Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments

Justice Matters

On today’s episode of Justice Matters co-host Mathias Risse speaks with Ken Roth, former Executive Director of Human Rights Watch about his new book “Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments”.

Ken Roth was executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) from 1993 to 2022. In the three decades under his leadership, Human Rights Watch conducted investigations in over 100 countries to uncover abuses, and pressured offending governments to stop them. In his new book, Roth writes about grappling with the worst of humanity, taking on the biggest villains of our time, and persuading leaders from around the globe to stand up to their repressive counterparts. He is currently the Charles and Marie Robertson Visiting Professor at the Princeton School for Public and International Affairs.

In this episode they discuss: why he wrote “Righting Wrongs”, the nature of HRW’s investigations and a few case studies from his tenure, his own German Jewish family’s exodus from Germany during Nazi rule, his personal journey that lead him to the idea of human rights, his views on China in regards to human rights, what advice he has for new people entering the field, the online trolling of HRW for its reporting on human rights abuses by the Israeli Government, his views on anti-semitism and the lessons of the Holocaust, the differences between the Biden and Trump administration’s foreign policy, as well as his perspective on what constitutes genocide and the ongoing atrocities in Gaza.

Ken Roth's new book is availble here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/739898/righting-wrongs-by-kenneth-roth/