Book: Righting Wrongs - Three decades on the front lines battling abusive governments

Righting Wrongs - Three decades on the front lines battling abusive governments, by Kenneth Roth,
Penguin Random House.

"People, of course, want human rights, at least for themselves." So begins Kenneth Roth's informative survey of his thirty years at Human Rights Watch (HRW). He saw his NGO's role as increasing "the price of oppression to shift a regime's cost-benefit calculation so that abuse no longer seems so desirable." In 330 readable pages, Roth provides an authoritative guide to the ways in which tyrants can be held to account for their atrocities.

Presenting well-researched facts and shaming leaders, rather than delivering pious lectures and holding street protests are the key, according to Roth. "Human rights abusers may feel no personal remorse," he writes, "but they would prefer to avoid the opprobrium of others….An abusive official always wants something from the international community, even if it's just to be invited to a major summit so they can be photographed with respectable leaders."

Roth provides a world tour of horror, from Cambodia to Syria to Ukraine and Gaza, illustrating how HRW gathers evidence and locates points of leverage. This leverage can be used by friendly governments and institutions to apply pressure on autocrats to reduce or stop slaughter and persecution.

He is particularly withering when demolishing the argument used by successive British governments that trade will lead to liberalization in China or anywhere else. The opposite has been true under the rule of Xo Jinping.

The power of pointing a spot light on violations of international human rights law (shaming) runs counter to long-established Foreign Office policy. The UK still supplies "technical support" to dictatorships in the vain hope that security services will change their torturing ways if we provide quiet seminars rather than exposing their misdeeds.

Roth's technique has been criticized for being too "elite", taking well-documented examples of human rights abuses to leaders, and persuading them that it is in their personal interest to desist. "The idea of building a human rights movement ignores how rarely popular mobilization occurs, how difficult it is to sustain, and how few issues the public will address." He also points out that Mandela or Navalny figures are required for such movements.

He describes meeting President Biden to brief him about China before the US leader met Xi Jinping. Biden "began talking and talking and talking. Finally, after some 20 minutes, I interrupted hm. After all, I was there to brief him." The Biden that emerges from these pages is an arrogant man who believes he has nothing to learn from country or legal experts. Roth observes that Biden avoided confrontations with fellow leaders about human rights, placating the likes of Mohammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia with little effect.

Roth is also dismissive of the current UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres for his timidity and desire to keep the lines of communication open with leaders who persecute their own citizens rather than holding them to account for failing to uphold the conventions they have signed. This affability brings few results, Roth concludes.

The scion of a German Jewish family who escaped the Holocaust, Roth has endured decades of criticism from Israelis who hate HRW's consistent even-handedness when it comes to the misdeeds of Israel and Hamas. For anyone seeking an introduction to human rights law and practice, Roth's book is a good place to start.

Rebecca Tinsley founded the human rights NGO Waging Peace.