COMMENTARY

The following articles / commentaries / letters to the editors /testimony were written by the staff of Human Rights Watch. They express our concerns regarding a few of the many pressing human rights issues addressed by the organization on a regular basis.
  • Party to Mass Murder?
    Published November 8, 2003 in The Washington Post
    By Daniel Wilkinson
    A presidential election is being held tomorrow in which one of the leading candidates stands accused of genocide. Efrain Rios Montt, a retired general, is seeking the presidency of Guatemala. In the early 1980s he headed a military regime that carried out hundreds of massacres of unarmed civilians and -- according to a U.N.-sponsored truth commission -- "acts of genocide." More...

  • Iraqi Civilians Fall Victim to Hair Triggers
    Published October 21, 2003 in Los Angeles Times
    By Fred Abrahams
    The U.S. military does not keep statistics on the civilian deaths it has caused, saying it is "impossible for us to maintain an accurate account." But in two weeks of research last month, Human Rights Watch confirmed the deaths of 20 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad at the hands of American troops since the end of major combat operations in May. In total, we collected reports of 94 civilian deaths in Baghdad involving questionable legal circumstances that warrant investigation.More...

  • Azerbaijan: A stolen election and oil stability
    Published October 20, 2003 in International Herald Tribune
    By Peter Bouckaert
    Last week's presidential election in Azerbaijan ensured that the current government would maintain its control over the country's significant oil reserves. In the former Soviet bloc's first dynastic succession, Ilham Aliyev, son of the ailing Communist-era holdover Heydar Aliyev, has now become president.More...

  • Thaksin's Potemkin Welcome for APEC
    Published October 17, 2003 in The Asian Wall Street Journal
    By Brad Adams
    If APEC's leaders offer the excuse that their meetings are about economics and not about human rights, they will effectively give the green light to Mr. Thaksin. They will also show APEC to be irrelevant to the basic needs of its citizens. This would violate one of APEC's own goals, which is "Making APEC Matter More." More...

  • Human Rights, the Bush Administration, and the Fight against Terrorism: The Need for a Positive Vision
    Published October 2003 in Lost Liberties: Ashcroft and the Assault on Personal Freedom
    By Kenneth Roth
    Leadership requires more than a big stick and a thick wallet. It also requires a positive vision shared by others and conduct consistent with that vision. The campaign against terrorism is no exception. The United States, as a major target, took the lead in combating terrorism. But the global outpouring of sympathy that followed the attacks of September 11, 2001 soon gave way to a growing reluctance to join the fight and even resentment toward the government leading it. More...

  • An invisible enemy
    October 3, 2003
    By Mary Wareham
    Landmines pose an ever-present danger to everyone within the borders of Afghanistan; its citizens and the soldiers of the world charged with keeping peace for them. Last year, the Red Cross recorded 1,286 landmine deaths in Afghanistan, one of the highest mine tolls anywhere on Earth. Numerous other casualties are believed to have gone unreported. More...

  • Children at War in Colombia
    September 29, 2003
    By Joanne Mariner
    When Paula Calderón was fourteen, her mother died. A few weeks after the funeral, Paula’s father brought her to a guerrilla outpost in the jungle. “He told me that he had a debt with them,” she said when I interviewed her last year, “and that he had to hand me over in exchange.” More...

  • Doing something about prison rape
    September 26, 2003
    By Lara Stemple, Wendy Patten and Benjamin Jealous
    Approximately one in five male inmates in the United States has faced forced or pressured sexual contact in custody, according to studies on the subject by researchers such as Cindy Struckman-Johnson at the University of South Dakota. One in 10 has been raped. For women, whose abusers are often corrections officers, the rates of sexual assault are as high as one in four in some facilities. More...

  • Broken Promises To Liberia
    September 24, 2003
    By Tom Malinowski
    Ravaged by a civil war that has claimed more than 200,000 lives, Liberia had its moment in the spotlight this summer. President Bush, on his way to Africa, pledged that America would "help the people of Liberia find the path to peace." Two thousand U.S. Marines steamed for Liberia's shores. And on Aug. 15, after the departure of Liberia's brutal leader, Charles Taylor, a "vanguard" force of 200 Americans landed in Monrovia, raising hopes among Liberians that the United States would aid them at last. More...

  • Who’s Afraid of Vladimir Putin?
    September 26, 2003
    By Anna Neistat
    President George W. Bush’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin will take place on the eve of presidential elections in Chechnya. For President Putin, the elections are meant to symbolize the final stage of stabilization in the war-torn republic. President Bush shouldn’t indulge him in this illusion. More...

  • Liberia: Where the Arms Come from
    September 17, 2003
    By Peter Takirambudde
    Liberia urgently needs more peacekeepers. But West Africa as a whole needs sustained and skillful diplomacy just as badly. The continuing war in Liberia is a regional war, and the United States has lost many opportunities to engage West African governments in ways that might have lessened the suffering this war has caused. The Bush administration should not lose any more chances.   More

  • Colombia: 'Checkbook Impunity' for Murderers
    September 14, 2003
    By Robin Kirk
    Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has presented a bill to his Congress that would allow paramilitary members who have committed atrocities to skip prison for a fee. Among them are men the United States has identified as terrorists for their willingness to massacre Colombian civilians.   More

  • Waiting for Death in China
    September 3, 2003
    By Brad Adams
    Officially, China's national AIDS policy discourages discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS. But in fact, these people are frequently hounded out of their homes, fired from their jobs, and refused medical care on the basis of their status, with no way to seek redress. Chinese hospitals routinely test patients for HIV/AIDS without even telling them. One health worker admitted to Human Rights Watch that the hospital calls up employers or families to warn them that a person they know is HIV positive.   More

  • Answer ‘Chemical Ali´ with a tribunal
    August 25, 2003
    By Joe Stork
    The capture in Iraq on Thursday of Ali Hassan al-Majid offers an extraordinary opportunity for Iraqis to bring some measure of justice to tens of thousands of victims of Baath Party rule. But this can only happen if he is put on trial before a tribunal that is fair, impartial and independent.   More

  • Idi Amin at death’s door: Despots should not rest in peace
    July 25, 2003
    By Reed Brody
    Amin is part of a shrinking club of ex-tyrants living safely in exile. Their number includes Amin's equally brutal successor Milton Obote, now in Zambia. Haiti’s Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier is hiding out in France. Mengistu Haile Mariam, whose ‘‘Red Terror’’ campaign in Ethiopia targeted tens of thousands of political opponents, now enjoys the protection of President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.   More

  • Show Trials are Not the Solution to Saddam's Heinous Reign
    July 18, 2003
    By Kenneth Roth
    Whatever one thinks of the war to topple Saddam Hussein, the issue of justice for the crimes of his regime is now coming to the fore. In one of its first acts, the new Iraqi Governing Council announced the formation of a commission to establish a tribunal to bring Saddam and his henchmen to justice. Sadly, this is the wrong approach.   More

  • What Tony Blair must say in Washington
    July 13, 2003
    By James Ross
    The Prime Minister must not pull his punches over the injustice of the proposed US military tribunals for terror suspects. The central issue is not where the trial of the two British prisoners should take place but fair trials for all of those accused of the most serious crimes.   More

  • Bush Should Do the Right Thing in Africa
    July 9, 2003
    By Janet Fleischman
    Many Americans seem to accept the notion that we live in a unipolar world, and that only the United States has the wherewithal to solve complex global problems, writes Janet Fleischman. But on the continent of Africa, which President Bush is crisscrossing for the first time this week, the U.S. isn't taking the lead. On his trip, President Bush has a chance to decide if the U.S. will play more than a supporting role.   More

  • SA stop pivotal to success of Bush's Africa tour
    July 8, 2003
    By Peter Takirambudde
    When US President George W Bush travels to Africa next week, it will underscore how pressing such a tour is, and how long the need has gone unaddressed by his government.   More

  • Avoiding War Crimes in Iraq
    July 8, 2003
    By Joe Stork
    Unfortunately, the US seems more interested in questions of justice and accountability for past crimes mainly to the extent that these can be used to vilify the old Iraqi regime and justify its military intervention. It is far less interested in seeking justice for the victims and survivors of Saddam Hussein's tyranny.   More

  • Historic moment in the fight to ensure there are no safe havens for mass killers
    June 30, 2003
    By Reed Brody
    The extradition of Ricardo Miguel Cavallo from his hiding place in Mexico to Spain for alleged crimes committed during Argentina's "dirty war" marks a historic moment in the effort to bring to justice the perpetrators of the worst atrocities.   More

  • What Mr Blair should say to the Russian President
    June 26, 2003
    By Anna Neistat&
    Four years ago, Putin's determination to crush the separatist rebels in Chechnya by force helped to elect him by a landslide. In the meantime, the effect of his anti-terrorist campaign has proved catastrophic.  More

  • 'New Justice' vs. Impunity
    June 18, 2003
    By Kenneth Roth
    Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld may see a divide between old and new Europe, but Europe and much of the rest of the world are standing united behind what might be called new justice.   More

  • Why the US needs this court
    June 15, 2003
    By Steve Crawshaw
    The US pressures at the United Nations have been only part of the story. The bully tactics against countries which defy America by refusing to weaken their commitment to the court have become blatant in recent months, as private (and much-denied) arm-twisting has given way to public threats. Countries vulnerable to American pressure - these days, the list of such countries is long - are told that unless they offer the Americans the desired immunity from prosecution, punishment will be swift and severe.   More

  • China's Other Health Cover-up
    June 12, 2003
    By Brad Adams
    The recent SARS epidemic has shown both the old face of the Chinese political system, and perhaps a new face. Beijing's dark side has been exemplified by its knee-jerk resort to draconian measures, including threats to execute "intentional transmitters" of SARS, arrests of those who send text messages "spreading rumors" about the epidemic, and the jailing of a doctor who accidentally infected his family with the virus. These measures have no place in a public health emergency, no matter how grave.   More

  • Putin's Party
    May 30, 2003
    By Diederik Lohman
    In 1999, as prime minister, Putin sent Russian troops to Chechnya, ostensibly to bring peace and stability to that troubled region. But the troops' brutal force quickly alienated a population already gasping for peace. Four years on, Russian troops and Chechen rebels are still engaged in a bitter guerilla war, with civilians the primary victims.   More

  • Allies' Postwar Panic Puts Justice in Jeopardy
    May 23, 2003
    By Kenneth Roth
    Having refused to endorse the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, France, Germany and their allies now face retribution from the Bush administration. Several European capitals seem gripped by panic in their desire to make amends. This longing to kiss and make up at any price has jeopardized the emerging international system of justice for the worst human rights offenders.   More

  • The Lesson of Afghanistan: Peacekeeping in Iraq
    May 20, 2003
    By John Sifton and Sam Zia-Zarifi
    The coalition policy of playing down security problems and relying on local enforcers has failed in Afghanistan, and it will fail again in Iraq. America and its coalition partners urgently need to increase peacekeeping forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan.   More

  • No peace without human rights
    May 18, 2003
    By Miranda Sissons
    Ariel Sharon is due to meet George Bush at the White House this week where the two men will discuss the latest Middle East roadmap - intended to pave the way for lasting peace. The roadmap is deeply flawed in one key respect. It fails to provide the essential human rights protection for a pattern of abuses by Israelis and Palestinians alike. And yet, peace is impossible, unless the importance of protecting civilians is clearly acknowledged by both sides.   More

  • Digging Up the Past in Iraq's Killing Fields
    May 16, 2003
    By Peter Bouckaert
    This is in sharp contrast to what happened in 1999 in Kosovo, when NATO forces worked with the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia to secure sites and enable exhumations almost as soon as Slobodan Milosevic's troops pulled out. As soon as possible, the international community must organize a similar process to aid Iraqi families, to allow at least a possibility for proper identification and preservation of evidence. In the meantime, coalition forces must protect the graves.  More

  • Collateral damage of a drug war
    May 8, 2003
    By Jonathan Cohen
    When it comes to the "war on drugs," Canada's stance is not unlike its position on the war in Iraq: We're not the United States. Our government supports needle exchange, has recommended the legalization of marijuana, and is allowing the first trial use of prescription heroin in North America.  More

  • Havana's Obstruction of Freedom
    April 30, 2003
    By José Miguel Vivanco
    The situation is about to get worse. Cuba's membership on the commission was set to expire but renewed for another term on Tuesday when the UN body, meeting in New York, voted on the issue. This is a stark testament to the commission's weakened credibility and degraded membership standards.  More

  • Mass Graves Hide Horror of Iraqi Past
    April 27, 2003
    By Saman Zia-Zarifi and Olivier Bercault
    American and British forces must, as an urgent priority, begin guarding sites such as the one we visited west of Basra to prevent spontaneous digging by bereaved relatives. These are crime scenes, and the coalition forces, as occupying powers, must function as the police in Iraq right now. Mass graves will provide crucial evidence for tribunals the U.S. government has said should be established to prosecute the crimes.  More

  • Thailand's crackdown: Drug 'war' kills democracy, too
    April 24, 2003
    By Brad Adams
    BANGKOK A violent 10-week-old state-sponsored "war on drugs" is rapidly undermining Thailand's long struggle to become one of Southeast Asia's leading democracies - and the civil rights of Thais. The United Nations and the United States should pressure Bangkok to end its shoot-to-kill policy.  More

  • Talking with Head Splitters: A Colombian challenge
    April 20, 2003
    By Robin Kirk
    Colombia proves that terror is not confined to a region or religion. A February car bomb police say was set by guerrillas destroyed a Bogota social club, killing 34. Days later, authorities found a grave with 11 bodies, reportedly locals captured by paramilitaries and executed. Vowing to defeat terrorists, President Alvaro Uribe has declared two states of emergency, levied new war taxes and boosted the size of his country's army. In the emergency Iraq aid bill just signed by President Bush, Colombia received almost $100 million to fight terror.  More

  • Burma's opposition needs fresh support
    April 15, 2003
    By Mike Jendrzejczyk
    WASHINGTON The United Nations special rapporteur on human rights, Paulo Pinheiro, was forced to cut short a mission to Burma last month when a bugging device was discovered in a room where he was interviewing political prisoners. The aborted UN mission is a symptom of deeper problems. Frustration is growing as Rangoon's ruling generals appear increasingly distrustful and unwilling to continue a dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the democratic opposition.   More

  • Kirkuk: An Eyewitness Account
    April 14, 2003
    By Hania Mufti and Eric Stover
    Ethnic tensions in the oil-rich Kirkuk region could quickly spin out of control. As members of a Human Rights Watch investigation team in northern Iraq, we witnessed a confrontation that suggests just how that may happen.   More

  • Liberation and Looting in Iraq
    April 14, 2003
    By Joanne Mariner
    While Baghdad burned, Donald Rumsfeld fiddled. Questioned about the orgy of looting and pillaging taking place under the gaze of U.S. forces, Rumsfeld criticized the media for exaggerating the extent of the damage.   More

  • Give Iraqis real justice -- not a U.S. puppet show
    April 10, 2003
    By Kenneth Roth
    Saddam Hussein and his henchmen have been responsible for murdering or "disappearing" some 225,000 Iraqis. Now that his dictatorship is crumbling, what is the best way to bring to justice the surviving members of his government who are responsible for these atrocities?  More

  • Meanwhile: Young girls in Africa cornered by AIDS
    April 2, 2003
    By Janet Fleischman
    LUSAKA The strikingly higher infection rates among adolescent girls compared to boys in Zambia and many other parts of Africa reveal a disturbing trend: the AIDS epidemic is being fueled by the abuse and subordination of young women.  More

  • Double Standards
    March 31, 2003
    By Jamie Fellner
    The United States is right to insist that Iraq honor the Geneva Conventions. But its position is weakened by failure to practice what it preaches in holding 641 prisoners without charges at the U.S. military facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.  More

  • The Meaning Of Concern: Washington Indulges Uzbekistan’s Atrocities
    March 27, 2003
    By Acacia Shields
    The bureaucratic term for it is “Country of Particular Concern.” That´s how the United States government describes nations that abuse religious freedom, under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA). And this month, the State Department decided that Uzbekistan was not one of them. This decision is absurd.  More

  • Executing the Mentally Ill
    March 26, 2003
    By Alsion Hughes
    The voices and hallucinations began to plague James Colburn when he was a teenager. Diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, he received only sporadic treatment (his family depleted their savings in an effort to help him), spent time in and out of mental hospitals, and attempted suicide over a dozen times. One night in 1994, while racked with hallucinations that told him to harm himself and others, James Colburn strangled and stabbed Peggy Murphy to death. On March 26, the state of Texas is scheduled to execute him by lethal injection.  More

  • US Courts Abandon Guantanamo Detainees
    March 21, 2003
    By Jamie Fellner
    The United States may have succeeded in carving out a piece of the world devoid of courts - and the fundamental rights they protect. A federal appeals court ruled this month that U.S. courts have no jurisdiction over the claims of detainees held on the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba because the base in on sovereign Cuban soil.  More

  • Long-Suffering Iraqis Face Only More Agony
    Published March 16, 2003 in The Los Angeles Times
    By Carroll Bogert
    The American and Iraqi governments have entered the final stages of bluffing, blustering and threatening. Soon, it seems, the shooting and the bombing will begin.  More

  • The U.N.'s Human-Rights Choice
    Published March 12, 2003 in The Asian Wall Street Journal
    By Mike Jendrzejczyk
    The United Nations Commission on Human Rights convenes in Geneva on Monday, overshadowed by threats of war and terrorism, divided along regional lines, and chaired by Libya -- hardly a paragon of human-rights protection. This year, it faces a particularly challenging test: whether to hold China and North Korea accountable for their poor human rights records.  More

  • Overlooking Chechen Terror
    Published March 1, 2003 in The Washington Post
    By Tom Malinowski
    One measure of America's importance is the frequency with which countries do outrageous things when they think Americans aren't watching. Saddam Hussein used to do his worst when official Washington was on vacation Ñ his offensive into Iraqi Kurdistan during the final days of August 1996, for example. North Korea may have provoked a crisis now because it sensed the Bush administration was distracted by Iraq.  More

  • Restore India's Secular Political Culture
    Published February 27, 2003 in The Asian Wall Street Journal
    By Smita Narula
    As the world deliberates a U.S.-led war in Iraq and braces for more terrorist attacks, the international community has turned a blind eye to the killing of thousands of Muslims in India in the name of fighting terrorism.  More

  • Clare Short Helps Out a Tyrant
    Published February 24, 2003 in New Statesman
    By Steve Crawshaw
    Clare Short, the Secretary of State for International Development, is due to chair the annual meeting of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), to be held in the central Asian republic of Uzbekistan in May. Uzbekistan is distinguished by human rights abuses on an epic scale. And yet it looks as if the meeting will go ahead with no real strings attached. This makes no sense at all. It amounts to a reward for (very) bad behaviour. A United Nations special rapporteur talked of the "systemic torture" that he found; the British ambassador rightly notes that "brutality is inherent" in the government of President Islam Karimov, a survivor from the Soviet era.  More

  • An Unfinished Assignment for Israelis
    Published February 21, 2003 in International Herald Tribune
    By Reed Brody
    Israel has reacted angrily to a ruling by Belgium's Supreme Court that leaves the way open for an investigation into the alleged role of Ariel Sharon in a 1982 massacre. Yet Belgium is doing what all countries are supposed to do - enforcing the most basic norms of humanity.  More

  • For 15 million in India, a childhood of slavery MEANWHILE
    Published January 31, 2003 in International Herald Tribune
    By Zama Coursen-Neff
    A new school for former child workers is expected to open in this town in the state of Tamil Nadu later this year. But 13-year-old Nallanayaki will not be enrolling. Since she was 9, Nallanayaki has labored 13 hours a day, six and a half or even seven days a week, in a silk weaving factory.  More

  • America's Dangerous New Style of War
    Published January 29, 2003 in Boston Globe
    By Dinah PoKempner
    AMERICANS are innovators, and we have invented a new style of war. Now we want new rules as well. This is critical as war with Iraq looms and major world powers convene in closed session at Harvard University to discuss reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions and the laws of war that provide some minimal protection to noncombatants.  More

  • Better a White Knight Than a Trojan Horse
    Published January 27, 2003 in The Australian
    By Rory Mungoven
    Australia has done a lot for the human rights cause over the years, including helping to draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and bring the commission into being. But given its deteriorating record on human rights and its hostile attitude to international scrutiny, Australia might well prove to be a wolf in sheep's clothing.  More

  • Falling Back to Taliban Ways with Women
    Published January 21, 2003 in International Herald Tribune
    By Zama Coursen-Neff and John Sifton
    In the city of Herat in western Afghanistan, the government of the warlord Ismail Khan recently applied new rules rolling back educational opportunities for women and girls.  More

  • Not the way to fight terrorism
    Neglecting human rights
    Published January 15, 2003 in The International Herald Tribune
    By Kenneth Roth
    The United States, as a major target, has taken the lead in combating terrorism. But the global outpouring of sympathy that followed the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is giving way to growing resentment of the United States and reluctance to join the fight. How was this goodwill depleted so quickly? Part of the reason lies in how terrorism is being fought.  More

  • Cambodians, Too, Deserve Justice
    Published December 27, 2002 in The International Herald Tribune
    By Mike Jendrzejczyk
    Aging mass murderers continue to live freely in Cambodia. This month Nuon Chea, "Brother No. 2" and deputy to the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, finally stepped into a courtroom. Among other crimes, researchers have linked him to the Tuol Sleng torture center where more than 16,000 men, women and children went in and only seven came out alive.  More

  • Ask Saudi officials some tough questions
    Published December 17, 2002 in The International Herald Tribune
    By Virginia N. Sherry
    Saudi Arabia's wink-and-nod approach to terrorism has rightly raised a critical storm in the United States. But the winking and nodding began almost a year before the terrorist attacks in September 2001, in the Saudi government's response to a series of mysterious bombings on its own soil.  More

  • Afghanistan's Women Still Need Our Help
    Published December 17, 2002 in The Washington Post
    By Zama Coursen-Neff
    The common perception outside Afghanistan is that when the U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban, women and girls were liberated. The truth is somewhat different. Despite improvements in access to education and an end to the Taliban's ban on working outside the home, an array of Taliban-era restrictions on women remains in place. One of the worst places is the western province of Herat, ruled by local warlord Ismail Khan.  More

  • Condemning the Crackdown in Western China
    Published December 16, 2002 in The Asian Wall Street Journal
    By Mike Jendrzejczyk
    Beijing's domestic war against terrorism has gone global. In September, the U.S. joined China in asking the United Nations Security Council to add to the U.N.'s terrorist list an obscure Uighur group, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a target of Beijing's war against "ethnic splittists, religious extremists and violent terrorists." And Chinese President Jiang Zemin's recent summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin was capped by pledges of mutual support to crush Muslim separatists in Xinjiang and Chechnya.  More

  • Europe is slowing down
    Published December 10, 2002 in International Herald Tribune
    By Kenneth Roth
    New York Human Rights Day this Tuesday is a moment to highlight the rights that protect us all. The Copenhagen summit convenes on Thursday to mark the expansion of the European Union. Given Europe's long tradition of support for human rights, the two events would seem to call for parallel celebrations.  More

  • Threat of War Crimes in Iraq Calls for Strong U.S. Message
    Published December 1, 2002 in USA Today
    By Peter Bouckaert
    The potential conflict in Iraq again raises the danger that war crimes will be committed on a massive scale by both sides as they have been in the past — by Saddam Hussein and by the opposition Shiites and Kurds.  More

  • India's Voiceless Women Are Easy Prey for AIDS
    Published December 1, 2002 in Los Angeles Times
    By Meena Seshu and Joanne Csete
    The $100 million that Bill Gates' philanthropy will add to the battle against HIV and AIDS in India is a welcome expression of concern for what Gates rightly portrays as one of the worst epidemics in the world. But the Gates Foundation's generous support may be undone by factors that neither the government of India nor its donors are addressing: the voicelessness of women and increasing violence against those most affected by the epidemic.  More

  • From eating rats in North Korea to sex abuse in China: A refugee travesty
    Published November 19, 2002 in International Herald Tribune
    By Mike Jendrzejczyk
    The head of the United Nations food program was in Beijing last week, pleading for China's help to prevent more death and famine in North Korea. Facing a funding deficit, the world body has suspended humanitarian assistance to 3 million North Koreans in the western part of the country. More aid cuts may come.  More

  • Turkey: A law against torture is the way into the EU
    Published November 12, 2002 in International Herald Tribune
    By Jonathan Sugden and Minky Worden
    ISTANBUL Now that Turkey's government has been swept from power, the international community is asking what the newly elected leaders mean for the future of human rights and especially Turkey's relationship with its European neighbors.  More

  • Foreign Enemies and Constitutional Rights
    Published November 10, 2002 in Chicago Tribune
    By Kenneth Roth
    NEW YORK -- The Bush administration thinks it has a solution to the evidentiary and legal frustrations of prosecuting terrorist suspects: Designate them "enemy combatants" and detain them indefinitely without charge or trial. But that raises the question: Is this an appropriate response to a serious security threat or a ploy to circumvent the U.S. Constitution?  More

  • Cleaning up the prisons Torture
    Published November 5, 2002 in International Herald Tribune
    By Rory Mungoven
    The world's attention is focused on how to apply an effective inspections system to check on Saddam Hussein's programs for weapons of mass destruction. But this week the United Nations is debating another inspections regime of considerable significance, one designed to stamp out torture and other ill-treatment in prisons around the world.  More

  • Iraq: Civilians Could Pay a High Price
    Published November 3, 2002 in Los Angeles Times
    By Peter Bouckaert
    The risk of civilian casualties from the fighting itself is likely to be particularly high in Iraq. Hussein will almost certainly attempt to draw the U.S. into an urban battle, one in which Iraqi civilians are used as human shields. Anyone who remembers the intense fighting in Jenin several months ago, or the bloody 1993 battle of Mogadishu, Somalia, depicted in the movie "Black Hawk Down," realizes what dangers urban warfare represents.  More

  • Fight the good fight
    Published October 22, 2002 in The Guardian
    By Kenneth Roth
    Before joining the US in a war on Iraq, Blair must lay down the law on key human rights principles. If he doesn't, British troops could face war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court, argues Kenneth Roth.  More

  • Children at war
    Published October 16, 2002 in The International Herald Tribune
    By Jo Becker
    BANGKOK In late 1999, a pair of chain-smoking twin boys called Luther and Johnny Htoo captured headlines as the leaders of the God's Army, an armed opposition group in Burma. Media stories about the boys and their reported mystical powers reinforced a common notion that use of child soldiers is largely a rebel group phenomenon. Yet by far the largest user of child soldiers in Burma is the military government, which appears to have 10 times as many child soldiers in its army as all of Burma's opposition groups combined.  More

  • Hong Kong: Liberties in doubt
    Published October 11, 2002 in The International Herald Tribune
    By Mike Jendrzejczyk
    HONG KONG: The recent cave-in by Hong Kong to pressure from Beijing to enact laws against subversion, sedition, secession and theft of state secrets was hardly a surprise. Hong Kong and Chinese government officials have been threatening to do this since Hong Kong's 1997 handover from Britain to China. But the muted response from key governments was surprising and disappointing.  More

  • Confronting the Anti-Human Rights Lobby
    Published October 6, 2002 in The Miami Herald
    By Joanna Weschler
    United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson was replaced by Brazilian Sergio Vieira de Mello, a longtime U.N. diplomat, last month. The transition is a tricky one, because the governments that dominate the U.N. Commission for Human Rights (CHR) are increasingly trying to protect themselves - and their allies - from any scrutiny or criticism. During the last annual session of the CHR in Geneva last spring, the body voted one by one to ignore severe human rights violations in such places as Russia/Chechnya, Zimbabwe, Iran and Equatorial Guinea.  More

  • Resist Washington's arm-twisting
    Published September 30, 2002 in The International Herald Tribune
    By Kenneth Roth
    NEW YORK This month the first assembly of states supporting the International Criminal Court convened at United Nations headquarters in New York. This new milestone in the march toward a tribunal for the world's worst human rights criminals was a moment of celebration. But the festivities were marred by the latest assault of the United States on the court.  More

  • Iran's elected leaders are ready to listen
    Published September 14, 2002 in The International Herald Tribune
    By Elahe Sharifpour-Hicks
    TEHRAN Iran is on the edge of imminent implosion. Poverty, unemployment, drug addiction and prostitution are widespread among the young. People under 34 constitute half of the country's population. Many of them voted for the reformist president, Mohammed Khatami. Now they are deeply disappointed.  More

  • By Choking Information, China Worsens AIDS Crisis
    The Cost of Silence
    Published September 14, 2002 in International Herald Tribune
    By Mickey Spiegel
    AIDS epidemics thrive when accurate information is in short supply. This is especially true in China, where the number of HIV cases has grown sharply since the first reported AIDS victim in 1985. Just over a month ago the People's Daily, the official Chinese Communist Party paper, acknowledged that AIDS appeared to be "sweeping the country," but those trying independently to educate the public still face government retribution.  More

  • A major U-turn in U.S. policy on peacekeeping Afghanistan
    Published September 7, 2002 in International Herald Tribune
    By Mike Jendrzejczyk
    Pentagon officials recently signaled a shift in U.S. policy on Afghanistan, admitting that an expansion of international peacekeeping operations beyond Kabul is necessary. The unsuccessful attempt to assassinate President Hamid Karzai on Thursday in Kandahar is intensifying calls for such a move. Some in the Bush administration called it a "mid-course correction," but the United States appears to be on the verge of a major U-turn.  More

    Tie Indonesia aid to rights reforms
    Published September 3, 2002 in Baltimore Sun
    By Mike Jendrzejczyk
    During a visit to Jakarta in early August, Secretary of State Colin Powell vowed he would get Congress to restart a military training program suspended in 1992 after Indonesian troops committed atrocities in East Timor. He argued that exposing officers to democratic institutions and human-rights values would have beneficial effects.  More

  • Friend of the US, enemy of justice
    Published August 27, 2002 in The Guardian
    By Steve Crawshaw
    By any measure, it should be a historic moment. For the first time, crimes against humanity can be punished and prosecuted in a single world court. Next Tuesday sees the launch session at the UN of the new international criminal court. The signatories to the ICC (77 and rising) will begin selecting judges before the court itself opens for business early next year. In many respects, celebrations are justified. Britain could, however, yet share responsibility for the celebrations turning sour.  More

  • The War on Women
    Published August 22, 2002 in The Wall Street Journal
    By LaShawn R. Jefferson
    After the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. government threw its full energies into combating terrorism emerging from militants in the Islamic world. But it has done little to expose and condemn the ways some states are using radical interpretations of Islamic law, or Shariah, to subordinate and exclude women. The U.S. should be equally concerned about the consequences of these interpretations on Muslims as well as non-Muslims.  More

  • Bush's Court Crusade
    Published August 16, 2002 in The Washington Post
    By Tom Malinowski
    Writing in Foreign Affairs magazine at the start of the 2000 Presidential campaign, George Bush's future national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, promised a "disciplined and consistent foreign policy that separates the important from the trivial." It is becoming hard to square that commitment with the Bush administration's strange and single-minded crusade against the International Criminal Court.  More

  • U.S. hypocrisy in Indonesia
    Published August 14, 2002 in The International Herald Tribune
    By Kenneth Roth
    Following the spate of recent business scandals in the United States, President George W. Bush called for "a new ethic of personal responsibility in the business world." Yet the State Department has recommended dismissal of a lawsuit alleging corporate complicity in violent human rights abuse in Indonesia. Its actions suggest that the administration's concern with corporate responsibility ends at the U.S. borders.  More

  • A Long Way to Go in Burma
    Published July 31 2002 The Wall Street Journal
    By Mike Jendrzejczyk
    Aung San Suu Kyi's release on May 6, though an important step, did not produce an inevitable momentum toward change in Burma. The euphoria that immediately followed her freedom has now faded. But this week's visit to Burma by United Nations special envoy Razali Ismail opens the door for progress toward restoring democratic, civilian rule and basic human rights.  More

  • Is America’s withdrawal from the new International Criminal Court justified?
    Published July 17 2002 Worldlink
    By Kenneth Roth
    In repudiating Bill Clinton´s signature on the treaty to establish an international criminal court, the Bush administration has taken an audacious step. The move suggests that a radically new vision is guiding American foreign policy: that the United States, with its extraordinary power, is no longer served by the international rule of law.  More

  • Justice or Therapy?
    Summer 2002 issue of Boston Review
    By Kenneth Roth and Alison DesForges
    In her reflections on justice and reconciliation after the Rwandan genocide ("The Legacies of Collective Violence," April/May 2002) Helena Cobban asks how best to restore health to a society smashed by devastating violence. Her prescription—substituting therapy for justice—ventures into dangerous moral territory.  More

  • Face to Face With Milosevic
    Published July 21, 2002 in The New York Times
    By Fred Abrahams
    As researchers for Human Rights Watch in Kosovo, we solemnly went about our work, taking photographs and interviewing surviving members of the Delijaj family. Journalists in the Balkans often asked me whether there would be justice for murders like these. I had always assured them there would be, hoping my enthusiasm would make it a reality. But in truth, I never let myself believe that Slobodan Milosevic would be arrested. I never thought then, standing in the forest, that one day I would face Yugoslavia's former president in court.  More

  • Milosevic Insiders to Testify
    Published July 18, 2002 in Balkan Crisis Report Institute for War and Peace Reporting
    By Bogdan Ivanisevic
    Public hostility in Serbia to The Hague war crimes tribunal has softened during the course of the trial of Slobodan Milosevic. But opposition remains strong, nevertheless, evinced in the public's persistent refusal to acknowledge the legal and factual reality of the trial unfolding in The Hague.  More

  • An efficient recipe for more death
    Published July 10, 2002 in International Herald Tribune
    By Joanne Csete

    AIDS in India

    BOMBAY If the international conference on AIDS in Barcelona this week wants to see how a country can spread AIDS from "high-risk groups" into the general population, it should look at the recipe in India.  More

  • 'Protect Young Girls from Forced Sex With HIV-Positive Men'
    Published July 10, 2002 in allAfrica.com COLUMN
    By Janet Fleischman

    AIDS in Africa ravages millions of lives, those infected as well as those affected. Increased international mobilization, particularly the XIV International Conference on AIDS in Barcelona, is crucial, but one acutely vulnerable group continues to suffer in silence - adolescent girls at risk of infection by sexual violence and other abuses.  More

  • HIV/AIDS in India: An epidemic of abuse
    Published July 10, 2002 in The Asian Wall Street Journal
    By Joanne Csete

    Success stories about combating HIV/AIDS in Asia are hard to come by. The United Nations continues to sound a warning that AIDS in Asia may even dwarf the calamity the disease inflicted on Africa unless governments step up their responses. AIDS experts in Asia often point to the success of Thailand's mobilization in the 1980s to contain what was one of the world's fastest growing epidemics.  More

  • Human rights, American wrongs
    Published July 1, 2002 in Financial Times
    By Kenneth Roth

    The most important human rights institution in 50 years comes into being on Monday, but its future is far from assured.

    The US is doing everything it can to undermine the new International Criminal Court. Unless Europe acts decisively, the cause of international justice will be imperilled.

     More

  • Cambodia's friends should get tough
    Published June 19, 2002 in The International Herald Tribune
    By Mike Jendrzejczyk
    Cambodia is struggling to lift itself out of poverty. Its economy is being drained by a bloated military. Investment is deterred by a weak legal system and a corrupt judiciary. The World Bank, in a carefully understated analysis, says the country and its population of 12 million face a "formidable array of development challenges."  More

  • The warlords are plotting a comeback
    Published June 10, 2002 in The International Herald Tribune
    By Saman Zia-Zarifi
    KABUL Hundreds of delegates from across Afghanistan have arrived in Kabul to take part in the loya jirga, or grand national assembly, that meets from this Monday until next Sunday to select the next government. Contrary to the rules, many of these delegates have been handpicked by warlords determined to defend regional fiefdoms.  More

  • No place for despots in UN commission
    Published May 30, 2002 in European Voice
    By Kenneth Roth
    Europe must help end the hypocrisy. THE recently concluded session of the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) confirmed a disturbing trend: despotic governments are increasingly running the show, with the hope of dampening its voice.  More

  • Beware, Moscow could contaminate NATO
    Published May 28, 2002 in The International Herald Tribune
    By Tom Malinowski
    Bringing Russia closer to NATO is a necessary part of building a Europe whole and free. But the partnership will make sense only if NATO uses it to address differences with Russia, including over the conduct of its forces in Chechnya, that challenge the alliance's core values and objectives.  More

  • Indonesia 'Peacekeeper' Plan Sends the Wrong Message
    Published May 20, 2002 in Los Angeles Times
    By Mike Jendrzejczyk
    Indonesia may be the next front in the U.S. war against terrorism in Southeast Asia. But terrorism is not at the root of Indonesia's most urgent troubles. And some U.S. proposals for fighting the war may worsen the problems they are meant to correct.  More

  • Where no abuse is too big to be ignored
    Published May 7, 2002 in The International Herald Tribune
    By Kenneth Roth
    NEW YORK Victims around the world look to the UN Commission on Human Rights to investigate serious human rights violations and generate pressure to stop them. But in recent years the commission has become a casualty of its own success. More

  • Next Year in Tashkent?
    By Elizabeth Andersen
    This weekend, 2500 bankers, businesspeople, and bureaucrats convening in Romania for the annual meeting of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will neglect a significant aspect of the Bank's mission.  More

  • World Summit on Kids: Do We Care?
    By By Jo Becker
    Published May 5, 2002 in New York Newsday
    As leaders gather at the UN, the U.S. has yet to ratify the world treat on children's rights.  More

  • A crisis visit to Burma
    By Mike Jendrzejczyk
    Published April 22, 2002 in The International Herald Tribune
    The world may get a glimpse of what is really going on in Burma when the United Nations' special envoy, the Malaysian diplomat Razali Ismail, visits Rangoon this Monday.  More

  • U.S. the Loser by Opposing World Court
    By Jonathan F. Fanton
    Published April 12, 2002 in Chicago Tribune
    So many nations are violently at odds with one another that reason for optimism is becoming ever harder to find. Yet on Thursday morning there was just such a moment: The treaty for the International Criminal Court received the ratification it needs to go into effect.  More

  • Holding China to Account
    By Lotte Leicht And Mike Jendrzejczyk
    Published April 4, 2002 in The Wall Street Journal
    As riot police shut down workers' protests in northeast China, Beijing's diplomats in Geneva have little to worry about. As things now stand, they won't be forced to defend China's treatment of labor organizers, or its crackdown on pro-democracy activists, Tibetans or Internet users. Nor will there be any debate on China's human rights record at the annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights now underway in Geneva -- unless the European Union, the U.S. and other key governments act quickly to push for a resolution on the issue.  More

  • Missing the Point in the Hague
    By Bogdan Ivanisevic
    March 25, 2002
    Since the beginning of the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav media have been flooded with praise for Milosevic's defense. If you were relying on this commentary alone, you would have to conclude that Milosevic is getting the better of the tribunal prosecutors.  More

  • Indict Saddam
    By Kenneth Roth
    Published March 22, 2002 in The Wall Street Journal
    The Bush administration's frustration with a decade of increasingly porous sanctions against Iraq has led to active consideration of military action. Yet one alternative has yet to be seriously tried -- indicting Saddam Hussein for his many atrocities, particularly the 1988 genocide against Iraqi Kurds. More

  • For the Sins of the Taliban
    By Peter Bouckaert and Saman Zia-Zarifi
    Published March 20, 2002 in The Washington Post
    KABUL -- Achter Mohammed was expecting quite a different kind of welcome when he returned home to Afghanistan from 15 months of exile in Iran. But what mattered to the Uzbek warlords in power in his hometown was that he was an ethnic Pashtun, and probably had brought back some money from work in Iran.  More..

  • Uzbekistan's empty promises
    By Tom Malinowski and Acacia Shields
    Published March 12, 2002 in The Washington Times
    President Bush is meeting today with the only world leader who honestly can say he has won the war on terrorism. Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov, now making his first visit to the White House, is a lucky man. Before September 11, his regime was threatened by a violent al-Qaeda-affiliated group known as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, or IMU, which raided Uzbek territory from Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban. So Mr. Karimov offered U.S. forces a base to strike at Afghanistan and, more reluctantly, a bridge to bring in relief. Now, thanks to America, IMU fighters in Afghanistan have suffered huge losses.  More..

  • Bush Policy Endangers American and Allied Troops
    By By Kenneth Roth
    Published March 5, 2002 in The International Herald Tribune
    The Bush administration thinks it deserves congratulations for its recent decision to apply the Geneva conventions to some of its prisoners from Afghanistan. The decision appears to reverse public statements by Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and even President George W. Bush himself that the detainees in its Guantánamo Bay base in Cuba didn't merit protection under the laws of war. More..

  • What to do with our 'detainees'?
    By Tom Malinowski
    Published January 28, 2002 in The Philadelphia Inquirer
    Thirty years ago, American prisoners of war were being brutalized in North Vietnam, and an outraged American government sought to shame their captors into respecting the Geneva Conventions. The treatment of Americans never came close to being humane. But, as Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) has said of his POW ordeal: "I'm certain we would have been a lot worse off if there had not been the Geneva Conventions around."   More..

  • Building a brighter future for Afghans
    By Mike Jendrzejczyk
    Published January 20, 2002 in Japan Times
    WASHINGTON -- The rebuilding of a peaceful Afghanistan requires a commitment to protecting the human rights of all Afghan citizens, including women and ethnic minorities. The International Conference on Reconstruction Assistance to Afghanistan taking place in Tokyo should take action to support the institutions and programs needed to promote human rights and secure justice.   More..

  • Cambodia: Commune Elections
    By Joe Saunders
    Originally Published as Killing Cambodian Democracy, January 18, 2002 in The Asian Wall Street Journal
    Once again the world's attention is turning to Cambodia as the troubled country gears up for its third election since 1993. This time, it's the turn of ordinary people throughout the countryside to run for office --Feb. 3 will see the first local, or "commune" elections to be held since before the Khmer Rouge took over in 1975, and the first ever that can lay any claim to being democratic.   More..

  • A Dangerous Security
    By Kenneth Roth
    Published, January 17, 2002 in Wordlink - The Magazine for the World Economic Forum
    The US government´s single overriding goal since September 11 has been to defeat terrorism. Determined as this campaign has been, it remains to be seen whether it is merely a fight against a particularly ruthless set of criminals or also an effort to conquer the logic of terrorism. Is it a struggle against only Osama bin Laden, his al-Qaeda network and a few like-minded groups? Or is it also an effort to undermine the view that anything goes in the name of a cause, the belief that even the slaughter of civilians is an acceptable political act?  More..

  • U.S. Must Take the High Road With Prisoners of War
    By Jamie Fellner
    Published, January 16, 2002 in Newsday
    AS THE U.S. armed forces begin to transfer captured Taliban and al-Qaida members to the naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, American officials are sending the public two messages about conditions there. The first message is that the camp will be no tropical resort. As a senior officer noted, "comfortable" will not be a word used to describe the detainees' accommodations.   More..

  • While the West Backs Algeria's Rulers, the People Suffer
    By Eric Goldstein
    Published, January 12, 2002 in International Herald Tribune
    Friday was the 10th anniversary of a military-backed coup that halted the electoral process in Algeria, after a first round of voting assured the Islamic Salvation Front of a huge majority in Parliament. In the name of safeguarding democracy from religious extremism, the new military rulers canceled the second round of voting, ousted the president, banned the front and arrested its leaders and supporters.   More..

  • Court-Martial Code Offers a Fair Way to Try Terrorist Suspects
    By Tom Malinowski
    Published, December 29, 2001 in International Herald Tribune
    NEW YORK If you listened to the talking heads on U.S. television, you would think that the United States has only two choices for prosecuting accused Qaida terrorists: either summary trials under President George W. Bush's order for military commissions that would allow the government to convict and execute suspects with no presumption of innocence, no need to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt and no right to appeal; or O.J. Simpson-style legal circuses with cameras in the courtroom, huge pressure on frightened jurors and evidence being thrown out because the Special Forces didn't read the suspects their Miranda rights.   More..

    • Commentary -- 2001-1999


Commentary
2001-1999

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