Strategic Blackmail with Infinite Compassion

Last night, we were invited to an evening with Ken Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch.

Human Rights Watch is dedicated to protecting the human rights of people around the world. We stand with victims and activists to prevent discrimination, to uphold political freedom, to protect people from inhumane conduct in wartime, and to bring offenders to justice. We investigate and expose human rights violations and hold abusers accountable. We challenge governments and those who hold power to end abusive practices and respect international human rights law. We enlist the public and the international community to support the cause of human rights for all.

Ken Roth is a former litigator and federal prosecuter, who has dedicated his energy to the Human Rights cause over the last two decades.

He explained HRW's mission, methods, and results in an engaging talk. A recent victory was described eloquently.

A Belgian judge has issued an international arrest warrant charging Chads exiled former president, Hissène Habré, with human rights crimes committed during his 1982-1990 rule. Habré lives in exile in Senegal, where he was indicted over five years ago before courts ruled that he could not be tried there. The Belgian warrant marks a turning point in the long effort to bring Habré to justice, and should lead to his extradition from Senegal to Belgium to stand trial. This man, in his days, killed tens of thousands of people, until Souleymane Guengueng, a modest and deeply religious civil servant who watched hundreds of his cellmates perish from torture and disease during two years in Habrés prisons, took an oath before God that if he ever got out of jail alive, he would bring his tormentors to justice.

But it was the methods that he described that were the most compelling.

In a nutshell, HRW uses strategic blackmail to arm-twist governments and powers to get them to cooperate, and to put a stop to unacceptable ways. No government wants to be publicly accused as a human rights violator. HRW has tremendous credibility with the world media for telling it as it is. Their reports are authentic, generated by researchers on the field, at considerable personal risk. They have the ability to create front page headlines in all major newspapers worldwide.

I was impressed by the combination of ruthlessness and killer instinct and getting the job done focus, set in the context of immense kindness.

It was still a rare, warm San Francisco night when we came out. With a sigh I thought to myself: Such, I hope, would be the anatomy of leadership in the years to come.

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