"Every government today, as a matter of its basic legitimacy, has to pretend to respect human rights."
Kenneth Roth is an attorney, activist and author best known as the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch for nearly thirty years. In this role, he prosecuted the worst crimes humanity has committed in recent years. From the genocide in Rwanda to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, he has never feared holding the powerful to account and applying international law to those who feel they are above it. Indeed, HRW won the Nobel Peace Prize while he was the director for its efforts to ban anti-personnel mines.
He is currently a fellow of the Harvard Kennedy School and a lecturer at Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs. His international affairs work has also led to him being denied entry to both Egypt and China. Most recently, he is the author of Righting Wrongs about his past in international affairs and how shame of all things, can be a powerful tool to hold autocrats to account.
"Godfather of human rights work." — New York Times
