Kenneth Roth

Former Human Rights Watch executive director (1993-2022). Now visiting professor, Princeton University, SPIA. My new book, "Righting Wrongs" (Knopf/Allen Lane).

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

This isn't the first time the US government stood on the wrong side of an essential human rights challenge. In my new book, "Righting Wrongs," I explain how the human rights movement repeatedly circumvented and overcame US obstruction. We can do it again. https://t.co/Q3acXNsqH7

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

In Maine, Susan Collins's greatest liability in her campaign for senator against Graham Platner is that a vote for her is seen as a vote for Trump. https://t.co/IlgyT0mRkg

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

While Trump favors voter suppression, even the Supreme Court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, adopts a more inclusive approach. https://t.co/vW2hj7A7v6

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

Overall not a good day for Trump at the Supreme Court despite the presumptive 6-3 majority in his favor. https://t.co/iOFNdg5CkN

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

The Supreme Court deals “a major blow to Trump, likely marking the end of his legal efforts to contest the jury verdict finding that he assaulted Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s in a department store dressing room." https://t.co/0t0wMgGRjB

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

Hungary's new prime minister, Peter Magyar, is using his supermajority in parliament to dismantle the remnants of Viktor Orban's autocratic rule. https://t.co/qev94yBzgg

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

Rejecting another Trump effort to suppress voting, the Supreme Court upheld Mississippi’s grace period for late-arriving mail-in ballots, rejecting a push by the Trump administration to invalidate a state law. https://t.co/rMuLxnGBrX

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

Crimea was Putin's first seizure of Ukrainian territory. It seemed easy. It has turned into an albatross. https://t.co/71AR3Y5qd9

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

The new Syrian authorities have enough on their hands as they try to consolidate power and fend off extremists. They don't need Trump's wacko idea of also fighting Hezbollah. https://t.co/Z6GpYnjtLQ

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

Biden calls Trump "a loser," portraying him as incompetent, corrupt and vain. He invoked Trump’s "vanity projects" in Washington and his "brazen, blatant corruption." https://t.co/iVZMwWHkC5

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

Putin admits that Russia is facing fuel shortages as Ukraine steps up its long-range drone campaign, with repeated strikes setting oil refineries ablaze and forcing multiple regions to introduce unprecedented petrol rationing. https://t.co/gKP2If1Ym5

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

No International Criminal Court member state that shows up in New York on July 24 to vote on the fate of chief prosecutor Karim Khan, based on the sexual assault allegations against him and the ICC Bureau's finding by at least 2/3 of its 21 member states of "serious misconduct," should vote simply on the basis of brief summaries. That wouldn't do justice to the complainant's detailed testimony of sexual abuse over many months in various locales, or Khan's carefully crafted denials. All states should read in full:
1. The Bureau decision.
2. The ruling of the advisory ad hoc panel of judges.
3. The UN investigative (OIOS) report.
That is the least they owe, given the important issues at stake and the future viability of the court. https://t.co/5nf4hd94OP

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

The Israeli military has killed 235 children in the occupied West Bank since 7 October 2023. No one has been indicted. That certainly looks like a "license to kill." https://t.co/pGBu23CTQy

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

Beijing has restructured Hong Kong’s governance to answer to Chinese Communist Party leadership rather than Hong Kong’s people six years after imposing the draconian National Security Law. So much for any pretense of democracy. https://t.co/OQq0KRVB92

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

Trafficked, beaten and raped: raids reveal the scale of abuse of women held in Asia’s cyberscam centers. As tens of thousands are freed, female survivors are increasingly reporting gender-based violence in the compounds, once thought to hold mainly men. https://t.co/LuI7kjk0za

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

Islamist armed groups and Malian armed forces and their allies have committed serious abuses against civilians since fighting escalated in Mali in April 2026. https://t.co/soc7UAjHIp

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

The Conservative backers of Brexit promised to spur Britain's advance. Instead, it has hastened Britain’s decline. But they still won't admit that truth. https://t.co/e7PJrM6nCF

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

A big question is why the advisory ad hoc panel of judges who reviewed the sexual assault allegations against International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Karim Khan didn't ask the UN investigators (OIOS) to make clear factual findings, not just to present a 150-page report of "he said, she said." There is reportedly a devastating summary at the outset of the OIOS report, but it is presented more as evidence than as the investigators' own clear findings. If the judges had just asked, they might have received the clear findings that they needed to assess the case, rather than essentially bowing out by saying that because there were no clear findings, the burden of proof wasn't met. That was a real cop out, a dereliction of duty by the ad hoc advisory judges, compounding the OIOS's avoidance of clear findings. All of this did a tremendous disservice to the complainant. It took the 21 member states of the ICC's Executive Bureau finally to step in and make clear factual findings, based on the complainant's detailed account of alleged sexual assaults over many months in many locales, juxtaposed against Khan's carefully crafted denials. That wasn't a "political" decision as Khan's partisans conveniently allege. It was a belated but laudable effort finally to make clear factual findings. Hence the ruling by at least two-thirds of the Bureau states of "serious misconduct" by Khan. That is the first time anyone associated with this case bothered to make clear factual findings from the evidence. https://t.co/UAg63C8MZD

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

In advance of a NATO summit in Ankara, Turkish authorities under President Erdogan detain 103 people including the editor-in-chief of a Turkish LGBTQ journal and 42 environmental volunteers, some elderly. "Terrorism" charges are used. https://t.co/Zve3Kknwo6

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

The wrongful sentencing of Rached Ghannouchi is part of a broader campaign to dismantle Tunisia's democratic opposition and consolidate authoritarian rule. Yet the ideals of the 2011 revolution remain alive, offering hope of Tunisians reclaiming democracy. https://t.co/CEVe9Fx9Hj

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

250 years ago America revolted against rule by a king. Trump would love to be king and subject America once again to a monarchy. But 2-1/2 centuries of democracy has built a strong system of checks and balances taht is pushing back. https://t.co/doc98GmEqj