“Ken Roth turned Human Rights Watch right into a juggernaut for justice,” the manager director of the American Civil Liberties Union stated
The longtime chief of Human Rights Watch introduced Tuesday he’ll depart his function this summer season as govt director after almost three a long time on the helm of one of many world’s main advocacy organizations.
Kenneth Roth ran the New York-based group because it shared a Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for its efforts to ban anti-personnel land mines. The group additionally pushed to determine the Worldwide Prison Court docket for prosecuting battle crimes, crimes in opposition to humanity and genocide.
Former ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda referred to as Roth an inspiration.
“Ken’s fearless ardour for justice, his braveness and compassion in direction of the victims of human rights violations and atrocity crimes was not simply skilled accountability however a private conviction to him,” she stated.
Roth turned govt director in 1993, when the group had a workers of about 60 and a $7 million annual finances. It now has over 550 staff in additional than 100 international locations and an almost $100 million finances to marketing campaign in opposition to human rights abuses.
“Ken Roth turned Human Rights Watch right into a juggernaut for justice,” stated Anthony Romero, govt director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “He has impressed a era of human rights defenders to battle for a greater world.”
The group has been on the forefront of advocacy on a number of the world’s most hot-button rights points.
In response to Human Rights Watch, that earned Roth many enemies over time.
“Regardless of being Jewish (and having a father who fled Nazi Germany as a 12-year-old boy), he has been attacked as a supposed anti-Semite due to the group’s criticism of Israeli authorities abuses,” the group stated in an announcement Tuesday.
“The Chinese language authorities imposed ‘sanctions’ on him and expelled him from Hong Kong when he traveled there to launch Human Rights Watch’s World Report in January 2020, which spotlighted Beijing’s risk to the worldwide human rights system,” it stated.
