Stanford University

Human Rights

Roth on Obama's human rights record

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On April 13, Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch discussed Obama's human rights record to an audience of over 125 students and faculty, marking Roth's first speaking engagement at Stanford University. This event was hosted by the Program on Human Rights at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, and was the final installment of the Sanela Diana Jenkins International Human Rights Speaker Series.

David Abernethy, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Stanford University, introduced Roth and provided a detailed overview of his professional background and the stunning growth and impact Human Rights Watch has witnessed since Roth took the helm in 1993. Under Roth's leadership and strategic direction, Human Rights Watch tripled in size, expanding its reach to over 90 countries worldwide. 

"Human rights Watch does a remarkable job in combining carefully documented facts with advocacy for a better world, including naming and shaming egregious violators of universally accepted norms," said Abernethy, in emphasizing the courageous work Human Rights Watch pioneers on a global scale.

Abernethy noted that Human Rights Watch is a "is a north, south, east, west NGO, directed towards all points on the compass and operating from all those points, as a truly globalized institution."

At the outset of his comments, Roth framed President Obama's human rights record as a desire to abandon the principles of the George W. Bush administration and embrace an approach that is in stark contrast to the Bush years of unilateral diplomacy.

Obama has evolved -- it has been a journey from being not George Bush to being himself.
- Kenneth Roth

Since assuming office in 2009, Roth noted, "Obama has evolved -- it has been a journey from being not George Bush to being himself."

Roth highlighted the differences between both presidents, emphasizing the fact that, "most significantly in terms of contrast, Obama was going to lead by example," Roth said. "He was going to have a domestic policy that he and we could be proud of and that would persuade others just by virtue of what the US did itself."

In reflecting on the evolution of Obama's approach to human rights since assuming office, Roth saw Obama moving from rhetoric to practice. Roth cited a number of examples where the Obama administration delivered substantially on their commitment to defend these principles and others where they had fallen short.

In terms of multilateral promotion of human rights, Roth discussed how the Obama administration supported the efforts of the United Nation's Human Rights Council by successfully lobbying for the U.S. to become a member and helping to revive the Council into a more effective body in holding governments accountable. 

According to Roth, "the Council has introduced tough resolutions on Libya, the Ivory Coast, Iran, and revived this tool and the ability of a group of a government's peers to condemn it."

Roth also mentioned how the Obama administration has been a key player in supporting the International Criminal Court (ICC) by voting in favor of referring Libya to the ICC, arresting the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army in the Congo, and exerting pressure on Sudan to surrender President Bashir.

These actions, Roth maintained, "strengthened a key international institution designed to stop the impunity that lies behind so many of the world's worst atrocities."

While, Roth thought Obama had certainly struck a much more modest tone on the world stage than Bush, he did stress that Obama had retained the option of humanitarian intervention and is not afraid to use military force when necessary, highlighting the recent examples of Libya and Cote d'Ivoire.

Roth believed that Obama's biggest shift was towards China's human rights record. In 2009, Obama was hesitant to exert pressure on the Chinese concerning their human rights practice, which proved to be an ineffective strategy in advancing US interests. Since the January 2011 China summit in Washington, Obama dramatically reasserted himself, calling on China to expand human rights protections and realized "human rights is not a dangerous topic."

In surveying the Obama administration's policy in the Middle East and North Africa, Roth judged it as "inconsistent" toward the recent pro-democracy movements where strategic concerns have sometimes outweighed more ideological ones.

In Egypt, Roth believed the administration took too long to take an active stand against Mubarak in support of the protesters, but eventually came around to prove they were "better late than never."

Similarly in Yemen, Roth described the administration as hesitant to initially oppose President Saleh because it jeopardized their relationship with an important counter-terrorism ally.

In Bahrain, Roth explained that the administration refuses to take an active stance and continues to discuss the possibility of reconciliation in light of the flagrant human rights abuses committed at the hands of the Bahraini regime. Roth claimed that Obama is acting in the best interest of the US's Saudi partners who are "terrified" at the prospect of a Shiite revolution in Bahrain. 

Roth characterized the administration's position towards Israel as a "predictable disappointment," in that the US vetoed a UN Security Council resolution classifying the settlements as a violation of international law and rejected the Goldstone report, refusing to recognize the positive aspects of this comprehensive investigation of the war in Gaza.

On domestic policies, Roth commended Obama's immediate effort to end the Bush policy of torture and shutter the CIA secret detention facilities, but was disappointed that Obama refused to prosecute the Bush torturers and investigate where the torture took place. 

Roth described the issue of long-term detention without trial as a work in progress, believing that Obama's hesitation to release a core group of 48 prisoners in Guantanamo stemmed from his concerns about potential future acts of terrorism. 

In closing, Roth was optimistic about Obama's evolution over the past two years, noting the great strides he has taken to actively implement his values in US human rights policy. However, he was cautious in highlighting the tensions that exist between US interests and human rights, claiming that Obama still has a ways to go in striking a better balance between the two.

This event was a rare opportunity for the CDDRL community to hear from a leading investigator and critic of human rights abuses, committed to reducing human suffering on a global scale.

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Thomas Christiano is Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellow at the Princeton University Center for Human Values and professor of philosophy and law at the University of Arizona and co-director of the Rogers Program in Law and Society at the University of Arizona. He is an editor of Politics, Philosophy and Economics, as well as the author of The Constitution of Equality: Democratic Authority and Its Limits (2008) and The Rule of the Many (1996). Christiano has published many papers, mainly in moral and political philosophy, with emphases on democratic theory, distributive justice, and global justice. He is now engaged in projects on the foundations of equality as a principle of distributive justice and on the bases of international justice, the legitimacy of international institutions, and human rights.

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How is Obama doing on Human Rights?

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Please join the Program on Human Rights at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, in welcoming Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch for a special event on the topic of President Obama's human rights record. Mr. Roth will speak about the US response to human rights abuses around the world, including recent uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa.

The event will be chaired by Professor David Abernethy, Professor Emeritus in the Stanford department of Political Science.  

How is Obama doing on human rights?
Executive Director Kenneth Roth will assess the Obama Administration's human rights record. How has the president done in addressing the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa? How has he performed on legacy issues, such as Guantanamo and torture? How has he handled competing national interests in places like China? Has his greater emphasis on multilateral diplomacy, especially at the United Nations, helped or hurt the promotion of human rights? 

Kenneth Roth is the executive director of Human Rights Watch, one of the world's leading international human rights organizations, which operates in more than 80 countries. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch in 1987, Roth served as 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 investigations and missions around the world. He has written extensively on a wide range of human rights abuses, devoting special attention to issues of international justice, counterterrorism, the foreign policies of the major powers, and the work of the United Nations.

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Resisting Europe: Protest and opposition in the EU

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Protest, street demonstrations and social unrest have been increasingly prevalent across the European Union. European citizens appear ever more discontent with their national governments and with ‘Europe'. Reforms and policies aimed at countering the challenges of the economic crises and increased global competition are met by strong public opposition. Recent student movements protesting against educational reforms, strikes and massive anti-austerity demonstrations in many European capitals, protest votes for extreme right or left political parties are just some of these manifestations. What translates dissatisfaction to protest and drives these collective actions? How is protest expressed in European politics and in the public sphere today? Who is protesting and against what? Is this growing opposition the result of socio-economic insecurity felt by European citizens due to Europe's increasingly strained economic security and prosperity? Or, has Europe hit the limits of how much integration and diversity it can digest? As the current model of European economic liberalism is attacked by protest groups and populists from both left and right, how does this affect European democracy and the future of the European project?  

Ruby Gropas is Lecturer in International Relations at the Law Faculty of the Democritus University of Thrace, and Research Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) in Athens, Greece. She studied political science and international relations at ULB (Belgium), management at the State University of Maryland, and holds a PhD from Cambridge University.

Her main research interests lie in European integration and foreign policy, human rights, migration and multiculturalism. She has taught at the University of Athens and was Managing Editor of the Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies (2006-2009). She was Southeast Europe Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC (2007, 2009) and a Member of the Organizing Committee of the 3rd Global Forum on Migration and Development (2009). Ruby is Vice-President of the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation Scholars' Association and is currently working on an EU-funded research project on history, identities and modernity.

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David Pressman on the challenges of making "never again" a reality

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On March 1, the Program on Human rights welcomed David Pressman to the Stanford campus, where he spoke during the eighth installment of the Sanela Diana Jenkins Speaker Series. Pressman, the former Chief of Staff to the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, was recently appointed by Obama to serve as the first-ever Director for War Crimes and Atrocities on the National Security Council at the White House.

Drawing both from his experience as an advocate during the crisis in Darfur and from his current role as a government official, Pressman discussed the challenges of making the oft-quoted promise of  "never again" a reality. Pressman argued that the United States has begun to and must continue to adopt more proactive and preventative measures to respond to humanitarian crises as they happen.

Pressman discussed his efforts to create an established process to identify areas where diplomatic efforts of the United States could help prevent or mitigate atrocities. In such a system, the NSC would collect and compile data from NGO's and intelligence agencies to analyze indicators that could predict when and where mass atrocities are likeliest to occur. With this information, the United States could better allocate its resources and engage diplomatically with other states who may be better positioned or equipped to handle the mounting crises.

Speaking more broadly about the demands of his job, Pressman said that it is an extremely exciting time to be working in his position. He detailed the government's massive efforts to prevent the outbreak of violence in the wake of the recent referendum in Sudan, which he described as a marked shift in policy focus toward prevention from the typical reactive measures of the past. He described the recent referral of Muammi Qaddafi to the International Criminal Court as a "watershed moment" for the United States' relationship with the international community in terms of human rights enforcement.

Nevertheless, he mentioned the many areas around the world in which mass atrocities are widespread - Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya, and Burma, among others -  and emphasized the need for continued progress toward a world where "never again" is more than a catch slogan.

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