

Follow Kenneth Roth on Twitter: @KenRoth.


Must It Always Be Wartime?

Rosa Brooks moderating a discussion on ‘the next generation’s human rights challenges’ during a program that was cosponsored by The New York Review, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C., April 2014


by Rosa Brooks

What Trump Should Do in Syria



How China Threatens Human Rights Worldwide

Police in riot gear rounding up suspected protesters, Hong Kong, January 5, 2020

The Chinese government is not the only threat to human rights today, but it stands out for its reach and influence. The cause of human rights today faces a dangerously destructive combination of a powerful centralized state, a coterie of like-minded rulers, a void of leadership among countries that might have stood for human rights, and a disappointing collection of democracies willing to sell the rope that is strangling the system of rights that they purport to uphold. Only if governments band together to address China’s flouting of human rights will the power balance shift. Decades of progress are now at stake.

Data Leviathan: China’s Burgeoning Surveillance State



Russia’s Responsibility in the Syrian Reconquest of Idlib

A Syrian woman and boy walking past a Syrian government checkpoint in western Idlib province, June 1, 2018

The endgame of the war in Syria is likely to come down to the northwestern province of Idlib, on the Turkish border, where some 2.3 million people are now trapped. As Russian-Syrian forces now finish retaking the smaller southwestern province of Daraa, Idlib will be the last significant enclave in anti-government hands. Russia clearly has the necessary leverage over the Assad government to avoid a bloodbath there. The key is getting Russia to use that leverage. Assad’s reputation is beyond repair—his main aspiration is to stay in power and avoid prosecution—but Putin still aspires to be treated as a respected global leader. He must be persuaded that he will fail in that quest so long as he continues to underwrite Assad’s atrocities.

Trump’s Cruel Deportations

A US Border Patrol agent checking birth certificates while taking immigrants from Central America into detention, McAllen, Texas, January 4, 2017

A fair immigration system would consider family and community ties before ordering deportation, but US law generally ignores them, and Trump’s policies are taking this to new extremes. Congress also bears responsibility for its abject failure to reform a system that everyone agrees is broken. It should require a hearing before deportation—or better yet, find a way to regularize the status of people who deserve legal recognition.