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Are human rights at a modern low point? One can certainly make the case that they are. Authoritarian leaders are in vogue. Inequality is rampant. There’s a global backlash against gender equality. The number of forcibly displaced people is at an all-time high. There are ongoing conflicts on multiple continents. Global freedom, according to a new index from Freedom House, declined for the 19th consecutive year.
But why are societies allowing basic rights to regress? How can civil liberties still be reinforced?
In the latest episode of FP Live, I spoke with Kenneth Roth, the author of the new book Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments. Roth ran Human Rights Watch from 1993 until he stepped down in 2022, dramatically growing that organization during his tenure. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page, or follow the FP Live podcast. What follows below is a condensed and edited transcript of our conversation.
Ravi Agrawal: Let’s begin with the broader trend lines on human rights, Ken. I was looking at a report from Amnesty International last year which says we’re hurtling backward past the 1948 promise of universal human rights. Is that right?
Kenneth Roth: I would not be that apocalyptic. I open my book with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.: “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” And I point out, as he does later in the speech, that, in fact, the defense of rights is a relentless struggle. Governments are always tempted to violate human rights. The task of the human rights movement is to change the cost-benefit analysis of repression.
I started my time running Human Rights Watch during the Cold War. We were dealing with a fixed situation: Repressive governments in Eastern Europe and proxy wars around the world. For a moment, it seemed that freedom was going to prevail. But then, there were ethnic conflicts in places like Bosnia and Rwanda. Then we had Bush’s war on terrorism, with all the disaster that foretold.
These days, the big issue is the global contest between autocracy and democracy, which accounts for the backsliding. There are highly abusive wars: Syria (until recently), Ukraine, Myanmar, and Gaza. And maybe it’s inherent in who I am, given what I do, but I tend to see the glass as half full. When it comes to the wartime atrocities, not only has there been global outrage, but the International Criminal Court has stepped in and charged people, reaffirming the standards. When it comes to autocracy, I take heart in looking at people around the world who want democracy. People keep coming out into the streets to stand for democracy. And sometimes they prevail, like in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Other times they don’t because autocrats are strong. But they make clear what they want. And the big challenge today, ironically, is in established Western democracies, where the people who feel abandoned by their governments are turning their backs on democracy and embracing far-right alternatives.
RA: You talked about this battle of ideas between democracies and autocracies—something former [U.S.] President [Joe] Biden used to talk about. But in that struggle, and also within democracies, what actually allows human rights abuses to happen, sometimes with seeming impunity?
KR: Well, the way we stop human rights violations—and I give many examples in my book — is by raising the cost of them. We do that, in part, by tarnishing the reputation of abusive governments and by depriving them of things that they want until they change, such as arms sales, preferential trade benefits, or simply being welcomed as legitimate members of the international community. Sometimes we get them prosecuted. It’s about arranging a sufficient group of disincentives. I think these days, particularly with the U.S. government pulling back from the defense of human rights, some governments feel that they can get away with it. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin miscalculated. In his COVID-19-induced isolation, he thought that invading Ukraine would be a cakewalk. He didn’t understand how difficult it would be. He resorted to the same techniques he had used in Syria with impunity. [Chinese President] Xi Jinping has been severely repressing the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, thinking he can get away with it. We came very close to getting them addressed by the United Nations Human Rights Council; Xi was personally calling heads of state to try to fend that off.
At this moment, a number of European democracies are in disarray. We are in a poorer position to fight back today than in [U.S. President Donald Trump’s] first term, when we had [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel, [French President Emmanuel] Macron, and a more united government. We had a stronger British government. But we’ve learned that even without the United States, if we put together coalitions of democracies around the world, we still can exert very significant pressure to defend human rights.
RA: “Naming and shaming” is often used by Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations to tarnish the reputations of human rights abusers. But a few new things make that harder. One is this sense from dictators that, “A lot of Western countries aren’t following the rules themselves, so why should we?” The other one is that the truth is now contested. Part of this is because of the speed at which the internet moves. But also, I say as a journalist, it is harder and harder to convince people what is going on because they have an alternative reality that seems convincing to them.
KR: I think you’re right. It is more difficult. But to begin with the basics, shaming works because even in today’s world, every government, as a matter of basic legitimacy, has to pretend to respect human rights. They all say that they do. Now, they obviously fall short. And what human rights groups do is carefully document and spotlight the discrepancy between pretense and practice. And every government finds that shameful and delegitimizing, so they want to avoid it. This is not a matter of personal remorse. I’m not in the psychology business. I’m not trying to change these dictators into good people. I’m just trying to force them to change by paying a reputational price for their repression.
Now, the hypocrisy factor does matter, because it gives governments a good excuse to avoid taking a stand when asked. And we see this, for example, when a number of governments—particularly in sub-Saharan Africa—say, “Well, why should we condemn what Putin is doing in Ukraine when Biden and now Trump are underwriting the same thing in Gaza?” It’s a cheap excuse, but one that works politically.
As to your point about the truth, we are past the point of just listening to Walter Cronkite to learn what’s going on. There are many more sources of information. People who want to know the truth still can. I’m less worried about whether you can find the truth than I am about the many people who don’t bother to look and are willing to consume whatever shows up on their social media feeds. But, if you look—even in a place like Russia with such propaganda and censorship, the Kremlin didn’t dare shut down YouTube or Telegram. People still use VPNs. You can get information if you want to know the truth despite that closed information environment. The truth is still very powerful, even as governments make enormous efforts to suppress it.
RA: And dictators and monarchs ultimately care about what the people think.
KR: Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, is suddenly advocating a Palestinian state when he couldn’t care less about the Palestinians. Why? Because the Saudi people watch Al Jazeera and see what Israel is doing in Gaza. Their outrage influences even a monarch who is highly repressive but can’t be indifferent to public sentiment.
RA: How does Trump’s reelection and everything that comes with it—the weakening of the multilateral order and alliances in favor of transactionalism—affect the trajectory of human rights?
KR: Trump does present a serious challenge. He obviously is cozying up to autocrats. He’s much more comfortable with them than the democracies of Western Europe, which he seems to see as adversaries. He’s turned his back on international institutions. But, we shouldn’t mark the demise of international institutions. Even in the first Trump term, other governments did step forward. Just to cite an example, we got the U.N. Human Rights Council to monitor the Saudi-led coalition bombing of Yemeni civilians. The Netherlands took the lead there. The United States was nowhere to be seen. That was a highly effective effort. When it finally ended four years later, civilian casualties doubled in Yemen. So, we can get a lot done in international institutions even without the United States. I think the real lesson is that the rest of the world must step forward when the United States, under Trump, vacates the field.
But the other big challenge is what do we do with Trump? I don’t give up on Trump. I do think that for the wrong reasons, we can get him to do the right thing sometimes.
In the current Ukraine negotiations, for example, the big issue is whether the United States provides the security guarantees. This is what the European nations require before putting peacekeeping troops in Ukraine, both to enforce a cease-fire and to prevent Putin from using the pause to rearm and then reinvade. We have to recognize that Putin doesn’t want a sliver of territory in eastern Ukraine. He wants to smother and destroy Ukraine’s democracy because he sees it as a dangerous model for the Russian people. If Trump continues with his current refusal to provide U.S. security guarantees, he’s going to produce a bad deal. The self-proclaimed “master negotiator” is going to leave a legacy of having been bamboozled by Putin. I don’t think that’s what Trump wants. If we can sufficiently demonstrate that Trump is heading toward a bad deal, that’s our best bet to push him to take that next step of not merely supporting security guarantees but providing them.
RA: You wrote in the book that China under Xi Jinping is the biggest threat to human rights around the world. But the Uyghurs are obviously not the only group facing systematic oppression around the world. Tibet is not the only subsumed region. Xi Jinping is not the only powerful antidemocratic leader. So, how is China undermining human rights efforts more than other countries, in your estimation?
KR: What I had in mind was not an assessment of Chinese repression, which is severe. There are other repressive governments.
China stands alone in having the world’s second-largest economy and being willing to devote a significant portion of the proceeds to fighting criticism around the world and undermining standards. I think we’re aware of the censorship efforts—the retaliation against the National Basketball Association when the Houston Rockets general manager tweeted in support of the Hong Kong protesters, the moves against companies that dare to be critical about China, the retaliatory tariffs on Australia for seeking an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19. And, certainly, Chinese dissidents abroad face this all the time.
But what makes China stand out is that Xi Jinping is the only leader trying to rewrite human rights standards. Those standards are actually very specific. They are codified in a series of treaties that are broadly adopted. And Xi Jinping, in essence, is saying we should rip them up and submit to just three criteria. One, are you building an economy? Second, are you providing security? And third, are people happy? But what does that mean? You can’t poll happiness. So Xi just asserts that Chinese people are happy. The people of Hong Kong were not happy. He’ll ignore that. Security: This is security via repression. What it really comes down to for him is whether GDP per capita is growing. Now, obviously, Chinese growth is slowing a whole lot. But we have to recognize how much that dumbs down human rights standards, because even the concept of economic and social rights looks past the size of GDP per capita. It looks at how available resources are allocated to meet the needs of the worst-off segments of society. The last thing Xi Jinping wants you asking is, “How are the Uyghurs doing? How are the Tibetans doing? How are rural Han Chinese doing?” So they don’t even allow that analysis, let alone allowing people any say in how the proceeds of their economy are allocated. Then, to make matters worse, at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, he says we shouldn’t criticize anybody anymore. We should just have nice, pleasant conversations about finding our own paths to respecting human rights.
So he’s trying to both destroy the standards and destroy the enforcement. No one else has the audacity to do that. So that’s why I see China, with its huge resources, is such an enormous threat to the global human rights system.
RA: I’ve often imagined in my head that dictators have this WhatsApp group chat where they share tips and notes with each other on what’s working, how to adapt, how to deal with people like you.
Throughout the book, you talk about applying leverage to countries and leaders, convincing or even manipulating them into prioritizing human rights in addressing other self-interested goals. And I’m curious how you would apply that framework today to someone like Vladimir Putin. Or Kim Jong Un, who is such an isolated leader with very little to pressure him on.
KR: Let me start with Kim. His great fear is information. If people learn about what South Korea is like—where there’s prosperity and democracy—they might pressure him to change. And so he is determined to shut off information, which is very hard to do given how easily information moves and how the North Korean people are increasingly dependent on private markets, which require a degree of mobility. So, while it looks static and totalitarian, there’s this flimsy foundation of information that we recognize, which gives us something to work with.
What makes Putin difficult today is that he has no reputation left. Sanctions have already been imposed. Military force is already being used. So the traditional tools to pressure him directly are not available. What we can influence is how governments respond to Ukraine. That’s why it’s so important that Trump recognizes it’s not just a matter of settling for some territorial compromise in the East, but that it is essential to preserve Ukraine’s democracy. I don’t think Trump cares much about democracy, which is why he needs to recognize that his reputation faces a real tarnishing. He does care about his reputation.
RA: One theory I use to explain this current moment is that a lot of what we’re seeing is a backlash. A lot of communities feel that a mix of unfettered capitalism and other global forces —too much urbanization, technological change, and immigration—came too fast and decimated rural communities. This backlash is often not very well-defined but can be interpreted as a broader complaint of “this is all too much” or “the system doesn’t work.” How does that apply to what we’re seeing in a regression of human rights?
KR: I think your analysis is correct. I would focus in particular on liberal economics and the view that global trade is good because the overall pie expands. It’s now broadly understood that there are winners and losers—that even if a nation is richer, the coastal elites benefit most. And people in the heartland, who tend to work in manufacturing, are actually hurt by globalization because you can find cheaper workers elsewhere and factories shut down. Trump is correct in trying to rectify that.
But the broader lesson is that democracies have to be careful to serve everyone. It’s not enough to just serve the elites, the experts, and the people in more economically advanced parts of the country. They need to pay attention to those who feel left behind so they are heard and their views respected. Policies should improve the lives of everyone, not just treat global improvement as sufficient.
That is where Western democracies need to do some self-correction. That is what is behind the rise of the far right. For example, migration. It’s one thing to say there should be a right to asylum. You should be able to flee persecution, flee war, and find a safe haven. But that’s not the same thing as saying every economic migrant who wants to show up in the West should be able to. I do think the numbers were probably too large, too rapid to integrate. And so when you see a housing crisis, problems with health care, and other basic challenges, it’s easy for somebody like [U.S. Vice President] J.D. Vance to blame immigrants. And that resonates with people who are upset with the status quo and are just looking for a facile explanation.
RA: In the book, you said that the real challenge for the human rights movement is to build a broader sense of community, which you say progressives have not done very well.
KR: I make this point because if established democracy is to be sustained, we need to put a greater emphasis on community. Human rights activists like to say that “our rights are not safe unless everybody’s rights are safe.” There’s an element of truth there. But what the far right is doing is just defining people outside the community. And if you treat immigrants as threats rather than members of the community, it’s easier to violate their rights. And so the human rights movement has to not simply fight human rights violations, but it needs to reassert this broader sense of community.
I’m frankly critical of the progressive movement here. Its identitarianism doesn’t promote community. It says we’re going to fight for an interest group. And progressives are not used to talking about patriotism, national interest, or the need to include everybody as a community rather than just a grouping of interests. And so progressives need to reexamine how they’ve been going about things, too. Because having a strong sense of national community is actually a prerequisite to ensuring that disfavored minorities are not excluded from the protection of rights.