Kenneth Roth

Early life

Kenneth Roth, a graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University, claims he was drawn to human rights causes through his family ties. He claimed that his father would keep his three young sons quiet as he cut their hair by telling tales of their grandfather's butcher shop in Frankfurt, Germany. Roth stated that as they grew older, his father told them about living under the Nazis as a young boy and fleeing Germany in July 1938.

Career

Jimmy Carter’s introduction of human rights as an element of US foreign policy in the late 1970s further inspired Roth to take on human rights as a vocation, Roth has claimed.

Prior to starting at Human Rights Watch (HRW) in 1987, Roth worked in private practice as a litigator and served as a federal prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York and the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington DC.

During the early years of his work in human rights movement, Roth focused on the Soviet imposition of martial law in Poland in 1981.

Roth joined Human Rights Watch in 1987 as deputy director. His initial work centered on Haiti, which was just emerging from the Duvalier dictatorship but continued to be plagued by brutal military rule. Since then, Roth has travelled internationally on behalf of Human Rights Watch.

His biography on the HRW website claims he has "special expertise on: issues of justice and accountability for atrocities committed in the quest for peace; military conduct in war under the requirements of international humanitarian law; counterterrorism policy, including resort to torture and arbitrary detention; the human rights policies of the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations; and, the human rights responsibilities of multinational businesses."

Roth has published numerous articles, newspaper op-eds, and articles in academic journals, covering a wide range of issues, including "Domestic Violence as an International Human Rights Issue", in Human Rights of Women: National and International Perspectives; "The Case for Universal Jurisdiction"; "The Charade of US Ratification of International Human Rights Treaties"; and "The Law of War in the War on Terror - Washington's Abuse of Enemy Combatants" His Twitter handle is @KenRoth.

In September 2007, Roth gave a lecture entitled "The Dynamics of Human Rights and the Environment" at the University of San Diego's Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice Distinguished Lecture Series. Roth frequently addresses audiences around the world, including at the United Nations in New York, universities and conferences, including the Munich Security Conference and the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Human Rights Watch

In 1987, Roth was hired by Aryeh Neier to be deputy director of HRW and since 1993 (when Neier left to become head of George Soros' Open Society Institute), Roth has been the organization's executive director.

Under Roth’s leadership, Human Rights Watch has grown eight-fold in size and vastly expanded its reach. It now operates in more than 80 countries.

During Roth’s tenure, Human Rights Watch has documented war crimes in Bosnia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq and Sierra Leone. Human Rights Watch researchers have testified at international tribunals. The organization has also done extensive work on child soldiers. The work of Human Rights Watch has helped to convict Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, Peru’s Alberto Fujimori and Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, among others, for crimes against humanity.

As a founding member of the International Campaign to ban Landmines, in 1997 Human Rights Watch shared the Nobel Peace Prize for helping bring about the Mine Ban Treaty.

Criticism and controversies

Under Roth's leadership, Human Rights Watch has been criticized for perceived biases and misconstructions.

Venezuela
On December 17, 2009, 118 scholars from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, the UK, the US, Venezuela and other countries publicly criticized HRW in an open letter to the HRW Board of Directors in response to an HRW report, A Decade Under Chavez: Political Intolerance and Lost Opportunities for Advancing Human Rights in Venezuela. The report was criticized for bias against the government of Venezuela and its President, Hugo Chavez, stating that it "does not meet even the most minimal standards of scholarship, impartiality, accuracy, or credibility." One of the letter's authors, Hugh O'Shaughnessy, accused HRW of using false and misleading information, and said the HRW report was "put together with the sort of know-nothing Washington bias..." Kenneth Roth responded, stating that the letter misrepresented "both the substance and the source material of the report."

Rwanda
Fred Oluoch-Ojiwah, of Rwanda’s New Times newspaper, questions Roth’s impartiality and equates his criticism of Rwanda’s human rights record to a “love affair” with the “genocidaires” that carried out the Rwandan Genocide of 1994.

“As a western human rights personality [Roth]…will always fail to understand the intricacies and complexities surrounding the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi. Wrapping it up simplistically the way he has done will only serve to undo the gains already registered in driving the very delicate process of bringing forth a new dispensation in Rwanda and by extension the African Great Lakes region,” Oluoch-Ojiwah wrote.

Israel
Kenneth Roth has been criticized by the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor for allegedly being biased against Israel. Gerald M. Steinberg has been a long-time critic of Roth's role as head of Human Rights Watch from 1993. Writing in a 2004 Jerusalem Post article in response to Roth's op-ed in which Roth accused NGO Monitor of disregarding basic facts, "fictitious allegations of bias" and a "fantasy-based discourse" which "does a deep disservice to Israel".

In August 2006, during the war between Hezbollah and Israel, Roth rejected criticism of HRW’s allegations against Israel, writing in a letter to the editor of the The New York Sun: "An eye for an eye — or, more accurately in this case, twenty eyes for an eye — may have been the morality of some more primitive moment. But it is not the morality of international humanitarian law which Mr. Bell pretends to apply." In response, the head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) referred to Roth’s rhetoric as a reflection of "classic anti-Semitic stereotype about Jews".

In reaction to Richard Goldstone's recantation of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict report, HRW Founder Robert Bernstein said to the Jerusalem Post in April 2011, referring to Roth, that it "is time for him to follow Judge Goldstone’s example and issue his own mea culpa.”

On April 26, 2015, Roth drew criticism for attacking Israel for sending humanitarian aid to Nepal during the April 2015 Nepal earthquake, while calling for the blockade of Gaza to be lifted.

Ethiopia

The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has taken issue with the credibility of Roth’s accusations that Ethiopia’s government is corrupt and uses international aid funding for “repressive purposes.” The EHRC accused Roth of impartiality caused by a desire to “appease…wealthy financiers.” It cited his evaluation of the Democratic Institution Program (DIP) as “superficial” and claimed that his allegations of corruption were based on “poor methodology.” EHRC also called Roth’s recommendations a “contradiction” that called “for the promotion of human rights at the expense of human rights programs and their implementers.”

Awards and honors

Published articles