January, 2025, Carol Haggas, review of Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments, p. 8.
Economist, March 13, 2025, review of Righting Wrongs.
Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2025, review of Righting Wrongs.
ONLINE
Brown Alumni Magazine, https://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/ (January 6, 2011), Beth Schwartzapfel, “Tyranny Has a Witness.”
Harvard Kennedy School website, https://www.hks.harvard.edu/ (June 12, 2025).
Human Rights Watch website, https://www.hrw.org/ (April 26, 2022), “Kenneth Roth to Step Down at Human Rights Watch”; (June 12, 2025), author profile.
New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/ (April 26, 2022), Aina J. Khan, “Kenneth Roth, ‘Godfather’ of Human Rights Work, to Step Down.”
Yale Law School website, https://law.yale.edu/ (March 21, 2025), “Kenneth Roth ’80 Discusses 30 Years of Righting Wrongs at Human Rights Workshop.”
Kenneth Roth is the Charles and Marie Robertson Visiting Professor at the Princeton School for Public and International Affairs. He currently serves as a Senior Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at HKS. Until August 2022, he served for nearly three decades as the executive director of Human Rights Watch, one of the world’s leading international human rights organizations, which operates in some 100 countries. Before that, Roth was a federal prosecutor in New York and for the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington.
A graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University, Roth has conducted numerous human rights investigative and advocacy missions around the world, meeting with dozens of heads of state and countless ministers. He is quoted widely in the media and has written hundreds of articles on a wide range of human rights issues, devoting special attention to the world’s most dire situations, the conduct of war, the foreign policies of the major powers, the work of the United Nations, and the global contest between autocracy and democracy.
Roth is currently writing a book, Righting Wrongs, to be published by Knopf, about the strategies used by Human Rights Watch to defend human rights, drawing on his years of experience.
Kenneth Roth
Former Executive Director
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Kenneth Roth is the Charles and Marie Robertson Visiting Professor at the Princeton School for Public and International Affairs. Until August 2022, he served for nearly three decades as the executive director of Human Rights Watch, one of the world’s leading international human rights organizations, which operates in some 100 countries. Before that, Roth was a federal prosecutor in New York and for the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington.
A graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University, Roth has conducted numerous human rights investigative and advocacy missions around the world, meeting with dozens of heads of state and countless ministers. He is quoted widely in the media and has written hundreds of articles on a wide range of human rights issues, devoting special attention to the world’s most dire situations, the conduct of war, the foreign policies of the major powers, the work of the United Nations, and the global contest between autocracy and democracy.
Roth is currently writing a book, Righting Wrongs, to be published by Knopf, about the strategies used by Human Rights Watch to defend human rights, drawing on his years of experience.
April 26, 2022 3:00AM EDT
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Kenneth Roth to Step Down at Human Rights Watch
Has Led Global Rights Group for Nearly Three Decades
Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth speaks during an interviewClick to expand Image
Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth speaks during an interview with Reuters in Geneva, Switzerland, April 9, 2018. © 2018 Reuters/Pierre Albouy
(New York) – Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth has announced that he plans to step down at the end of August 2022, Human Rights Watch said today. Roth has led the organization since 1993, transforming it from a small group of regional “watch committees” to a major international human rights organization with global influence.
“I had the great privilege to spend nearly 30 years building an organization that has become a leading force in defending the rights of people around the world,” Roth said. “I leave Human Rights Watch with confidence that a highly talented and dedicated staff will carry on that defense with great energy, creativity, and effectiveness.”
Under Roth’s leadership, Human Rights Watch grew from a staff of about 60 with a $7 million budget, to 552 covering more than 100 countries and a nearly $100 million budget. In 1997, Human Rights Watch shared a Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to ban antipersonnel landmines and played a critical role in the coalitions to establish the International Criminal Court and to ban the use of cluster munitions and child soldiers. The staff’s reporting and advocacy also contributed to the conviction of Liberia’s Charles Taylor, Peru’s Alberto Fujimori, and wartime Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. Today Human Rights Watch is deeply engaged in documenting and working to curtail serious abuses in Ukraine, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Syria, and Yemen, among the 100 countries where it regularly works.
Roth began his human rights career as a volunteer, working on nights and weekends while serving as an attorney and a federal prosecutor. He joined Human Rights Watch in 1987 as deputy director. At the time, the organization consisted of Helsinki Watch, formed in 1978 to support dissident movements in Eastern Europe; Americas Watch, founded in 1981; and Asia Watch, formed in 1985. Shortly after Roth joined, the organization created Middle East Watch and Africa Watch. Early in his tenure, Roth moved the organization toward a single identity as Human Rights Watch.
Not long after his arrival, popular uprisings toppled dictatorships across Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union collapsed, opening up new opportunities for the human rights movement. But as citizens of Europe’s new democracies embraced their newfound freedoms, rivalries suppressed by decades of dictatorship erupted. When Roth was appointed executive director in 1993, Yugoslavia had split apart, and Bosnia was in the throes of war marked by a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign. The genocide in Rwanda was soon to follow.
Roth recognized the need for real time documentation of atrocities to generate immediate pressure to end them. That led to the creation of a group of specially trained researchers who could provide a surge capacity to the organization’s regular country researchers.
Roth also embraced new possibilities to bring perpetrators to justice. As Human Rights Watch researchers meticulously documented abuses, the organization pressed the United Nations Security Council, then in a more cooperative moment, to create international war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Human Rights Watch research was used to build some of the cases, and staff testified at both UN tribunals. Human Rights Watch also played a prominent role in establishing the International Criminal Court, fending off pressure from the US government seeking to ensure immunity for its own forces.
“Ken’s fearless passion for justice, his courage and compassion towards the victims of human rights violations and atrocity crimes was not just professional responsibility but a personal conviction to him,” said Fatou Bensouda, former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. “He has indeed been a great inspiration to me and my colleagues.”
Today, amid the horrific abuse taking place in Ukraine, an infrastructure is in place to hold perpetrators accountable.
Roth also created special teams to address the needs of certain marginalized people, including women, children, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, refugees, people with disabilities, and older people. He also oversaw the development of specialized programs on poverty and inequality, climate change, technology, and corporate social responsibility. In addition, he initiated a program to address human rights in the United States.
“When Ken Roth succeeded me as executive director of Human Rights Watch nearly 30 years ago, I had worked with him long enough to know that the organization would be in good hands,” said Aryeh Neier, the first Human Rights Watch executive director, who later became president of Open Society Foundations. “He has exceeded my expectations. Ken’s personal integrity and leadership have been essential in making Human Rights Watch one of the world’s most important nongovernmental institutions.”
Roth changed the way that Human Rights Watch directed its advocacy. The organization began focusing mainly on US foreign policy. Roth globalized the organization’s advocacy, establishing offices in Brussels, London, Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Johannesburg, and Sydney. He also spearheaded the organization’s work with the United Nations, with dedicated advocates in New York and Geneva.
After the 9/11 attacks, Human Rights Watch documented and exposed the use of “black sites” where US officials interrogated and tortured terrorism suspects. Under Roth, Human Rights Watch pressed the US government to investigate and prosecute those responsible for issuing the orders. Eventually the US Senate issued the Torture Report confirming Human Rights Watch’s findings and denouncing the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of torture.
“Ken Roth turned Human Rights Watch into a juggernaut for justice,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “He has inspired a generation of human rights defenders to fight for a better world. During the so-called ‘war on terror,’ Ken went to Guantanamo and brought to bear his acumen and stature in exposing the farce of the military commission process. No organization and no leader have had a greater impact in human rights on a global scale.”
Human Rights Watch’s communication strategy evolved dramatically under Roth. The organization began by writing reports. Over time, it also began producing shorter and quicker reports and built a strong multimedia capacity, so that videos, photos, and graphics now routinely accompany the organization’s publications and sometimes are the publication itself. The organization also embraced social media. The organization has amassed nearly 14 million followers on the major social media platforms. Roth himself has more than half a million Twitter followers.
In his nearly 30 years at the helm of Human Rights Watch, Roth traveled the world, pressing government officials of all stripes to pay greater respect to human rights. He met with more than two dozen heads of state and government along with countless ministers and made investigative or advocacy trips to more than 50 countries. Whenever he could, he also met with communities affected by human rights violations. During his early years with the organization, he conducted fact-finding investigations himself, including in Haiti, Cuba, Israel-Palestine, Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion, and Serbia after the US bombing. In recent years, he has been especially concerned with addressing atrocities during the Syrian war as well as Chinese government repression in Xinjiang.
Roth inevitably earned many enemies. Despite being Jewish (and having a father who fled Nazi Germany as a 12-year-old boy), he has been attacked for the organization’s criticism of Israeli government abuses. The Rwandan government was particularly vitriolic in its criticism of Roth after Human Rights Watch, which had issued a definitive account of the genocide, also reported on atrocities and repression under President Paul Kagame.
The Chinese government imposed “sanctions” on him and expelled him from Hong Kong when he traveled there to release the annual World Report in January 2020, which spotlighted Beijing’s threat to the global human rights system. Roth responded to these and many other criticisms by noting that the organization employs the same fact-finding methodology and applies the same human rights principles in every country where it works.
Roth has written extensively on a range of human rights issues. In addition to writing the introduction to the World Report since 1990, he has published more than 300 articles including in the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The New York Review of Books, Foreign Policy, and Foreign Affairs.
Roth plans to write a book drawing on his personal experiences about the most effective strategies for defending human rights. “I am leaving Human Rights Watch but I am not leaving the human rights cause,” Roth said.
Human Rights Watch will conduct an open search for Roth’s successor. Tirana Hassan, chief programs officer, will serve as interim executive director.
“Ken’s clarity of vision brought me to Human Rights Watch,” said Amy Rao, the Human Rights Watch Board of Directors co-chair. “Supporting him and this organization has been one of the great honors of my life. We are committed to ushering in a new leader who will build on Ken’s legacy and drive Human Rights Watch forward in partnership with other organizations to defend and protect human rights around the globe.”
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kenneth Roth
Roth during the Munich Security Conference, 2018
Born September 23, 1955 (age 69)
Elmhurst, Illinois, U.S.
Education Brown University (BA)
Yale University (JD)
Known for Executive director of Human Rights Watch
Spouse Annie Sparrow (m. 2011)
Kenneth Roth (born September 23, 1955) is an American attorney, human rights activist, and writer. He was the executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) from 1993 to 2022.
Early life and education
Kenneth Roth was born on September 23, 1955, in Elmhurst, Illinois, to Muriel T. Roth and Walter S. Roth. His father was a Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany.[1][2][3] Walter's family had a butchery in Germany near Frankfurt when Adolf Hitler came to power.
Kenneth Roth grew up in Deerfield, Illinois.[4] He graduated from Brown University in 1977 with a BA in history[1] and received his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1980.[5]
On June 13, 2011, Roth was married in an Anglican church to Annie Sparrow.[3]
Career
Roth in 2012
Roth worked in private practice as a litigator and served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the United States Department of Justice for the Southern District of New York and the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington DC.[6] Roth's career in human rights began inauspiciously. The one human rights course offered at Yale Law School was repeatedly canceled, and upon graduation he found that jobs in the field were few. As a result, as he worked as a lawyer, and volunteered nights and weekends doing human rights work, focusing on[7] the Soviet imposition of martial law in Poland in 1981.[8]
Roth joined Human Rights Watch (HRW) in 1987 as deputy director. His initial work centered on Haiti[9] and gradually extended to Cuba[10] and the Middle East,[11] among other places.
Since 1993 (when Aryeh Neier left to become head of George Soros's Open Society Institute), Roth became the executive director[6] of HRW. While he was in the office, the HRW staff increased from 60 to 552; HRW shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for banning of anti-personnel mines, helped to establish International Criminal Court and ban children in the military. Roth resigned from HRW on 31 August 2022.[12] After leaving HRW, Roth said he intended to write a book.[4]
Roth received honorary degrees from Brown University,[13] Bowdoin College,[14] the University of Ottawa,[15] and the American University of Paris.[16] He was a recipient of the Athens Democracy Award,[17] the William Rogers Award[18] from Brown University and the Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award[19] from Tufts University. He serves on the Watson Institute Board of Overseers[20] at Brown University, the Board of Governors of Bard College Berlin,[21] and the Humanitarian and Development Advisory Panel of the Novo Nordisk Foundation.[22]
Harvard Kennedy School fellowship
In 2021, Roth was offered a fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. The offer was withdrawn in 2023. Roth said that the withdrawal was because of his criticism of Israel.[23] Michael Massing reported Roth's claims in the Nation.[24] Roth told the Guardian and Amy Goodman on Democracy Now that he believed Harvard Kennedy School dean Douglas Elmendorf had capitulated to Harvard's donors who are strong supporters of Israel. Kennedy school professor Kathryn Sikkink said she was told that Elmendorf thought Human Rights Watch has an "anti-Israel bias" and that Roth’s tweets on Israel were concerning, points she disputed with the dean.[24][25][26] Following Roth's complaint, the ACLU, Pen America, and other human rights activists condemned the Kennedy School's decision.[27] On January 10, 2023, HRW published a letter to Harvard President Lawrence Bacow that said it was concerned about a "lasting impact on scholars and activists, particularly Palestinians, who should not have to fear professional repercussions from Harvard University or another institution if they write or speak critically about the Israeli government".[28] Following those reports, hundreds of Harvard affiliates called on Elmendorf to resign.[29]
On January 19, 2023, The Kennedy School, which denies Roth's allegations,[30] reversed its decision, reoffering Roth the fellowship.[31] Elmendorf said that his initial decision had been in "error" and was not intended "to limit debate at the Kennedy School about human rights in any country".[32] Roth responded that Elmendorf failed to say anything to identify the people "who matter to him" who he said were behind his original veto decision. "Full transparency is key to ensuring that such influence is not exerted in other cases", Roth said, adding: "Secondly, I remain worried about academic freedom. Given my three decades leading Human Rights Watch, I was able to shine an intense spotlight on Dean Elmendorf’s decision, but what about others? The problem of people penalized for criticizing Israel is not limited to me."[33]
In the fall of 2023, Roth joined the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs as a lecturer and the Charles and Marie Robertson Visiting Professor.[34]
Denial of entry to Egypt and China
In 2014, the Egyptian government blocked Roth from entering the country.[35] He was traveling to Egypt to release a report on its government's August 2013 Rabaa massacre[36] of 817 sit-in protesters.[37]
In December 2019, China announced unspecified sanctions against HRW and several other NGOs because of links to the Hong Kong democracy movement.[38] In January 2020, Roth said that he was denied entry to Hong Kong.[39] He was planning to launch the organization's World Report,[40] which had an essay saying China is a growing threat to human rights around the world.[41] Geng Shuang, a spokesman for China's foreign ministry, told reporters he would not read the report, accusing Human Rights Watch of distorting the truth and claiming China's human rights situation is “the best it's been in history.”[42] In August 2020, the Chinese government announced that it had imposed unspecified “sanctions” on Roth.[43]
Kenneth Roth ’80 Discusses 30 Years of Righting Wrongs at Human Rights Workshop
March 21, 2025
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Kenneth Roth, sitting at panel, speaks while pointing
Kenneth Roth ’80, then Human Rights Watch executive director, in 2011. (Photo: Harald Dettenborn)
Kenneth Roth ’80 drew from his nearly three decades at Human Rights Watch at a talk detailing the strategies the organization has used to fight human rights abuses around the world. At the Feb. 20 event hosted by the Orville H. Schell Jr. Center for International Human Rights, Roth described how advocates can apply political pressure to advance human rights when avenues like courts are not available. The talk, “Does Human Rights Advocacy Make a Difference?,” was part of the Human Rights Workshop series.
Now the Charles and Marie Robertson Visiting Professor at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, Roth was previously executive director at Human Rights Watch, or HRW. In his nearly 30 years with the organization, Roth conducted investigative and advocacy missions around the world. He has also written hundreds of articles on human rights issues, including the conduct of war, the foreign policies of the major powers, the work of the United Nations, and the global contest between autocracy and democracy.
The purpose of human rights activists, Roth believes, is to alter the political calculus of governments and global actors who have made the decision to violate human rights. These actors deem their violations “rational” according to a cost-benefit analysis of what they can get away with or do to stay in power. Ultimately, according to Roth, advocates must make it more costly for these actors to blatantly violate human rights.
In the talk at Yale Law School, Roth explored his book, “Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments.” The book offers an insider’s view of the strategies used by Human Rights Watch to put pressure on governments to respect human rights. Roth began his talk by noting that, while most people are purportedly pro-human-rights, they tend to view human rights activism as well-intentioned but ineffectual. Roth complicated this narrative with a career of counterexamples.
While law students may be trained to view courts as the ideal path to sustained remedies to human rights abuses, Roth showed that other paths are possible. He discussed how Human Rights Watch usually operates in areas without a dependable court system or where there are no judicial remedies available — often because judges have been killed, compromised, or corrupted. In these environments, he said, activists must exert targeted political pressure that mimics the remedies sought by a court.
According to Roth, such political pressure is guided by several undercurrents. First, whether or not world leaders feel personal remorse, global actors in today’s world must at least purport to respect human rights in order to seek legitimacy and global recognition. Careful documentation of violations — so-called “naming and shaming” — is therefore delegitimizing, he noted. Second, Roth explained, activists can deploy the knowledge gained from such investigations in sympathetic capitols worldwide, urging friendly governments to condition attendance at summits, arms sales, or military aid on compliance with international human rights norms. Third, and only in rare instances, activists can seek prosecution of violators, either through the International Criminal Court or through domestic courts via the doctrine of Universal Jurisdiction, according to Roth.
Roth then turned to some of the case studies in his book. He detailed one on the Idlib province in northwestern Syria, where human rights advocates say Syrian and Russian armed forces repeatedly bombed civilian infrastructure, as documented in a HRW report. The challenge for the organization, Roth said, was that Syrian President Bashar Assad “had effectively no reputation left to lose” because he had dropped chemical weapons and barrel bombs on his own civilians. Yet at the time, Roth explained, Russian President Vladimir Putin still cared deeply about his reputation in Europe, and Assad remained dependent on the Russian Federation for assistance. HRW thus conducted a three-year investigation and chain-of-command analysis, concluding that Putin wanted to maintain relations with Germany, France, and Turkey. HRW then gradually pressured all three governments to raise the Idlib issue on their diplomatic agendas. Starting in March 2020, the strategy proved successful: the bombings stopped.
Turning to another case study, Roth discussed the M23 rebel group in Eastern Congo, which was effectively controlled by the Rwandan government. When Rwanda President Paul Kagame invaded a decade ago, HRW began documenting how the Rwandan government was providing military support to the M23 group. Kagame publicly denied providing the support initially, but HRW produced three comprehensive reports demonstrating the link between the Rwandan government and the M23. The international community then began recognizing the crisis.
Ultimately, HRW advocated for U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his British equivalent, Foreign Secretary William Hague, to call Kagame and condition military aid on his cutting ties with the M23. The strategy was successful, and M23 crumbled without Kagame’s support. Eight years later, the M23 has seen a resurgence. Though Kagame continues to present himself as a respected statesman, the International Criminal Court has reopened their investigation against him.
In his book, Roth describes other advocacy strategies HRW has pursued. In China, the organization sought to stop Xi Jinping’s detention of Uyghurs. It advocated to deprive Hungary and Poland from their EU subsidies to stymie the risk of autocracy within Europe. In the U.S., it gathered evidence to advocate against the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo under former President George W. Bush and to reassess the U.S. military’s proportionately analysis in bombings.
Looking to the present, Roth discussed strategies for steering U.S. President Donald Trump toward respecting human rights. In a recent Guardian essay, Roth writes about what he has learned from three decades of dealing with autocrats and how to apply those lessons to Trump. He writes that Trump sees himself as a master negotiator, so to hit him where he cares, advocates must show that he is a bad dealmaker on human rights. For instance, Roth writes, the temporary ceasefire in Gaza suggests that Trump has the capacity to apply pressure in a positive direction. However, he continues, Trump’s subsequent push for a deal to force two million Palestinians out of Gaza “would be a blatant war crime.”
To reroute Trump, Roth writes, advocates should urge him to be the master negotiator behind a Middle Eastern deal that would appease the Saudis with the assurance of a concrete pathway to a Palestinian state and move Netanyahu away from his steadfast opposition to a Palestinian state. In this way, according to Roth, Trump may be in a better position than former President Joe Biden to negotiate with Trump-like leaders.
Regarding Ukraine, Roth writes, activists should similarly frame negotiations with Russia as an opportunity for Trump to show off his negotiating skills — and if Trump capitulates and cedes vast territory to Russia, he will be perceived as the ”21st century Neville Chamberlain.” According to Roth, activists should present human rights as an opportunity for Trump to make deals, while making it clear that Trump will be seen as a bad businessman if the deals fail.
Finally, Roth spoke about his time at Yale Law School. When he was a student, the Law School offered a single human rights course and it was ultimately canceled, according to Roth. Now, human rights opportunities abound. Yet human rights courses continue to emphasize the judiciary as the primary mechanism for effective remedies, Roth said. He implored students to explore the political process as a less-studied but parallel legal method of advocacy.
Righting Wrongs. By Kenneth Roth. Knopf; 448 pages; $30. Allen Lane; £30
A doctor in Syria under Bashar al-Assad was forced to sedate 63 prisoners. Not to ease the pain caused by shackling, but to ensure they did not complain about it when a UN delegation visited the hellish prison where they were being held. At first glance, the moral of this story is obvious: despots spit on human rights. But Kenneth Roth, a former head of Human Rights Watch (HRW), sees another, more hopeful lesson. Even the vilest rulers care about their reputations, and so try to hide at least some of their abuses. This gives human-rights campaigners an opening: by exposing horror, they can sometimes shame governments into perpetrating less of it.
This task is not straightforward. Those who rule by fear are hard to shame. Exposing their cruelty may actually bolster their power for a while, by reminding their subjects of the dangers of disobedience. However, ruling by fear alone "is risky, because a disgruntled public is always on the lookout for a way to oust the tyrant". (As Mr Assad, pictured, discovered in December, when his overthrow sparked jubilation in Damascus's streets.) So most dictators want to appear to serve the public good.
Having run one of the world's most effective human-rights groups for three decades, Mr Roth has sparred with more nasty regimes than most people could name. In "Righting Wrongs" he distils his hard-earned insights. With warlords carving up Sudan , Russia kidnapping Ukrainian children and America's president musing about ethnic cleansing in Gaza , the book could hardly be more timely.
The key to shaming powerful wrongdoers, Mr Roth argues, is to avoid name-calling and "stigmatise with facts". Researchers at HRW are told "that their top priority is accuracy", and that it is better to come home empty-handed than to publish inaccurate information. They dig up the truth painstakingly, by interviewing victims and combing through tedious official documents. Even if their reporting achieves nothing in the short run, it can furnish evidence for future prosecutions.
Despots fear exposure. Otherwise they would not devote such vast resources to hiding their abuses, sometimes ineptly. When China blanked out its Uyghur prison camps on online maps, it made it easier for researchers to find them–by looking for unexplained blank spots.
An activist must know which levers to pull. If a head of government is genuinely unaware of abuses, simply proving them may be enough, especially in a democracy. In 2011 Mr Roth sat down with Mexico's president, Felipe Calderón, to discuss a report on "disappearances" and summary executions meted out by the Mexican army in its "war on drugs". Previously Mr Calderón had insisted that his troops were innocent. But after Mr Roth went through the report with him paragraph by paragraph, the president admitted he was wrong and adopted some of Mr Roth's suggested remedies, such as no longer interrogating suspects on military bases.
To shame nastier regimes, more skill is required. Rulers who feel no guilt about tearing out dissidents' thumbnails may simultaneously crave international respectability. After America overthrew Saddam Hussein, another Arab dictator, Muammar Qaddafi , was eager to avoid the same fate. As well as publicly giving up a nuclear-weapons programme, his regime invited Mr Roth to visit Libya.
Mr Roth seized the chance and shared a list of 131 political prisoners, demanding their release. Mid-level officials exploded with rage and "seemed to think they could bludgeon us into not publishing [the findings] at all", Mr Roth recalls. He let them hyperventilate for a while, and then gave them a choice. HRW was going to hold a press conference in Egypt a few days later. When journalists asked about their meetings in Tripoli, they could say: "All they did was yell at us." Or: "The conversations were productive, and they promised various reforms." Which would it be? The next day the officials apologised, and soon all 131 political prisoners were freed.
Defending human rights is getting harder. Russia has gone completely rogue. The two most powerful democracies, India and the United States, have leaders who care little for human rights. And China under Xi Jinping has become what Mr Roth calls the greatest "threat to the global human-rights system", constantly seeking to undermine it in international forums.
Meanwhile, some Western progressives have lost their common sense. Some embrace the ridiculous notion that for Westerners to criticise oppression in the global south is a form of imperialism. Others talk self-righteous guff. Mr Roth recalls an adviser urging HRW to campaign against "structural racism, patriarchy and classism embedded in the design of Western public-health systems". Such rhetoric is likely to repel "the moveable middle"—the people campaigners need to win over. Far better to focus on things that more or less everyone agrees are wrong, such as torture.
The gripes of Roth
As the world polarises, human-rights campaigners must be seen to be impartial. This is hard. Nasty regimes often accuse them of being agents of foreign powers. Other abusive regimes try to change the subject: what about America's crimes? Mr Roth's response is to arrive with a stack of HRW reports on America and "place them with a good thump" on the whataboutery-spouting official's desk.
After he retired from HRW in 2022, Mr Roth was cancelled. An invitation to take up a human-rights fellowship at Harvard was vetoed, allegedly because donors objected to his "anti-Israel" bias. The objection rang hollow: Mr Roth is Jewish, his family fled from the Nazis and he is a stern critic of brutality everywhere. After an outcry, Harvard backed down.
The world needs more watchdogs like Mr Roth: principled yet worldly, insanely hard-working and resolutely non-tribal. It probably helps that he never took an academic course on human rights. Rather than nitpicking about the minutiae of international law, he tells human stories, like that of the Syrian anaesthetist, that shock the listener into fury. It is stories, more than theories, that help humans comprehend tyranny. And as the mighty fill the world's small screens with falsehoods, someone needs to tell true tales.
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Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 Economist Intelligence Unit N.A. Incorporated
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"The best way to curb the cruelty of the world's worst regimes." The Economist, 13 Mar. 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A830853651/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b3825eb4. Accessed 1 June 2025.
Roth, Kenneth RIGHTING WRONGS Knopf (NonFiction None) $30.00 2, 25 ISBN: 9780593801321
Applying pressure for change.
As the director of Human Rights Watch for three decades, Roth put public opinion to work in the service of his cause: The nongovernmental organization, he writes, "figured out how to deploy the public's sense of right and wrong to pressure the political branches of governments to respect rights." Sometimes this pressure was brought to bear on corporations instead of governments directly. Sometimes the effort worked the other direction, as when Xi Jinping's China "realized that it had a powerful weapon to silence human-rights criticism: it could deny access to any critic," whether Roth's organization or a foreign corporation. Some of Roth's carefully orchestrated campaigns have been successful, as with the organization's contributions to arranging a cease-fire in Syria. That was a cease-fire in which the ever-implicated Vladimir Putin had to sign off, given Russia's armed intervention there, while attempts to improve rights conditions in Russia have faltered, Roth allows. He insists, though, that even Russia might one day come around: "Some backers of Ukraine have been inclined to treat all Russians as enemies, hoping that their suffering will push them to stand up to their government. I think a more productive approach is to treat them as potential allies." Having retired, Roth is now free to name names in sometimes less-than-diplomatic ways: He calls out numerous figures in the Saudi ruling family as responsible for war crimes in Yemen, and he calls U.N. Secretary General António Guterres "a human-rights disappointment, reluctant to use his public voice in an effective way." This reluctance, Roth notes, has daily implications in places like Gaza.
Given the never-ending assault on human rights, a valuable call to fight back.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Roth, Kenneth: RIGHTING WRONGS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Jan. 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A823102235/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=9bf4f187. Accessed 1 June 2025.
Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments.
By Kenneth Roth.
Feb. 2025. 448p. Knopf, $30 (9780593801321); e-book
(9780593801338). 323.
To the extent that the world becomes aware of atrocities committed in global combat zones and areas of political unrest, the international nongovernmental organization Human Rights Watch is responsible for casting light on those darkest human impulses. When courts, governments, police, and military cease to be the protectors of a country's citizenry--indeed when these officials are the perpetrators of torture, rape, and murder--it is left to Humans Rights Watch to bring pressure on corrupt institutions by uncovering and reporting such crimes. In hot spots from Rwanda to Cuba, Russia to Iran, the group has practiced brave investigative journalism, top-tier diplomacy, and groundbreaking legislative reform to end corruption and abuse. For three decades, Roth was executive director of this Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization. In an expansive behind-the-scenes memoir, Roth now shares his singular insights on how governments can be encouraged to end human rights abuses. In an era when such crimes against humanity are increasing in scope and severity, Roth's candor and clarity provide inspirational wisdom and practical advice for rights advocates everywhere.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 American Library Association
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Haggas, Carol. "Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments." Booklist, vol. 121, no. 9-10, Jan. 2025, p. 8. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A829739223/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=447b81fe. Accessed 1 June 2025.