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Good evening. Welcome to the Human Rights Day lecture hosted by LSE's center for the Study of Human Rights and featuring Ken Roth, the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch. The lecture is an annual event at LSE and this year it marks the 59th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN General Assembly. I have just two brief pieces of information by way of introducing tonight's lecture. The first is about me. All appearance and accent. To the contrary, I sadly am not Connor Gerrity. My name is Dorothy Thomas and I am a visiting fellow at the center for the Study of Human Rights, which Connor Geraghty so ably directs. In fact, he so ably directs it that he managed to place himself in a comfortable chair in the audience and land me as chair up here without my ever fully realizing it until I found myself actually doing it. Any of you familiar with the center, with its academic programs and its public events, knows that Connor inspires and expects forthright and friendly engagement about key topics in human rights. An approach which I trust you will help me to emulate. The second is about tonight's distinguished speaker. When I started the Women's Rights Division at Human rights watch in 1990, Ken Roth was the organization's Deputy Director. He had previously served as a federal Prosecutor for the U.S. attorney's office in the Southern District of New York and for the Iran Contra investigation in Washington. In 1993, Ken became Human Rights Watch's executive director. In the 14 years since, he has transformed it from a relatively loose, if allied, collection of regional and thematic programs based in the United States into a unified and highly disciplined global organization with offices in many countries, including this one. Under his leadership, Human Rights Watch has come to be widely acknowledged, as has Ken himself, for a dedication to evenhandedness and accuracy, a highly strategic sensibility, and an unshakeable commitment to human rights. Ken will speak with us tonight about the state of human rights in the post 9, 11 and 77 political and legal environment, about key challenges faced by Human rights NGOs in the world today, and about the health of the human rights idea going forward. His 40 minute lecture will be followed by equal time for questions from all of you. I ask only two things of the audience. The first is that you join us for a reception after the event. The second is that you bear in mind that tonight's speaker used to be my boss. As much as I cherish my decade long tenure at Human Rights Watch, I doubt there are many greater pleasures in life than the prospect of one's former employer being questioned by an audience as informed and concerned about the state of human rights as is the one which typically attends the Center's events. I encourage you to rise to your usual standard of interrogatory excellence, and I do so in the full knowledge, gleaned over what is now a 17 year long acquaintance, that it is just such a free and impassioned engagement with human rights that tonight's speaker relishes and that he has done everything in his power to protect. Please join me in giving a warm welcome to the center for the Study of Human Rights 2007 Human Rights Day Speaker, Kenneth Roth.
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Well, see, what Dorothy doesn't say is that like the main questioner during all those years was her. And I remember many debates in my office with Dorothy saying, well, can't we say this or can't we take this approach? And certainly my approach to women's rights, but also my approach to a lot else is a product of those quite regular debates which I miss. I think I'm going to get in the same city again at some point.
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Amen to that.
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Yes. But I also wanted to say just how nice it is to be here. I want to thank Connor in particular, because I think the human rights movement, often it may seem in battle because we face so many enemies out there, and there's a tendency, I think, to sort of, you know, drop the gangplank and to sort of have this bunker mentality that we can't really question first principles because there's so many dictators out there that want to get us, you know. And Connor has really, I think, adopted the role of the insider critic, you know, the friendly critic, the person who does address the fundamental questions that we need to address in order to really maximize our strength. So, Connor, I want to thank you for that and I want to thank the center for having me here. And particularly to mark occasion, I was asked, as Dorothy mentioned, to talk about the challenges facing the human rights movement going forward. And I welcome that because in many ways I think the challenges are quite fundamental. Let me explain that because first, what is the human rights movement? And I'm going to define it a little bit narrowly here for these purposes because clearly there are many, many people out there, many organizations that speak in the name of human rights. Some people are litigators, some people are just political activists that invoke the human rights rhetoric. I'm going to talk about a fairly narrow subset of that universe, and that is international human rights organizations like Amnesty or Human Rights Watch that are engaged in a certain methodology. And here maybe it makes most sense to define this in distinction to what probably most people outside of this room, when they say, you know, I'm going to protect my rights, they think about going to court. You know, they think about hiring a lawyer and suing the bastards. And you know, you all are fortunate to be living in a country where usually, you know, you have a chance at least of the courts deciding your way. And there's, you know, there's a reasonable forum for that to happen. You know, similarly the United States, similarly a lot of Western democracies, the human rights movement, as has come to be sort of acquaint or attached to Amnesty, Human Rights Watch basically works in countries where that kind of litigation isn't possible because the courts have been shut down or the courts have been compromised or the courts have been intimidated. And if you think about it, it doesn't take a whole lot to make the courts effectively unavailable for human rights purposes because, you know, you shoot a few judges or you pay pay off a few people and you know, very quickly, and it's not like judges are the bravest people in the world. They will, you know, they start going with the government. And so, you know, a lot of the places where we work are countries where the court is not effectively an option. Now, I don't want to suggest by that that we ignore the western democracies because the other thing that we've learned, and I'll get to this a little bit later, is that the, you know, even in well established democracies, the courts tend to abdicate their responsibilities in certain areas. And so, you know, in the United States, for example, you know, even before 9 11, the courts basically stopped dealing with prison conditions. There's a provision in the US Constitution about cruel and unusual punishment, which used to regulate prison conditions and doesn't anymore. The courts just abdicate it or there are areas say, you know, the rights of immigrants, but immigrants are so unpopular that the courts tend to not, you know, provide a lot of redress there either. So there are areas even in well established democracies where this narrower type of human rights movement is needed. But I think the way to understand the human rights movement that I'm going to talk about tonight is as an alternative to litigation. And I recognize that litigating groups are part of the human rights movement, but that's something different. What the human rights movement, a la Amnesty or Human Rights Watch has done is to develop an alternative methodology for defending rights, one that doesn't depend on courts and if you think about it, it's not judges that ratify treaties to uphold rights, it's governments. And governments, last time I checked, have not only judges, but also an executive and a legislative branch. And so what the human rights movement has done is develop a way of putting pressure politically on the political branches of government to force them to live up to the responsibilities that they have, have accepted, but which obviously they don't always abide by. Now how do we do that? We really have a handful of quite basic tools. We shame governments by reporting on and exposing their abuses. And that shaming can be very powerful because it undermines a government's reputation, it challenges their legitimacy. No government wants their human rights crimes aired or taken out of the closet, so that reputational harm can be very powerful. Second, we work in the capitals of influential governments to get them to use their clout on behalf of the human rights movement against the target government. And there we basically look at the target government and say, well, you know, what does this dictator want? You know, he wants his next aid package, you know, we'll target that, he wants his next arms sale, we'll go after that. He wants to have his summit with the British Prime Minister, we'll try to restrict that until the dictator changes whatever the conduct is that we're trying to address. And so that kind of advocacy with influential governments or institutions like the UN or the World bank is a second way that we get things done. And then a third way which really focuses on the worst case scenarios, situations of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity. There we really have to play hardball, to use an American metaphor. And we will try to get people prosecuted before one of the international tribunals, or we will try to send in peacekeepers, or in worst case scenarios, we may even try to invade so called humanitarian intervention. So those require obviously different kinds of institutions to get things done. But those in essence are the non litigation tools of the human rights movement. And when you start talking about what are the challenges going forward, I think it's useful to think in terms of those tools, because each of those tools presupposes certain conditions which may or may not be there. And when I think about the threats to the movement, the challenges that we have to overcome, I, I actually look at the times in which those preconditions for these techniques to work are not there. And so what I'd like to do in my talk today is to outline what I see as some of the threats to these preconditions for our methodological tools to be effective and that's what I see as the challenges going forward. Let me, you know, to make this more concrete, let me talk about shaming. Now, shaming at a certain level seems, you know, simple, right? I mean, you expose something that somebody's embarrassed about and they're ashamed. It's not that simple though, because shame requires the exposure in front of an audience that disapproves of the conduct. If I say, you know, dictator, so and so did X, and everybody starts applauding, you know, no shame, right? And so one of the challenges we face is there's certain kinds of governmental practices that we would like to treat as human rights abuses we would like to shame governments about. But the risk is that the public is increasingly applauding. It's not viewing this in a disapproving fashion. And what I have in mind are two types of challenges here. One is the a series of security related issues which come up principally in situations of war or in situations of terrorism. And the second is what you might call problems of culture or religion. And let me address each of those in turn. First, with respect to war. Now, Human Rights Watch, one of the, I think, innovations of the organization is that we, I think, were the leaders in bringing the Geneva Conventions and what's known as international humanitarian law or the laws of war into the human rights movement. And traditionally, people thought of just, you know, international human rights law, which basically controls government repression in times of peace. They thought of that as the scope of the human rights movement. And Human Rights watch for about 25 years now has been also looking at the Geneva Conventions and has basically interpreted the right to life via the Geneva Conventions. Because what does the right to life mean when you're allowed to kill soldiers on the other side? Well, you'd need to look at the Geneva Conventions to define what kind of killing is legitimate and what not. The problem with the Geneva Conventions is that in many respects they are not intuitive. A lot of times you can hold up a violation of the Geneva Conventions and people applaud. And you know, what I have in mind here is, I mean, I'll give you an example. I was meeting just the other day with an Israel supporter and he was telling me, you know, that the Israelis, they really got to be squeezing those Palestinians in Gaza. You know, it's really, they got to hurt the civilians until they understand that they're on the wrong course. And it's just, you know, this is the only way to sort of change the situation. And I said to him, you know, well, don't you realize that, you know, one aspect of war is you can't squeeze the civilians. You can shoot at all the Palestinian militants you want, but you can't be, like, deliberately harming civilians. And his feeling was, why not? And this is just. It's an example where intuitions don't accord with what the law is or the flip side of this. I mean, I've had so many conversations with Palestinians or with others in the Arab world who say, go, those suicide bombers. We really got it. We're going to show the Israelis. We're going to, you know, send more of those Qassam rockets in and make the Israelis pay the price. Because, after all, it's a democracy. You know, they elected these people who are waging this war. And again, you say to them, well, you know, you can't do this. You know, basic rule of Geneva Conventions, you can't attack civilians. You can't indiscriminately fire towards civilians. And they kind of look at me like, well, why not? You know, and they'll even come up with rationalizations and say, well, you know, Israel's a very militarized society. Everybody serves in the army. Or, you know, or it's really the settlers that we're after, you know, whatever. But these are, again, not intuitions. And one of the real challenges is how do you make the requirements of humanitarian law more a matter of public morality so that when you expose these kinds of abuses, people frown rather than smile. And this particularly comes up on issues, say, of reprisal, where one of the favorite arguments you hear from abusive governments in times of. Or rebel forces, for that matter, is, well, the other side did this bad thing to us, so we're going to do it to them. And reprisals of that sort, you know, targeted against civilians, are flatly prohibited by humanitarian law. But, you know, very few people have embraced that as a part of their personal morality, you know, or they'll say, well, humanitarian law is really designed to help the powerful. You know, we don't have this big military, so we have to attack their civilians. It's the only thing we can do. Sort of an imbalance of power argument. You know, again, if the requirement of the Geneva Conventions was that you had to, you know, have an even, you know, an even playing field, that the two sides had to be equally matched, you would have no Geneva Conventions. And so, you know, there are a series of things like that. One of the real challenges we face is how do you get people to internalize this? And Human Rights Watch has been devoting a lot of attention to this. I mean, in part it's through just our day to day work because when we issue reports, say on Israeli bombing in southern Lebanon and describe in detail why what happened was a violation, why it amounted to indiscriminate warfare, just the process of doing that is an educational process. But we also have had to reach out to some non traditional allies, you could say. I mean, often our best allies are JAGs, the military lawyers who are versed in this stuff, who totally get it and who are great spokespeople on these kind of things. And we try to, you know, get them to speak out on these things. We've started a, with respect to sort of attacks on civilians, we've started what we call a civilians initiative where we've been meeting with civil society groups throughout the Middle east trying to get them to recognize what these principles are and to begin to speak out about them. And not necessarily starting with Israel, but getting, you know, getting civil society leaders or religious leaders in the Middle east to denounce attacks on civilians. And actually what's happened in Iraq has made that easier because suddenly the victims of suicide bombing are not just Israelis, but they're Iraqi Muslims. But there is a lot of educational work that needs to be done here. So that is one of the real challenges we face just in the area of warfare. Now it is that much more difficult when the war is the so called war on terrorism, because here people's intuitions just go out the window in human rights terms. And, you know, because people are scared, they're worried that, you know, they could be the next victim. There's this real tendency to ask governments to just protect us. And if that requires, you know, breaking a few heads, you know, so be it. And so, you know, people who are, you know, well versed in human rights law, who have kind of all the right instincts, normally those instincts begin to crumble when there is a serious security threat that is closer to home. And we have, you know, we found this really, you know, I suppose in the way we've, when we've started doing advocacy on counterterrorism issues. You know, so for example, if we, you know, talk about waterboarding. And I found that when I go into a government's government official's office and talk about, you know, this kind of technique is a violation of human rights, or it's a violation, a violation of humanitarian law, they kind of look at me with this blank stare and say, well, yes, but we're protecting Americans, we're protecting the British people, or what have You. And there's an odd irrelevance to the mere citation of international law. It doesn't convince anybody at this stage. And what I found we have had to do is to make much more pragmatic arguments time and time again and really argue consequentialism. Say that it's not only that this is wrong or illegal, but this is counterproductive, this practice. And that has required building up a whole different kind of expertise. So, for example, there is a paradigm that has informed the Bush administration's counterterrorism practice, which is that the most important thing in fighting terrorism happens in the interrogation room. And that is really the premise to almost everything that follows. You know, why do they have CIA secret detention facilities? Because the law they believe falsely is more, you know, is more permissive. If they held people overseas, you know, why do they have the military commissions to try people, well, to admit evidence from torture because they, you know, otherwise wouldn't be able to convict these people. You know, why do they have Guantanamo? Well, it's, you know, because sometimes even with the military commissions, they can't convict them after they tortured them, so they got to have someplace to warehouse them. I mean, everything sort of flows from that initial decision that the key thing is what happens in the interrogation room. And we've had to sort of become experts on what does it take to crack a secretive criminal conspiracy. And when you begin looking at this, and this is true not only for terrorism, but also for, you know, drug conspiracies and the Mafia and all this, experts will tell you that the interrogation room is about 15% of what matters. And that by far the biggest source of information to break these conspiracies comes from tips that are offered by the general public. You know, somebody sees something suspicious and they report it. And in fact, it's not just the general public, really. It's the public from the community that gave rise to the suspect, which, by the way, of course, is the community that most identifies with how that suspect is treated. And basically, every time you start squeezing the suspect using torture or somewhat lesser equivalents, you are turning off people in that community. You are making it less likely that they are going to want to be part of a dirty war and therefore less likely that they are going to offer assistance, that they are going to, you know, provide information to the police that they might see that would otherwise have been useful. And so you really are, you know, for this modest gain in the interrogation room, you are giving up the far more important source of information. You also, of course, are providing a boon to the terrorist recruiters. I mean, if you look at, you know, terrorist websites, you know, they. They love to talk about Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib or these things. You know, this is how they get people. And so there is, you know, once you start explaining this, they say, well, you know, the real picture here is not just, you know, what last drop of information can you squeeze from this suspect? But rather, you know, are you stopping more terrorists than you're creating? It changes the conversation. It makes these sort of hearts and minds issues more important, and it makes it possible for us to really transform the conversation. But that is, you know, very different from just citing a violation. And it requires a lot of educational work. First, ourselves to kind of know what we're talking about, but second, with the public, because a lot of these, you know, the way one can effectively combat a terrorist conspiracy is not intuitive because most people think the tougher the better, and it's hard to get past that. So again, in order to generate public morality that does frown on these practices, that doesn't applaud, there is a huge amount of educational work that needs to be done now. You know, I do think that we're making some progress on this. I mean, just as a brief aside, you know, if you look at sort of, I mean, the Bush administration has clearly been the leader in abusive counterterrorism policies, and it's been a real battle with a lot of back and forth, but we have made some progress in that. You know, the US Military, for example, has now basically pulled itself out of the coercive interrogation business. The issue now is really, what is the CIA going to do? And even the CIA today agrees that it can't torture and it can't use cruel and human degrading treatment. The issue is all one of definition. They've decided to define these terms as a shock, the conscience test, and which is a subjective test in their view. And if you're doing something as important as fighting terrorism, very little shocks the conscience, you know, so, I mean, that's the problem that we're dealing with there. But it still is, you know, it's a much smaller body that's doing this now rather than the entire US Military. We have basically closed the CIA secret detention facilities. They still are as a kind of a residual space, but for the most part, I'm not sure if this is progress, but for the most part, the CIA is now outsourcing its detention to Pakistan and Afghanistan. And that, of course, is a lot of what this Pakistani coup, the musharraf coup was about. It was about preserving the ability of the isi, the Pakistani intelligence agency, to be detaining terrorist suspects without interference by the court or lawyers we have with the military commissions. The original version was that there was going to be, you know, completely secret evidence and no access to an independent tribunal for appeal. We now have access to the evidence. There is an independent appeal, but we still have hearsay. And so you still have the ability of, you know, basically the interrogator's boss introducing evidence that happened in the interrogation room with no possibility of cross examination. And to make matters worse, it's still written into the law is that so long as the cruel and human degrading treatment happened before December 2005 and some military judge finds the evidence reliable, you can introduce coerced evidence into a trial and conceivably execute somebody on the basis of it. So there's, you know, still obviously a ways to go there. The U.S. supreme Court just today was hearing the habeas appeal, but I think that that's kind of going in the right direction. But probably the biggest challenge we face is Guantanamo. And there, you know, ironically, the biggest fear is that they're going to close Guantanamo but still insist on holding people without trial and ask for a preventive detention statute. And I realize, you know, here in Britain, when today is the day that the numbers just increased, you know, not quite double, but almost, you know, the US has avoided legalizing preventive detention by using various surrogates. It's used Guantanamo, it's used the concept of enemy combatant, it's used in immigration detention, it's used material witness statutes. But, you know, they so far have not asked for formal preventive detention law. And one of the things we fear is that the cost of closing Guantanamo will be that request. So we still have a ways to go. And we need to, in a sense, you know, work on the public instincts so that there is disapproval as these kinds of proposals come forward, as these kinds of debates proceed, so that we can embarrass the government as we expose and focus on these kinds of abuses. Now this is, you know, so far I've really been talking in the kind of the war terrorism realm, but I mentioned that the other area where it is sometimes difficult to shame is in the realm of culture and religion. And here you can imagine how the conversation goes. You know, we cite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and they cite God, you know, guess who wins? You know, so. And that is a real problem around a series of issues that mostly have to do with, with gender, with sex and with religion, gender, a whole range of gender equality issues, sex particularly issues of sexual freedom, adultery, obviously sexual orientation and religion, the right to proselytize, the right to convert, these are all deeply contested with people citing their religious or their cultural tradition to say that, you know, you may expose a practice, but they say, yes, that's what we want. You know, this is what our culture demands, this is what our religion demands. And so that has been a real challenge, particularly for, you know, a group that is, we may be an international organization, but nobody's going to claim that we are, you know, based in the developing world, that we, you know, share the culture or share the religion that is giving rise to these practices. And so one of the real challenges there is, you know, how do you use shame? And we've had to really modify our methodology considerably, doing much more work, first of all through local voices rather than our own, but also really highlighting situations in which the plight of the victim is most sympathetic. Because the aim is to transform the conversation from, you know, Western imposed international standards to indigenous cultural or religious standards, and rather to transform this into, you know, one group of people in this country wanting to do a certain thing and the government preventing them and turning it really into a matter of personal freedom within that society, which can only be done by speaking as much as possible through the voice of the victims or their immediate surrogates. And this is something that we've actually had quite a bit of success doing. I mean, even I remember, you know, sort of going into Egypt on a gay and lesbian rights issue. And the first time we tried this using traditional techniques, even our allies in Egypt, like local human rights groups were looking at us and saying, why are you touching this? You know, this is not a human rights violation, this is immoral conduct. And it took us kind of changing our methodology and first of all highlighting in this case gays who were being tortured and linking tortured gays to torture of Islamists and torturer secular oppositionists and putting it really in a context in which people were most able to identify with the plight of the victims. For suddenly Egyptian groups to be willing to come forward and sit with us at the press conference and talk about this as a human rights violation. And very effectively, because on the day, that day was the end of this particular practice that we had documented in the report, it just stopped. And so even on something as sensitive as gay rights, it is possible to make progress in a very conservative society if you sort of have the right methodology. But it is a matter of, in a sense, finding a way to describe issues that are most likely to generate shame rather than to generate applause. Now, I've been talking so much, really mainly about shaming. Let me if I could talk about the second tool that I described, which is the effort to go to influential governments to get them to use their clout. And here it's a different problem. There are many governments today, including the entire European Union, that says that it is dedicated to promoting human rights as part of its foreign policy or external policy. The fact remains that for better or worse, the US Government has been the most out front on these kinds of issues. Utterly inconsistent, sometimes backing up awful governments, but it has often been the most vigorous. And that has been a problem since Bush, because Bush's way of fighting terrorism has utterly discredited US foreign policy. And so, you know, the United States cannot, with a straight face, promote a whole range of issues. Now, you know, they can still combat, you know, crimes against humanity in Darfur because the US is not currently, you know, massively murdering people on an ethnic basis. You know, they can, you know, they can, you know, have sway in a place like Colombia or Pakistan because they're a major funder. And, you know, nobody argues that much with their funder if the funder insists. But if it comes to just sort of, you know, pushing for protection for, say, the right against torture or the right against being disappeared or the right against arbitrary detention, you know, what's the US Going to do? And so, you know, what you find is, I'll give you another Egypt example. I was meeting with the Egyptian Prime Minister just after there had been a bombing in the Sinai and they had just rounded up all the usual suspects and were torturing them. And we got word that they were torturing them. And I went in and I said, you know, Mr. Prime Minister, can you stop this? You're torturing these people. And the guy didn't skip a beat. He said, well, that's what Bush does, you know, and so now that's a cheap excuse. It doesn't justify anything. But it makes it that much easier for a government to deflect the kind of pressure, the external pressure from a third party government that we ordinarily would be able to amount. And to make matters worse, I then went over and met with the US ambassador and kind of looked at him and said, are you able to bring these issues up? And of course, he sort of sheepishly had to admit that, of course not. How can a US Ambassador with a straight face go in and Protest, torture today, you know, it's just not going to happen. And so, you know, what you have is, you know, the most powerful example setting a negative example and the most powerful voice silenced. You know, not a good situation for our efforts to enlist the clout of powerful governments. And so, you know, what we've had to do is to, you know, begin to look around the world and say, well, who else can fill this void? And, you know, two governments that are volunteering arms raised are China and Russia. Now, you know, Russia's pretty hopeless at this stage. I mean, Russia seems to be defining itself as, you know, anything that is the opposite of what the US Wants. China is not quite as hopeless. I mean, actually on Darfur and on Burma, have been able to sort of get a modest degree of cooperation from the Chinese government. But, you know, you don't want to base a human rights program on these two governments. And so, you know, we've had to kind of look around the world and say, you know, who else can do this? And so you look, you know, I mean, in sort of the south, there are a series of new democracies, particularly in Latin America, There are some governments that are playing a very interesting role. You know, Mexico, Argentina, Chile. Very constructive in many circumstances. But, you know, for every one of those you can cite, you find a, you know, an India or a South Africa that is still extremely reluctant to promote human rights in their international relations. And so, you know, this kind of new segment of developing world democracies is really not one that, again, we can yet reliably look to. And, you know, there are miscellaneous others. There's, you know, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. But, you know, very quickly you get to the eu, and the EU is really the obvious alternative voice, which should have huge clout, I mean, much bigger than the United States, dedicated by law and policy to promoting human rights. Long tradition domestically of respect for human rights, and it is punching way below its weight, because I could go on for a long time here, but because, in brief, two things I'll highlight. One, it decides everything by consensus, which means the lowest common denominator. Now, on the accession process, wanting to join the eu, this veto process actually was very powerful because if Bulgaria wants to get in, it has to convince everybody in the EU that it has lived up to the Copenhagen criteria and is respecting human rights. And that's a tough thing to do. And so Bulgaria gets its act together. You know, you've seen the effect of this in Turkey, where at least while the session looked like it was a possibility, Turkey was radically transforming. It was all very positive. But when it comes to the EU projecting its influence outside of its immediate accession sphere, the veto works in the opposite direction, because it means that if anybody has a reason not to push hard on human rights, the EU as a whole doesn't push hard. And this can be, you know, I mean, it can be anything. It can be, you know, the French trying to get a, you know, a contract for the nuclear reactors. It can be Germany trying to not upset the Russians too much on access to gas. I mean, but whatever the parochial interest is, that becomes the EU policy. So, you know, it's being led by the most reluctant member, which, needless to say, is not a great way to run a business. Then, to make matters worse, the EU has this lovely tradition of rotating presidents that, that you all know about. And so every six months, you get a whole new foreign ministry that shows up to lead the eu, and they spend the first three months figuring out where is Darfur and who are the players and who are we supposed to be talking to. And finally, at the end, they'll hold a summit or something, and then they'll hand it off to the next one. And we see this right now, Portugal, who is. Their big claim to fame was to have this EU African summit. And they were so intent on having the summit that, you know, they invited everybody. You know, they could, you know, rather than get into a whole thing about having Robert Mugabe come to this thing, they just, you know, fine, bring him. Because we want our summit because this is our big prestige item, you know, and it's, again, you get no continuity, you get no expertise. And these, you know, I mean, these sound kind of bureaucratic, but these are huge issues in terms of effectiveness. And so, you know, we have a challenge now in terms of replacing the United States. It may not be a permanent challenge because, you know, a new administration will be there in a year, and maybe it will be an administration that can redeem America's reputation on human rights, but maybe not. And in any event, the world is much more multipolar, and it's way past the time when the US alone is going to carry the weight. So we need, you know, an effective eu, and we need a much more effective set of southern democracies so that everything doesn't become a North south issue. Now, the one other issue that I wanted to mention with respect to enlisting influential governments has to do with the question of economic growth. And here maybe I can sum this up by citing Singapore and China, you know, Singapore as a model of a government that has achieved economic growth without allowing civil and political rights. And China is sort of the new model in that respect, but a very, very rich one that everybody wants to be nice to hear. The challenge is that because this, you know, this process to economic development exists, it makes it very easy for Western governments to be complacent and to say, well, we'll just trade with them and then things will get better. You know, we don't have to push too hard on human rights. And it makes it tempting for developing governments to look at this as an alternative model to say, well, we don't really need to respect human rights because we, we can just be like China. We can get rich repressively. And so one of the challenges here is how do we combat this paradigm? And there are several ways to do it, but this is, again, it's a very difficult process because here it's a matter of really affecting not just public morality, but really governmental morality and the common wisdom that guides governments. One way is to sort of, maybe you can sum it up by contrasting Lee Kuan Yew with Mobutu. In other words, for every wise, thoughtful, enlightened leader, likely Kuan Yew, bastard as he is, there is a Mobutu who is a kleptomaniac who stashed away his country's riches and Geneva's bank accounts and utterly destroyed this huge nation. And how do you know which one you get? You don't, you know. Well, what's the best way to make sure that your leader is morally Kwanyewish than Mobutuish? It's by having, you know, accountability, by having a free press, by having civil society organizations, by having ways of sort of constraining the leader to kind of push them in the more responsible direction. Now, that still leaves China, which is a, you know, is a real difficulty. And I don't know that I've got the answer here other than to say that China is still very much a work in progress. And one of the big questions is whether the, you know, the tens of thousands of incidents of public unrest each year that result because corrupt local officials are stealing land to sell to developers or polluting the local stream, or are, you know, detaining people to extort money. Is this kind of localized corruption going to lead to a bigger explosion, which is clearly what Beijing is terrified about. And our answer to Beijing is, you know, again, the answer to the way to avoid this becoming a huge problem is to allow the people who are most affected by these corrupt practices to have A say in ending them, to let them go to court, to let them speak about it in the press, to let them have civil society organizations. And for a while Beijing was moving in that direction. But then they got scared and they've been cutting back for the last two and a half years. But you know, it's China right now is a very strong negative model for us and one that we have to figure out how to deal with. The last thing that I want to say on this score has to do with the importance of economic rights in this analysis because for me economic rights means for these purposes two things. I mean, one, it means you've got to focus on the worst off individuals, that it's not enough just to expand the pie. You've got to ask what does that biggest of piece mean for the impoverished sectors of society. And second, it's a way of constraining governments of forcing them to use available resources to progressively realize rights, you know, putting in simple English to conscientiously do what they can to improve the lot of the worst off members of their society. And this again is a, is a constraint on the sort of just, you know, let them be China approach to promoting human rights because the, it does require looking at good governance. It requires making sure the governments are responsive to the needs of their people. It requires people who are less well off that they have a say in getting their views heard. And so I think that there's a real role in giving economic rights some bite and having that be used in this process of steering governments to sort of address more critically the China or the Singapore model. Now finally, let me address kind of the, what we do in the worst case scenarios of, you know, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the like. And here as I mentioned, you know, the two principal tools are either prosecution or the deployment of forces in some form. The, you know, the prospect of prosecution is obviously very powerful because, you know, shaming hurts the government's reputation. Dealing with powerful third party governments may affect their wallet, but justice affects their liberty. And this is something that, you know, tyrants pay attention to. We are at an interesting moment in that suddenly international justice is becoming a little bit more normal. It was, you know, at best episodic until now, but it's becoming a bit more entrenched. The International Criminal Court is finally going to have its first trial in March. The other ad hoc tribunals have kind of moved through and to a large degree have succeeded in dealing with the genocide air in Rwanda and Bosnia. But we are as a result of this, as A result of justice being much more of a threat. We are beginning to encounter a backlash. And this backlash comes in the form of people saying, this quest for justice is getting in the way of what's really important. You know, what's really important is getting that dictator to leave. And if he's worried about being prosecuted, he's not going to leave. Or what's really important is getting this war to end. And if the warring factions think they're going to be prosecuted, they're going to just keep fighting. And this is, you know, it's an important argument because, you know, obviously our goal is to save lives. And if people say, well, you know, sorry that people died yesterday, but, you know, we want to save lives tomorrow, and so let's not do anything to jeopardize this peace process or jeopardize this transition away from a dictatorship. And that is a challenge that has been a perennial challenge, but is one that has become much more acute recently, I think, because justice is becoming a more real threat. We're seeing this today in northern Uganda with the Lord's Resistance Army. We're seeing it in Darfur as an excuse not to let in the peacekeepers, because the ICC is there. And I think there's a lot of work to be done in order to convince governments and the public of the importance of justice. The importance of justice not just as doing the right thing for the victims, but the importance of justice in much more pragmatic, deterrent oriented terms. And here, I mean, there are kind of a number of ways of going about this, but one is to stress that this argument is really about war, in my view, not so much about dictatorships, because if you think about dictatorships, I've never found a dictator who gives up power prematurely. You know, dictatorship almost by their nature, cling to power until the last possible second, at which point they have no real power to insist on an amnesty. And so this whole, you know, amnesty versus perpetuating the dictatorship is a false argument. I view with respect to dictatorships. Where it has more truth, though, is in the area of war, because people don't just fight to the death, they fight to sort of exhaustion, and at some point they're willing to stop. And so if, you know, if in fact the threat of justice perpetuates the war, that's something to be worried about. But I think that we need to sort of look at this a little bit more carefully because our experience has been that justice and peace really are not necessarily incompatible if the justice is done smartly. I Mean, first of all, there have been cases in which people have been indicted and nonetheless have signed peace agreements or they've at least been under investigation by an international tribunal and still have gone forward with a peace agreement. I mean, I think about, you know, Milosevic in Dayton, who signed the Dayton Accord and, you know, was prosecuted a short time later. You know, he knew he was subject to prosecution, never insisted on an amnesty, or Charles Taylor, who was actually indicted by the special court for Sierra Leone, but nonetheless agreed to the peace plan in Liberia. So, you know, there are precedents there which show that there's not this necessary incompatibility. And at the same time, there are positive examples where justice actually contributed to marginalizing the people that you want to, you know, stop the fighting. So, you know, the fact that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia existed meant that the sort of the extremists in Bosnia suddenly had to hide. You know, they were all worried about, you know, if their profile was too high, that they would get on the radar screen of the prosecutor in the Hague and might get indicted. Once the Lord's Resistance army in Uganda was indicted, suddenly they were, you know, they went from being God to being, you know, an indicted suspect and kind of were chased off to this game park in eastern Congo where they've been hiding out and fighting with each other these days. So, you know, there. There is some positive effect of justice in terms of delegitimizing warring factions. But the, you know, the issue still comes up, you know, is justice, you know, enough of a deterrent because it still is fairly irregular. And here I think, you know, the situation is evolving. You know, you can cite examples where people, you know, even though they were facing the prospect of indictment, would continue to commit atrocities. And then you can cite other examples like eastern Congo today, where we hear back from the warlords that they're terrified that they're going to be the next Lubanga sitting in the Hague. So I think we're moving in the direction that at least some deterrence is possible. And frankly, even if you kind of deter an occasional genocide, that's still pretty good. So, I mean, I think we're moving in the right direction here, but this is far from an area where there is really considered judgment, where the pursuit of justice is secure. We're even further from that with respect to the prospect of humanitarian intervention. And here, this is perhaps the biggest casualty of Iraq. I mean, awful as Iraq is, I think one way to understand Darfur is as one of the casualties of the Iraq invasion Because, you know, not only did the British and the Americans have no troops left after Iraq and at least Afghanistan, but, you know, Khartoum was able to portray the prospect of any kind of non consensual intervention as, you know, more of this war on Islam. And it was a, you know, we have really, we have I think, lost for a period of time the ability to credibly threaten humanitarian intervention. The whole concept of, you know, responsibility to protect, which is, you know, was just endorsed two years ago and which means a lot of things, but at least means being able to go in and stop the genocide is very much in jeopardy in reality right now because, you know, nobody's willing to do what Bush just did. And a lot of this is, you know, it's Bush's fault not only for invading Iraq, but for also after the fact that trying to justify this as a humanitarian intervention when in fact it was nothing of the sort. But that said, he did that and we're sort of stuck with that mischaracterization. So Human Rights Watch is maybe unusual among human rights groups in that we are not a pacifist organization. We are willing to press for military intervention in cases of genocide or comparable atrocities. But this is a tool that it is much more difficult to do because of what Bush has done to this kind of concept over the last two years. And so the ability to redeem humanitarian intervention is at least a last ditch opportunity in the case of ongoing or imminent mass slaughter, is something that is a real challenge before us looking forward. So anyway, I've reached my time, as Dorothy stirring over there suggests. So let me just say that I think that the human rights movement has made huge strides in its relatively short existence today. Human rights are a key way in which governments legitimize themselves. It's a key way in which political movements around the world articulate their aims. It is reflected in a broad, diverse, vigorous movement in many, many countries. But it is also a movement that is young and fragile and that is built on certain premises, certain conditions that are not necessarily the given reality. So I think the real challenges for us are not simply fighting the dictators and fighting the next rebel group or the next, you know, person responsible for atrocities, but it's also maintaining the conditions in which our methodology will be effective. So I thank you very much forcing me to think through all this. And this is an area where we clearly need a lot of intellectual engagement and I welcome your participation in it. So thank you.
- [49:41]
A
Thank you, Ken. So Ken's going to now take questions. I think what we'll do is take three to four questions at a time. I only ask that you give your name and affiliation if you have one. Try to keep your question brief and please wait for the roving microphone before you start to speak. They're both upstairs and down here, so I hope that will work as a process. And we'll leave Ken, a little bit time at the end for final remarks before we close. So we're open for questions.
- [50:21]
C
Yes.
- [50:21]
A
This gentleman up here in the middle, this gentleman back here at the very back, and this gentleman here on the wall.
- [50:31]
B
You confused everyone.
- [50:32]
A
Did this gentleman here? Yeah.
- [50:36]
B
Hi, I'm a postgraduate student at LSE and my question is about Burma. Considering the economic blockade is not complete, should free trade with Burma or increased trade with Burma similar to China, offer any sort of hope?
- [50:52]
A
Okay, next here in the back.
- [50:58]
D
I'm.
- [50:58]
E
A human rights student. My question is regarding the third methodology which the human rights organizations are using. That the legitimizing the humanitarian intervention, that means we are giving right to intervene to the powerful countries and even not criticizing those countries in the cases of the non armed conflict, like the missile attack in Yemen or the trial of the Bosnians in American court. So in this evolving methodology, when we are holding the governments and the international organizations accountable, do we have a mechanisms for human rights as organizations accountable to our constituents, where Human Rights Watch have no any mechanism for accountability.
- [51:51]
A
Over here against the wall. And I think we'll take one more. If someone wants to raise their hand, just go right there. Don't forget, I'm sorry to say, your name and your affiliation, please.
- [52:07]
F
In what cases, what can you quantify how a lack of resources have affected what you have been able to do, what areas of the world, what conflicts you would have brought up, brought to the fore if you had had more resources? The other key criticisms that you heard, not something I agree with. There's always constant criticism that Human Rights Watch is not impartial, that it only chooses to highlight certain cases and take particular sides. For instance, you've heard it's always talked about with regard to the Israel situation as one example, but there are constant other ones. How do you rebut these? And linking with this earlier question, do you feel about China and Burma that the only real way of getting anywhere with the situation in Burma is to target China in such a way as perhaps to wreck the Olympics as a public spectacle by pressuring governments to say that they would ensure that closing opening ceremonies and all manner of things would be done so as to humiliate China, do you feel this is an effective way? Perhaps.
- [53:34]
A
Okay, I'm going to change my thought about taking the fourth question. We'll give a chance to Ken to answer those three and then we'll come right back to you. Just quick rephrase. Looking at Burma, should trade offer hope? Is targeting China on option question of risk of legitimizing humanitarian intervention and also question about how the NGOs like human rights Watch itself, deal with issues of their own accountability. And a question about how the lack of resources affects your work and how you deal with questions about Human Rights Watch's impartiality.
- [54:06]
B
All right. On Burma, I mean, is increased trade the hope? No, because the government controls such a large segment of the economy, that matters. I mean, if you look at the sale of gas or the sale of gems, two of the major export sources for Burma, this is all government money. So I don't, I think further trade in this case will actually entrench the Burmese military. So no, I think what they need is pressure, not more trade. Should the pressure come via China? China, yes. China is a key part of this. On the Olympics, I mean, we have deliberately not advocated boycotting the Olympics because I think that would just backfire. The Olympics are very popular in China and so ultimately you need a tool that will work with the Chinese people. But the Olympics are completely fair game for China. Tarnish. And that we've been trying to do most effectively with Darfur. But the one interesting little, you know, factoid on Burma is that the Burmese democracy movement is generally attributed to have started on August 8, 1988. 8, 8, 8. Which was an auspicious number. The Burmese are very into this numerology. The Chinese Olympics, for similar reasons, are starting on 8-808-early 20 years later. And so inevitably they are going to be linked to the way in which China treats Burma. And that I think gives us a real hook to insist on more pressure. Will urging humanitarian intervention legitimize the military, the use of military by the powerful? And how do we promote accountability there? Well, I mean, I guess I start from the premise that there are certain atrocities that are just so awful that we do have to continents military action. You know, I think that I wouldn't do this just for a dictatorship. And we openly opposed justifying the invasion of Iraq as a humanitarian intervention in 2003 because there just was not massive murder taking place then. I mean, if it was back in 1988 in the middle of the Anfel genocide, I would have said go for it. But in 2003. No. So there are times when I think, you know, much as I hate to advocate war, sometimes war is the last lesser evil. And then the question is, well, how do you get legitimate war? Ideally, you have the Security Council act, but that means then the only people who get to be saved are the people who don't have China or Russia or the U.S. or France or the U.K. protecting them, because the veto makes it impossible for the Security Council to act in many of these situations. And so you either sort of stand back on that legalism and say, well, I'm sorry, then it's illegitimate and which we can't do anything to help you, or do you accept an imperfect world and we tend to opt for the imperfect world we send. You know, we say we want Security Council approval ideally, but failing that, we want anybody who's willing to act to stop the genocide. And we then try, you know, how do we prevent that from being pretextual, really, just through our voice? I mean, I think we have a special responsibility then that when, you know, Bush or his ilk try to justify military action for other means or other purposes by citing it as humanitarian intervention, we need to contradict. And so even though Human Rights Watch is ordinarily completely neutral on the question of whether you go to war, we look at only how the war is fought. The one exception we make to that is when governments try to pretend that a war is a humanitarian intervention when it isn't. And that's what we said quite explicitly on the Iraq war, on partiality. The, you know, there. I mean, I think all I can say is look at our website. I mean, it's, you know, it's all there. And in any conflict, we work intensively on the worst abuses by each side. As a matter of principle. In any armed conflict, we always report on both sides as a way of highlighting our impartiality. And, you know, and I think the recent example of this, we did, you know, the Israel Hezbollah conflict, we, you know, one week did a massive report in Beirut, launched in Beirut or try to launch in Beirut has Bola stopped or pressed press conference. But on Hezbollah is rocketing into Israel. And then the next day, the next week, I went to Jerusalem and did a massive report on Israel's bombing in southern Lebanon. And this is just kind of routine. This is what we do in conflicts around the world. So, you know, I mean, sort of judge for yourself. But I think if you look at our website, you'll see that we're pretty careful about this and lack of resources. You Know, God, I mean, you know, where do you want me to start? You know, I mean, we're. Right now, you know, the, the three things we're trying to sort of raise money for. One is to sort of fill certain gaps in our coverage. So the fact that we have nobody signed full time to Sri Lanka, even though there's an awful war that has revived there, or, you know, the fact that we have nobody on Bangladesh, even though there's martial law that's been declared. These are, you know, big gaps. We're also trying to, you know, I mean, I mentioned we have somebody in Tokyo. We just put somebody in Tokyo to try to enlist the Japanese government, but we have no money to support her. We're just kind of, you know, straight stringing her along and trying to raise the money. We're trying to raise money to put somebody in Delhi who would influence Indian foreign policy. There's so much more we can be doing in these areas so that we are not so dependent on the US and the eu. So these are the places where we're kind of concentrating our fundraising efforts these days.
- [59:10]
A
So next round of questions, we'll take first you. But don't ask. Oh, yeah, let me just identify a couple others so that the stewards can pay attention. This woman back up here in the back and this gentleman here in the front. I see you all in the middle there. I'll try to make my way to you next round.
- [59:29]
C
Hi, I'm Carly Newman from UCL Postgraduate. I work in computer science. And so from a computer science perspective, at the moment, software is highly in high demand and the amount of people, software engineers creating such products are very low on the ground. So there is a potential problem for an increase in like an industrial sort of approach to software and by decentralizing the methods in which you would create this software. So my question really is what is being done to prevent an infrastructure industrialization? So violations of labor rights and human rights in industrializing countries, which would be cheaper labor in this domain.
- [60:28]
A
Did you want to ask your question up there?
- [60:30]
D
Yes, I'm a postgraduate student at SOAS and I'm interested in what you said earlier concerning justice and peace not necessarily being incompatible if justice is done smartly. If you can shed some light to how justice can be done smartly, particularly in Darfur, when I think just a few days ago, Human Rights Watch issued a press release calling on the Security Council to urge the Sudanese government to cooperate in terms of the arresting and surrendering to the icc. The two suspects were named in committing war crimes tribunals. And as you know, as you mentioned, the complex issues that the government is in serious negotiations over the hybrid force, the UN AU force, and they said that if the ICC thing is on, this is out of the window. And also the political negotiations which are not proceeding very well with the rebels, they kind of also are stalling because of this issue of the, among other things, the icc. So my question is at this stage, which is more important to the Darfurian IDPs and refugees? Is it justice or peace? And how do you be smart? Smart about having justice.
- [61:58]
A
I think there. Yes, you.
- [62:00]
B
I'm Ben Grant from BPP College. Can we have any hope that the.
- [62:06]
G
US Administration that openly advocated waterboarding and other forms of cruel treatment, certainly in the last few years, can we have.
- [62:14]
B
Any hope that they may be prosecuted.
- [62:16]
G
Through the US Courts under US Law? Perhaps not now, but perhaps under a future administration?
- [62:24]
A
I think we'll take one more question. Yes, just here in the front.
- [62:36]
G
I'm Sam Coates. I'm on the Conservative Party's Human Rights Commission. You spent a lot of your speech talking about America and criticizing some of the human rights abuses in America. The Western media spent a lot of their time talking about, about American human rights species as well. And it's kind of in disproportion to the human rights species in lots of other countries. I've just come back from Burma where America's problems really do kind of pale in significance compared to some things, the Burmese regime. Do you think this kind of focus kind of does contribute to anti Americanism and do you think that's a bad thing? I agree that you have to hold America to a higher bar. And I think we worry that America needs the moral responsibility to do good in the world. But it does seem to kind of go too far the other way and actually cause anti Americanism.
- [63:24]
A
So just to give a brief review, there's a concern here about an industrialized approach to software and whether anything might be done using labor rights or human rights to prevent that problem. A question from upstairs about the exact balance between, between justice and peace in the current situation with respect to Darfur, any hope that the United States might be prosecuted for its conduct and the risk of disproportionate attention to America contributing to anti Americanism in the world.
- [63:55]
B
All right. Well, on industrialization, which I mean, I think your question is really about outsourcing, you know, in others is where, I mean, at least usually where there's question comes up. It's not just that it's kind of more of an industrialized process, but rather that there are Indian computer software developers in wherever as opposed to here or someplace else in the West. And I don't think outsourcing in and of itself is a human rights abuse. Human Rights Watch does not oppose the fact that jobs shift from one country to another. The issue is, are the conditions in the country respectful of labor rights? And so I think if you have that level playing field, I mean, if you insist on the right to form a labor union, the right not to have child labor, not to have forced labor, not to have discrimination, not to have arbitrary violence in the workplace, the basic rights, if you have those, and nonetheless the job migrates someplace else, c' est la vie. But I think our job is to insist on those basically bright standards. That's our approach to this kind of outsourcing, but not to oppose the outsourcing itself in terms of sequencing of justice. I mean, first of all, let me just. I think one example would be what happened with Charles Taylor, where he was indicted, but we didn't insist that he be arrested right away. We were willing to say, okay, get him out of Liberia. First and foremost. You know, Obasanjo took him into Nigeria, and no one objected. In fact, they applauded Obasanjo at that stage for kind of getting this tyrant out and letting the war wind down. Then the question is, well, how long does he sit in Nigeria? You know, Obasanjo, who was not eager to establish a precedent of African leaders being prosecuted, was his vision was forever. And our vision was, you know, not very long. And we ended up compromising in two years, years. But that was a sequencing issue. And I think there's no problem with sequencing. Nobody insists on arrest and prosecution at a given moment. But the key is not to have formal amnesty, but to leave open that possibility of prosecution when political conditions permit. In the case of Darfur, I'm not at all convinced that, first of all, I know Khartoum sometimes talks about this being the issue with a hybrid frame force, but it actually isn't. I mean, at this point, the arguments are really about how non African is the force going to be, where are the helicopters going to come from that the force needs? I mean, it's a different debate right now. I think Khartoum has gotten past the point where they feel that the members of the hybrid force are going to be kind of a roving arrest squad going after ICC suspects. The flip side of that is that because there's been no progress yet either. And I should say no progress until this week. Because this week the assembly of state parties were meeting in New York and they. Two interesting things happened there. I mean, one is that many governments, including African governments, started criticizing the lack of cooperation with the icc, not necessarily naming Sudan like the Western countries named Sudan. The African countries didn't, but everybody knew that this was what it was about. And so you get this sudden great increase in pressure on Sudan to cooperate. And the other interesting thing is that Luis Moreno Ocampo, the chief prosecutor, announced that he is going to go after two. He's going to open two investigations on attacks on peacekeepers and attacks on humanitarian workers. Obviously very conscious of the deterrent effect of an investigation to try to protect. What is really the issue today. And the way he described it is stage one massive displacement, that's pretty much over with stage two to attacks on the displaced people themselves in their camps. And he, you know, I think to his credit is now pushing on this latter thing and trying to use justice as a protection tool. So that was, I thought, you know, a very good development and one that shows that justice and immediate safety concerns can be, you know, quite self reinforcing. Do we want Rumsfeld and company prosecuted? Absolutely. Is it going to happen? You know, I wouldn't hold your breath. I mean, I think that the, you know, I think that the most, the most that we can hope for initially would be serious hearings, you know, sort of a truth commission model. I think that if we push at the outset for prosecution, you know, even assuming it's a Democratic administration that comes in, they're not going to want to go here. This is going to be seen as vindictive and opening up difficult moments and all. And I mean the Democratic Congress has been so cowardly even to address interrogation practices now when they could having hearings and the like, they just don't do. I'm not at all confident that they would be tougher. But I think what we can push for is hearings, full exposure and then let's see where it lies. That may change the political terms enough that we can begin to talk about prosecutions. But at this stage, even though Human Rights Watch has called for prosecutions, I just don't see the politics there. It's not going to happen just yet. And finally, is the focus on US abuse disproportionate? I mean, I don't pretend that the US is the worst human rights abuser in the world. I do think it's the most influential one. And I think that justifies so, you know, we're not doing this instead of Burma or instead of Darfur, we're doing both. But I think it's important that we focus on US abusive counterterrorism practices because it is such an important precedent setter. And as I described with the Egyptian example, governments are copying this left and right. And so if we don't deal with this, we are. It's not like an ordinary government where they do something wrong and you can say that's a violation of human rights, but the standards stay intact. When the US does it, it degrades the standards. And so we need to address this in order to kind of redeem or rehabilitate these standards.
- [69:52]
A
Next round. Oh my gosh, you all were supposed to get in sooner, not like accumulate yourselves. At the end, we'll go with this woman in the back who's held up her hands, I think, several times. Leslie here, this gentleman on the end there, and that woman right here in the front. I hope you guys can keep track of yourselves. I'm counting on the steward. And if you speak quickly and come to the point, we might be able to get a few more folks in. So with that.
- [70:29]
H
I'm wondering, my name is Ghazal Vegeti and I'm a postgraduate student at sos.
- [70:33]
B
What is Human Rights Watches public advocacy.
- [70:36]
H
Strategy for shaming the US Government in.
- [70:39]
B
The eyes of the US public for.
- [70:40]
H
Its abuses during the war on terror? And how effective has this strategy been? Hi, Leslie Vinjamori Soaz, I'm really curious about your comments concerning sequencing for two reasons. One is it seems to me like it's a shift in thinking on the part of the advocacy community with respect to questions of judicial intervention and ongoing conflict, and especially of Human Rights Watch, I might well be wrong about this. But first of all, is it a shift from your thinking around the sort of 1993 period, the creation of the ICTY, until now? And secondly, I'm wondering if you could compare two cases for me and say more about how it is that Human Rights Watch has consistent constructed, or what exactly the sequencing argument is. So if you compare Charles Taylor and Liberia and the question of when you push for indictment and what the policy is on arrest or what you're willing to concede, and how that has, how that links up to the course of the war, the threat that you thought it may or may not have created, and if you compare that to Uganda and the strategy that Human Rights Watch has proceeded in Uganda with respect to pressing for indictments and what is sort of the status of pushing for arrests, what is the sequencing argument.
- [72:00]
A
Just.
- [72:00]
H
Could you sort of elaborate that a little bit more?
- [72:07]
B
My name's Bruce Walter, and unfortunately I'm not a student. I'm a taxpayer in two countries and I'm part of the HRW London network. My question might be a little easier. Not asking you. I'm not asking you who you'd vote for, but I'd like you to comment on who you feel can support HRW's agenda. The best from the Democratic side and the Republican side. And why.
- [72:35]
A
But that's an easy question. I love this crowd. You know what I mean? I mean, the idea of what's easy is totally relative, I must say.
- [72:44]
B
Thank you.
- [72:44]
C
Laura Niada from the University of Westminster. I have two questions for you. First, one, about what is your relationship with other international human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International, for instance? Is there collaboration? Do you share information? Do you have the same approach or any other difference? Second, questions, if you. It's more practical. Do you have access to all countries and within countries? Can you investigate freely? And what are the main. I mean, there must be some constraints. So basically it's a bit of provocation. How reliable are your investigation? I'm thinking about the Israel and Palestine conflict. And can you also.
- [73:32]
A
I think I'll try to fit in one more question from somewhere in the middle here because you all seem to be getting left out. This woman here in the blue shirt in the middle, if you can quickly pass the microphone. I know I made that difficult. I should have thought that through. But while you're warming up. Monal, Wait.
- [73:50]
B
Go ahead. Rebecca Tinsley. I was an LSE student 30 years ago. In terms of sheer numbers of massive human rights violations, the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, pretty high in the league table. What are your thoughts as to why the international community has failed to engage in a meaningful manner on drc?
- [74:20]
A
So just a quick review. What's your policy for shaming the United States government? Discussion of sequencing raised by Leslie. Is it a shift the policy you're describing? And can you give us some comparative examples, examples about how you weigh these matters? Who do you think can best support Human Rights Watch's agenda on the Democratic and Republican side? That's an easy one. What are your relationships with other, or I should say Human Rights Watch's relationships with other international human rights organizations? And what kind of constraints do you face on access in the investigations you conduct that might affect their actual reliability? And finally, how do you account, given the situation, for the relative lack of attention to the Congo?
- [75:03]
B
All right. I mean, have we tried to shame the United States on counterterrorism. Absolutely. It was hard right at the beginning because right after 9, 11, there was a period in there, I'd say two, three months, where the average American view was, do whatever it takes to protect me. And. And so mere exposure didn't do the trick. We're past that now. And so it is possible to shame the United States. I think that when we expose the secret CIA detention facilities, they got shut down. I mean, there are certain practices that have been difficult to sustain, but there is a need to investigate, to educate the public about, as I was mentioning, about the counterproductive nature of some of these practices. Because there still are many people who. Who feel that, you know, human rights, that's really, you know, that's all well and good, but we're talking about our safety here. And so, you know, there is a need to make the pragmatic arguments in addition to the principled ones, but shame is absolutely alive and well. I mean, it is, and it wasn't always, but it is now. I mean, the debate. I often notice that when I leave the United States, people still have the view that it's, you know, it's October 2001, but the US has really changed. And a lot of people are deeply ashamed of the practices of the Bush administration on sequencing the first. I don't think we really have shifted. I mean, the essence of our view all along has been that we don't want amnesties. We don't insist on immediate prosecution, but we don't want prosecution foreclosed. We recognize sort of the timing may be politically dependent, but that at some point it's got to be possible. And so that's the kind of the essence of the argument in terms of, you know, Charles Taylor versus the Lord Resistance Army. In each case, you've had, you know, indictment while the war was ongoing. In the Taylor case, you know, we didn't insist on immediate prosecution. We just didn't insist on ultimate prosecution. It's basically the same thing with the lra. It's not as if we're saying, you know, pick them up tomorrow. But what we're objecting to is the LRA's effort to get the UN government to give them an amnesty. And so we can talk later. I may not be answering your question, but that's. I think we're being consistent. But let me know if. Or not, in terms of the candidates, this is a little hard for me because we're actually a nonpartisan organization. We're not supposed to talk about these things publicly.
- [77:28]
A
So this isn't public, other than the fact that it's taken and going to be on a podcast.
- [77:33]
B
So my lawyer's looking out for me. So I'm just going to say that there are, you know, there obviously are. If you look at just sort of the writings and the action, I mean, there are some say on the Republican side, like McCain, who we've worked very closely with in fighting torture, there are some like Giuliani, who have been quite outspoken about wanting to be Bush. Plus, you know, I think on the Democratic side, you know, Obama has been sort of more outspoken. But, you know, Hillary has also come out against a lot of these issues. You know, she's often seen as sort of more moderate, maybe less willing to rock the boat. But it's, you know, it's hard to. It's really hard to say. And I think that this issue is going to be, I think, become more prominent, actually when we get past the primary stage and it's the Republican versus the Democrat. And I see the, you know, particularly torture coming up there where you really could have. And if it was Giuliani versus Obama, just like, you know, kind of went extreme, torture would be a big part of the campaign. Yeah, right. So, yeah, relationship with Amnesty. We actually work very closely with Amnesty. I mean, you know, Amnesty and Human Rights are really at this stage, the only groups that have global scope. We at the level of sort of researchers exchanging information, happens all the time, doing things jointly, campaigns and the like will do that a lot. We have different sort of focuses, you know, different core methodologies, which I think at this stage represent a healthy division of labor. You know, Amnesty's great strength is its membership. And the main way it gets things done is by mobilizing its membership to write letters and to demonstrate that dictates a certain kind of reporting, which is much more kind of popular oriented. You know, Human Rights Watch is, you know, I mean, as I said, today really focuses, you know, on mainly shaming, which Amnesty does a lot of as well. But we try to shame and we try to work through powerful governments. We do much more of that, you know, policy level work than Amnesty does. Our reports are written much more for the Foreign Office than they are for the Amnesty membership. And so, you know, if you read a Human Rights Watch and Amnesty report and, you know, rip off their covers, you would immediately tell which was which. And it's because we do have kind of different primary audiences. That's good. You know, and I think there is a very, you know, kind of Positive synergy that exists there. We also have, like, completely different donor bases, which is also, I think, useful. The access to countries we have. We don't always get access to countries. You know, we. North Korea, we don't have access to. We have to deal with North Korea from, you know, from China, you know, Saudi Arabia, we get periodic access to. So we have to scoop up all the information we can when we're there. But then other times we have to work through migrants who come and go or other sources of information. We are not at all averse to sneaking into countries. We will put out a report tomorrow on Burma, which, you know, represents, in part, work from inside. We have done a lot of work on Darfur without having permission to go in. And so that is, you know, you do what you can, but, you know, we can get the information. There are always ways to get the information. You mentioned Israel, Palestine in particular. That's not a hard place to work in these terms. I mean, it's a very politicized place to work, but it is not at all difficult to get information there. You know, that's not a closed country in either party. Even Gaza, we just had a team in there, so that, you know, in terms of access is not a problem. And finally, you know, why do people ignore the brc? I think it is in part because it's complicated. You know, it's not a clear good guy and a bad guy. I mean, Darfur was easy to understand. There was the Janjaweed and there were the displaced people. You know, there's an Alphabet soup of rebel groups in the DRC that nobody can keep track of. It's not clear who's good and who's bad and who's what, you know, and so it seems much more chaotic. And I think the people have a harder time dealing with that kind of complexity. And so as a result, there's sort of a tendency to just throw up their hands and say, what's a mess? And I don't know what we can do about it. And that's, you know, I think that's the analytic weakness of the world. But that also, you know, reflects a certain reality. You need a compelling story to engage people.
- [81:35]
A
I think we'll take two last questions and give Ken a final chance to say something. This gentleman here in back in the blue shirt, and this woman here in the back with the blue scarf. And I apologize to all of you people up there in the top.
- [81:56]
G
In the light of Thomas Pogg's work on the human rights of the global poor, Can Human Rights. Edward Davy Development Studies Institute at SE.
- [82:05]
B
Can Human Rights Watch comment profitably on.
- [82:09]
G
Human rights of the global poor in the context of climate change and absolute poverty? Or is that something. Something best left to the other institutions which already act in that context?
- [82:22]
B
I'm a postgraduate student at the LSC as well. You touched on the cultural question and you explained how Human Rights Watch deals with it on a practical level. But I was hoping you could go into how it deals with it on a theoretical level and how it deals with assertions of, of cultural relativism. Okay, just quick.
- [82:45]
A
I mean, it was just to be consistent, you know, can Human Rights Watch comment or usefully really engage with issues of global poverty, or is it best left to other types of organizations? And this last question about how you deal with the assertion of religion or cultural difference in defense of human rights?
- [83:05]
B
Well, in terms of poverty, there are ways that we can productively address it if. And again, you know, I've written on this and we could talk about this at greater length, but in essence, I think it's methodologically based. For our methodology to work and our shaming in particular, we need to be able to, you know, focus on a particular violator and show that, you know, so and so is responsible. So if it's just that there are a lot of poor people out there and you got to spend more money or, you know, the west has got to give more aid or whatever, it's harder to shame somebody, because who's responsible there? Is it the stingy West? Is it the corrupt local government? Is it the misguided World Bank? But if you can show that poverty is a direct product of some kind of governmental action, some failure to conscientiously progressively realize these rights on the basis of available resources, you then have somebody to stigmatize. I mean, to give you a quick example, we, we did an investigation recently in Nigeria, you know, a potentially wealthy country, massive oil revenue. We went to River State, which is the largest state in the Delta, and there were no schools, there were no health clinics. It was a disaster. And so we tried to figure out, well, why is this happening? And we traced the money and found that the state government there, the governor, he had a pretty personal travel budget of 60 some thousand dollars a day to drive around this little area. And there were a series of things like that which showed that in this case there was massive unaddressed corruption. And there we suddenly had somebody to stigmatize. This was not just a matter of urging people to find more money. When money is Scarce, but it was rather saying the money is there and you are squandering on your Swiss bank account rather than on helping people. And so in situations like that, where there really are policy level decisions that are having a negative impact on poverty, our methodology can work very effectively and we do quite a bit of work on that. You know, in terms of climate change, I think where we're much more productive is dealing with sort of more traditional pollution, where by, you know, say in the case of China, you know, by empowering the people who, who are affected by this to organize and push against it, we can make a big difference. Climate change is. The responsibility is so diffuse that I'm not sure that the human rights frame is going to help that much. I mean, climate change is going to give rise to conflicts and human rights violations. But some people say Darfur is the first conflict that's a product of climate change. Whether that's true or not, you can't blame the climate for it. It was Bashir who decided, decided to start responding to whatever climactic difficulties there were by murdering people. And so, you know, the paramount responsibility goes to the murderous government. Even though maybe in a context of, you know, made more averse by climate. On the cultural relativism point, I mean, at the theoretical level, the, you know, I mean, I think that I sort of alluded to this. I mean, the basic answer, I think is that this is not about imposing a Western conf. This is about respecting one variation of the local culture. You know, in a sense that these issues arise when you have conflicting cultures in a country. You have a culture that thinks it's okay to be gay and another culture that thinks it's immoral. You have a culture where women want equality and a culture where people feel that, you know, women shouldn't be equal. And that's really what it's about is competing local cultures and our, you know, we then come in on one side of, of the equation. You know, we try to give our backing as effectively as we can to the side of that local cultural conflict that is more compatible with the international standards. But we're not imposing, I mean, you know, if women want to be subordinate, they want to defer to their husband, you know, if gays want to stay in the closet, you know, if people want to not convert out of Islam more power to them, you know, it's their choice. We're not imposing this on them. But if somebody wants to do it differently, we're going to be standing there with them so that, you know, the dominant culture doesn't preclude their alternative culture. So that's sort of the theoretical answer.
- [87:05]
G
That I would give.
- [87:06]
B
Let me just. I mean, you know, by way of conclusion. I mean, I didn't prepare concluding remarks, but let me just say that, you know, all of this is complicated stuff. And, you know, what's exciting about, you know, one of the things that's exciting about working in human rights is that it's also new. And these issues are, you know, are ones that we don't just sort of speak about publicly, but we debate in house all the time. And so, you know, there's lots of room for you all to participate. And we welcome that kind of participation because, you know, I mean, I gave you one set of answers today, but they may be the wrong answers. And, you know, we need debate on these issues because it is, you know, we've got tough challenges ahead of us and we've got to, you know, make sure that we're most effective as possible. And so, you know, I think by showing up, you've shown your interest in, and I want to encourage you to sort of stay involved in the debate because we need you.