Transcript: I think one thing that you could say the world is doing right today is that there is a more global perspective. People are, because of the communications revolution, better able to understand and potentially identify with people on the other side of the world. Certainly that process of identification has been absolutely key to the human rights movement. You know if you go back 100 years, the only thing you could have a human rights movement about were great big trends. You know you could talk about, you know, slavery or colonialism – some of the . . . the big kind of abuses that didn’t really change day to day, and therefore you could really build a movement about. But the idea of generating pressure to stop this particular war or that atrocity was impossible because you wouldn’t even know about it until it was too late. Today, because of communication, there is this greater capacity to . . . to see the person on the other side of the world both literally, but I think more importantly to figuratively identify with that person. And I do think that there is a growing globalization spirit which we are doing right. There’s a long way to go. Still many Americans don’t even have a passport. They’ve never traveled abroad. It’s a big country, and there’s often a feeling that, you know, why do you need anybody else? You can travel for 1,000 miles and still only find Americans. But that’s beginning to change, and I think that’s for the best because it will make America a better global citizen; perhaps a more humble citizen, but one that is more willing to live according to the values that it’s preached for many years.

Recorded on: 8/14/07

Transcript: Well if I could interview anyone, I actually think it would not be some traditional global leader. I think for me, what I’d be interested in doing is interviewing an ordinary nobody in an Indian village or, you know, in the middle of the Congo. Or, you know, people whose lives are completely different from mine, with whom I have no contact at all. And I would wanna understand the world from their perspective. And that’s not easy. There are not only enormous linguistic barriers, but there are massive cultural barriers and differences of perspective. And I feel that, you know, I don’t understand those people. And I’m sure that most people don’t. But if I think about, you know, what would be most expansive for me, what would I learn the most from, it wouldn’t be speaking with, you know, another member of the elite in some other country, even if it’s a very foreign country. But it would be talking to somebody whose life is really completely different from mine. And that would be, for me, fascinating.

I’d wanna know, you know, not only what they aspire to, but really what would make their life better. You know where do they want to go with their . . . their own life, with their village, with their nation? And I think understanding aspirations from that point of view would provide very important guidance. It’s . . . it’s a point of view that we don’t hear, because you hear leaders speaking on behalf of these people; but you don’t hear these people. They’re never on TV. You know, they’re not articulate enough to be on TV. They don’t speak the right languages. They’re not on the Web for that matter. They’re probably not online. And that is a part of the conversation that tends to be absent that I feel I have a lot more to learn from, and I feel many others do as well.

Recorded on: 8/14/07

Transcript: When I try to look forward, say, 50 years and look back at how will people consider this moment, I think that the . . . you know the early part of the 21st century is going to be dominated, in retrospect, in part by the overreaction to terrorism. You know terrorism is certainly a real threat, but it is a threat that, you know, pales compared to other huge threats that face humankind – ranging from . . . from global warming, to medical threats, to . . . to developmental threats and the like. And I . . . I think that people are gonna look back and say that we lost our soul in a certain respect in this overreaction. I don’t think that that’s inevitable. I think that we can regain the values on which our civilization has been built. But it is going to take some time. It’s gonna take different leadership from the leadership we’ve had in the United States for the . . . the first part of the 21st century. And it’s gonna take not simply sort of a change in practice, but a real act of repudiation – a real effort to regain those values and to display them visibly in . . . in the conduct of this government to say that rights are something that are not just for other people, but that bind the United States. That’s something that the U.S. government is not used to saying. It’s not something that even the American people are used to thinking about, because most Americans think of human rights as foreign. You know Americans have constitutional rights. Americans have civil rights. But human rights, those are for other people. And . . . and I think it’s only dawning on people that human rights are important because it’s one way to constrain the U.S. government from some of its worst instincts – many of which we’ve seen over the last several years.

Recorded on: 8/14/07

Transcript: There are many big human rights challenges today. On the one hand there are the mass atrocities – places like Darfur or Eastern Congo where . . . where many, many people are killed and displaced. There are highly repressive governments – say North Korea, or Burma, or Uzbekistan, or Turkmenistan – where just the severity of the government repression deserves attention. There are places where wars have become so chaotic that . . . that the lack of government is a problem. I think Iraq is an example of that. So in that sense there are many situations where . . . where violence and repression call out for urgent attention. But there are other, you know, quieter forms of abuse that we tend not to . . . you tend not to see in the headlines, but that nonetheless affect many, many people quite severely. And here I think about, say, the severe restrictions on the rights of women that exist in many parts of the world. I think about migrant workers who are forced to travel long distances, and in a foreign environment often are . . . exist completely without respect for rights, wholly at the whim of their employer. I think about, you know, children who may be drafted to be soldiers – you know physically seized and coerced to become soldiers. Or who have to serve as . . . as domestics in lieu of going to school. So there are many of these quieter issues that don’t get into the headlines, but that are also acute problems as well.

Recorded on: 8/14/07

Transcript: The . . . At a certain level you can say that, you know, because global warming could harm many of our lifestyles – it could actually jeopardize the lives of people – that it would implicate human rights. But I don’t see a big advantage to calling this a human right issue. You know it’s sufficient to say that global warming is an enormous environmental problem. It’s something we need to deal with. I don’t see huge value added to say, “Oh and by the way, it implicates the right to life, or the right to healthcare, or the right to this or that.” Or even a right to a clean environment. I mean adding that rhetorical rights language doesn’t add appreciable weight to the arguments against global warming. So there is a tendency to view rights as the trump card that . . . that, you know, will sort of get you to prevail in any political conflict. But . . . but there are limits to that, and I don’t see tremendous value added on the issue of global warming. If it comes to, say, governments repressing environmental activists, or if it . . . that’s a rights issue. If it comes to, say, governments shutting down the press so that the press won’t report on their environmentally destructive __________; or the environmentally destructive farming practices or what have you – those are rights issues. There are many ways in which the human rights cause can advance the environmental movement or many other movements. But that doesn’t mean that you have to treat every other movement as a rights issue in and of itself. There’s a risk of cheapening the concept of rights which . . . which we need to protect as a . . . as a kind of a core element, and it doesn’t add anything.

Recorded on: 8/14/07

Transcript:  China represents an enormous human rights challenge in part through its domestic practices.  Because it still is doing everything it can to prevent the emergence of any kind of organized political opposition.  So while there’s been tremendous evolution in China, and tremendous growth in what you might call “personal freedom”, today people do have the right to choose where they work, where they live, where they send their kids to school.  There’s much greater personal freedom; but when it comes to political freedom, there still is very little.  You can speak out in certain circumstances; but anything you do that begins to look like organized opposition is likely to face a government reaction.  So expanding the scope of civil society in China is an enormous challenge.  And because China is so big, and thus so immune to some of the traditional forms of pressure, it’s a particular challenge.  But the other challenge that China presents is in its foreign policy, because China today is looking foremost for natural resources to fuel its economic growth.  And it . . . because it is so sensitive about people interfering in its domestic affairs, it has adopted an ideology in its dealings with other countries of non-interference.  So it will enter into contracts to purchase oil, or to explore for minerals with so called “no strings attached”.  It will make these purchases or enter into contracts without regard to the conduct of its partner government.  And the result of that is it tends to (01:03:04) undermine pressure being exerted by the World Bank, or the IMF, or western governments to try to improve the practices of some of these governments – whether it’s in the area of corruption, or in the area of repression.  And so you take a country like Sudan where China has been the principle purchaser of Sudanese oil.  And while western governments have slowly pulled out of Sudan because they don’t want to be underwriting the slaughter in Darfur, China has gone in and bought away, and indeed for a long time was fighting off pressure to . . . being put on Khartoum to stop the murder in Darfur.  Now that has slowly begun to change, and this is one place where I am guardedly optimistic.  Because China seems increasingly not to want to be seen as the supporter of thugs and murderers around the world.  It wants to be seen, it appears, as a responsible global citizen.  And it increasingly was getting a black eye.  Its reputation is getting tarnished because of its behavior in places like Sudan, or Burma, or Zimbabwe, or Angola.  And particularly with the Olympics approaching – a particularly sensitive moment for China in public relations terms – we’ve begun to see some modest changes – foremost in Darfur where the Chinese government has begun to play a useful role in convincing Khartoum to consent to the deployment of a hybrid, United Nations, African Union Peacekeeping Force in Darfur.  A year ago, say in . . . in 2006, China was resisting that kind of pressure.  But beginning in roughly December 2006 and on throughout 2007, China has been playing a modest but useful role in convincing Khartoum to allow this peacekeeping force to go forward.  And I think the reason for that is simply that China didn’t like the tarnishing of its reputation because of its tacit support for this mass murder.  And indeed there’s no reason for China to be indifferent to mass murder.  You don’t expect China to be actively supporting civil society or the rule of law around the world when these are not rights that are respected at home.  But at least since Tiananmen Square, China is not in the business of committing mass murder.  And so it can quite safely oppose mass murder around the world without . . . for fear of . . . of this, you know, boomeranging back and somehow impinging on its own latitude at home.  And so this is an area where I think we can get China operating on a more constructive level.  But any dealing with China is . . . is slow, long term and challenging.

Recorded on: 8/14/07

Question: Are global institutions capable of defending human rights?

Transcript: There are a number of important international institutions; things ranging from the international criminal court, which is a very important, new institution – basically a global war crimes tribunal – that stands ready to pursue anyone who commits genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity. That’s a very important advance, because traditionally dictators could guarantee their impunity by simply murdering a few judges at home and shutting down their judiciary. And then there’s, you know, no consequence . . . no penal price to pay for their mass atrocities. Today that’s no longer the case because they can’t shoot all the judges in the Hague. And so there is this court sitting there, you know, ready to jump in if local justice systems have been compromised. So that’s an important step forward. There are regional institutions – say the . . . The European Union is one which, in my view, is punching way below its weight, because it still has not found a way to enlist the . . . the 27 members in an active sense. It still has a . . . It gives each of those 27 members a veto, which basically means it’s being led by its most reluctant member. So if any particular EU member happens to have a special relationship with Uzbekistan, or Libya, or whoever the abusive government of the moment is, the EU does not exert its substantial potential power on behalf of human rights in that country. There’s a need to get a better mechanism there, which the EU Constitution wasn’t designed to achieve, but that was defeated, and has not been a good alternative put forward. So that’s an international body that could make a difference.

Question: What about the U.N.?

Transcript: In terms of the United Nations, there is an inherent difficult there because on the one hand, its great strength is that it is a universal body. That brings it special legitimacy. But it also then is a body composed not only of governments committed to human rights, but also governments that are sworn to do everything they can to . . . to . . . to stymie the enforcement of human rights. And so working through the U.N. will always be a challenge. There is a brand new institution set up – the Human Rights Council – which has been a disappointment. But it’s a disappointment that frankly, I think, the responsibility for which lies principally in the west. Because this council, if you look at it, its membership is about roughly evenly divided between governments that are committed to human rights, and governments that are committed to blocking human rights enforcement. And then there were a series of swing votes that could go either way, many of them in Africa. And so far the major governments of the west have allowed the African governments to vote as a block, and to be dominated by the abusive powers in their midst, rather than weaning them from those abusive powers and getting them to stand up in their foreign policy to the values that many of them respect in their domestic policy. And so you find democratic governments in Africa voting with the thugs against human rights enforcement at the Human Rights Council. That’s the current reality, but it’s not the necessary reality. And it’s one that I think could change, but is gonna require real commitment from the European Union; from governments like Argentina, and Chile, and Lati

Question: What is the significance of the Charles Taylor trial?

Transcript: Right. Yeah. When you think about a . . . a . . . a poster child for the regime of new international justice, you might think of Charles Taylor. This was a man who was absolutely ruthless first as a rebel leader in Liberia, then as president. And he committed terrible atrocities within Liberia, and also supported next door in Sierra Leone a rebel group there known as the Revolutionary United Front which itself committed massive atrocities – its signature atrocity probably being the chopping off of people’s limbs. After that war was ended largely through the intervention of British troops, a special court was set up to try those who were responsible for the atrocities of that conflict. And the top defendant was Charles Taylor. Now Charles Taylor at the time was President of Liberia and thought he was pretty safe. But a separate rebel movement emerged there, and he had to flee to Nigeria, where President Obasanjo of Nigeria sheltered him for two years. And it took a campaign that Human Rights Watch was deeply involved in to build up pressure on Obasanjo to surrender Taylor. And . . . and in the end, what did it was that Obasanjo wanted a meeting with President Bush in the White House. And here the Bush administration did the right thing and essentially said at the urging of Human Rights Watch and others, “No meeting until Charles Taylor is surrendered.” And so he was then suddenly, miraculously turned over to . . . to U.N. police who brought him to the Hague. So this is a . . . a huge victory. Here is a man who was above the law, who was absolutely ruthless who suddenly is gonna have his day in court. And that sends the signal to tyrants around the world that if they’re thinking about going down the path of mass atrocities, they may be better off thinking twice because they could face the same end as Charles Taylor. Now in an ideal world, Charles Taylor would have been tried in Sierra Leone or in Liberia among his victims. That was not possible for security reasons. Everybody agreed that he had many allies, and that to try him in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone where the court is located, would simply be too dangerous. And so as a result, Taylor was moved to the Hague literally to the building where the international criminal court runs from, and is gonna be tried there; although not by the international criminal court, but by the special court for Sierra Leone. That distance is gonna make the justice a little less meaningful for the people of Sierra Leone or the people of Liberia, although steps will be taken to try to narrow that distance. The . . . the trial will be televised. It will be broadcast on radio. There will be various ways to make it tangible and real so that this momentous step for international justice will also be an important national step for the people of Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Recorded on: 8/14/07

Transcript: In my view, the greatest task facing, say, the next American president on the foreign policy realm is to reestablish the moral authority of the United States as a human rights actor. Now I don’t wanna overstate the case. The U.S. does still have an important voice, say, to stop genocide. The U.S. has actually been an important rhetorical voice on Darfur because the United States does not commit mass murder. It’s not, you know, ethnically cleansing hundreds of thousands of people. So in that sense there is some still residual moral authority to the United States. The U.S. can also credibly promote democracy because, you know, whatever flaws we have in the United States, it still is a credible democracy. But the U.S. cannot with a straight fact promote the fight against torture; the fight against forcible disappearance; the fight against arbitrative detention; the fight against unfair trial; because there are all abuses that the Bush administration has practiced in the name of fighting terrorism. So the real challenge facing a new government is to end those practices; to repudiate them; to hold the authors accountable in some meaningful way; and to recommit the United States to serious respect for human rights even in the tough moments – even when the U.S. is at threat. And in doing that, I think that the United States can reclaim its position as one of the leaders, if not the leader of the human rights movement at the governmental level. That is absolutely essential, I think, in the long term if the human rights movement is to have the power that it has enjoyed in an earlier era.

Recorded on: 8/14/07

Transcript: And I fear that one consequence of the Iraqi debacle is that we are much less likely to intervene. On the one hand there’s just a shortage of troops. You know everybody’s preoccupied in Iraq, or to some extent with Afghanistan. On the other hand there is a . . . no more stomach for military action. I think people have just had it with . . . with these adventures overseas, want the troops home, and are not about to launch into another one. And . . . and . . . And in a third respect, the Bush administration has discredited the concept of humanitarian intervention by trying to justify the Iraqi war after the fact as a humanitarian intervention, when we all knew at the time it was supposedly to find the non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Or it was to attack the non-existent links with international terrorism. But if . . . if we knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction; if it was clear there was no Al Qaeda connection, Bush would not have gone in just because Saddam was a tyrant. But after the fact by trying to justify the Iraq war as a humanitarian intervention, one that I don’t think is justified; because bad as a tyrant Saddam was, there was not the mass slaughter at the time that would have justified humanitarian intervention. Bush has given the term . . . given the concept a bad name. He’s really tarred what is, I think, a very high-minded concept with his fairly base political needs. And in the process, I think it’s people say like the people in Darfur who are paying the price. Because, you know, why is the international community only willing to go into Darfur with the consent of the Sudanese government? You know consent that has been withheld for a very long time. It’s because there is no more, you know, stomach. There is no more capacity to . . . to use military force; but also because people are now skeptical of this concept of humanitarian intervention. And so in that sense, the people of Darfur, or of Eastern Congo, or of others facing mass atrocities are very much paying the price of this . . . this cheap resort to war in an effort to justify it after the fact as a humanitarian intervention.

Recorded on: 8/14/07

Transcript: One is whether the principled commitment to human rights that exists in many governments around the world can survive the very real threat of terrorism that also exists today. And there is a temptation that we’ve seen indulged in many instances to sacrifice rights in the name of protecting us from terrorism. It is a . . . a strategy that I think is not only wrong, but also short-sighted because it loses the moral high ground, which is just what the terrorists want in order to . . . to accentuate the divide to facilitate their recruitment to discourage public cooperation with law enforcement efforts. These are all consequences of ignoring human rights; but it has not been enough to convince the U.S. government and certain key European allies that they should resist the temptation to sacrifice rights as . . . as an expedient in the name of fighting terrorism. So that’s one thing I worry about.

The other thing I worry about is the willingness on the part of the world to make real sacrifices to come to the aid of people who are facing mass atrocities. At the end of the 1990s, we saw the emergence of what is sometimes known as . . . as the doctrine of the responsibility to protect. Others call it humanitarian intervention. But the willingness on the part of governments around the world to step in even to the extent of using military force, if that was necessary to stop a genocide; to stop mass slaughter. And much as I think any of us resist the idea of going to war if at all possible, in my view pacifism is not the ultimate value. There are times when war is necessary, and one of those would be when people are standing helplessly before a government that is mowing them down. And at that stage, in my view the international community has a duty to step in.

Recorded on: 8/14/07

Transcript: If you look back at the United States, it was probably one of the foremost proponents of human rights certainly coming out of the Second World War. The fact that Eleanor Roosevelt was the chief architect of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is no accident. America really was at the forefront of this novel concept of human rights. And for many years it was a partisan of convenience, because it found that these rights were useful to fight the Cold War with; that . . . that they highlighted a lot of shortcomings in the Soviet Union. With the end of the Cold War, there was a lot of question as to where America’s commitment would go. And it took a while for, say, the Clinton administration to find its footing. It let the genocide in Rwanda go without interfering indeed with actively resisting efforts by others to stop the genocide. But by the time later in the decade Bosnia and Kosovo came along, it belatedly did act. And there was a willingness to stand up for human rights even if it was costly. That, you know, seemed to, again, speak toward a positive trajectory. But when 9/11 came along, there was a real retrenchment, because it was one thing to stand for these rights as sort of a beacon around the world; trying to bring the rest of the world up to a certain standard; and maybe sometimes even intervening militarily for the benefit of human rights; but it was quite another when the United States itself felt threatened. And there on the one hand, we saw the shallowness of the commitment of at least some Americans to these values. We also saw a government that was in no sense committed to these values, and viewed them simply as an obstacle toward its efforts – in frankly a ________-fisted and counterproductive way – to try to protect America from the terrorist threat. I think today with a little perspective on 9/11, we understand that this resort to say torture, or disappearance, or detention of people at Guantanamo, or at CIA secret facilities, that this has been a disaster for the fight against terrorism; that it has not made us safer; that indeed it has bolstered our enemies. We have . . . we have read from Osama bin Laden’s playbook. We’ve done exactly what he would have wanted the United States government to do. So it may be that for pragmatic reasons, the American people are going to return to respect for rights. And we are seeing bits and pieces of that in the growing rejection of torture; the growing clamor to close Guantanamo; the beginnings of congressional action to reign in the Bush administration. But I wouldn’t say that any of these rights are secure. And if there is a big terrorist attack tomorrow, I still worry about how the American people and the American government will react. I don’t think we’re yet at the level where the commitment in principle to human rights, which does very much exist in the United States, is strong enough that it can resist the temptation to do whatever it takes to protect us in the face of a threat – which is frankly the way many American people responded after 9/11.

Recorded on: 8/14/07

Transcript: I think human nature is very adaptable. There are certain instinctual identities with one’s family, with one’s tribe, with one’s co-religionists. But that doesn’t necessarily translate into decency toward the other, however that’s defined, even if the other is your next door neighbor. And I think the challenge for the human rights movement is to overcome what are countervailing tendencies toward treating that other as the enemy; as a lesser human being; as somebody who can be used purely instrumentally; who doesn’t have to be treated with respect; who can be killed if necessary. That is also an element of human nature. And I think our task is to expand the concept of community sufficiently so that people are willing to treat large numbers of people with the basic respect that rights require, ideally at a global level – which is not easy because it’s hard to speak of the global community in any meaningful sense. But that obviously is the goal, so that all of us act as if everyone on earth has the entitlement to these same basic rights. But I don’t think that that in any sense is a natural inclination. It’s a possibility, one that needs to be nurtured by building up public morality; building up public expectations about behavior; building up institutions that reinforce those instincts or behavior, and gradually getting to the point where we can, with greater degrees of dependability and expectations, see people live and treat each other with respect for these basic rights. But it by no means is an inevitability.

Recorded on: 8/14/07

Transcript: Democracy – or that is to say the right to elect one’s government; to have the rule of law; to have a civil society – those are all rights issues. In order to have a democracy, you really do have respect for a broad range of rights. It’s hard to conceive . . . In fact almost ___________, if you don’t have democracy, you won’t have respect for basic rights. The real problem though is that many people take a . . . a sort of a narrow conception of democracy and equate that with rights. And that equation is wrong. You find this where governments – you know from Reagan all the way up to the current Bush administration – have tried to promote mere elections as being the . . . the . . . the full scope of the human rights agenda. And if we can just, you know, get a government to hold an election – regardless of how corrupt it is; regardless of what’s done to . . . to imprison the opposition; or to shut down the opposition newspaper; or to get rid of dissidents – we’ll still call it a democracy because they held an election, and then everything’s fine. We can ignore their human rights record. That superficial notion which, unfortunately, tends to prevail all too frequently in Washington . . . that in no . . . that has very little to do with a human rights agenda. But I think a more sophisticated . . . a fuller understanding of democracy is very compatible indeed . . . to a larger extent equates with a complete human rights agenda

Transcript: When I think of justice, I think of something that’s not all that much different from respect for individual rights. Now in this respect though, I speak not simply about the civil and political rights that for, I think, many Americans are conjured up by the concept of rights. It’s not simply the rights that are in the U.S. Constitution that is to say, but also some basic economic justice. Some basic respect for what are known as . . . as economic and social rights in the international realm. But that is to say at the minimum, the provision of the necessities of life – the housing, the food, the medical care and like – that allow people to exist and live with some basic dignity. So I do think that with that holistic concept of rights, that there’s not all that much difference between justice and respect for rights. But I do think to . . . to equate the two, you have to move beyond the more procedurally oriented rights of, say, the U.S. Constitution – the civil and political rights – and look at some of the more substantive rights of . . . of what are known as economics and social rights.

Recorded on: 8/14/07

Transcript: I’m not one who believes that rights are divinely inspired, or that they are, you know, inherently universal; or that they are scientifically derivable. I mean there are various philosophies put forward. I think rights are valuable as a way of respecting the individual; but I think they have to be fought for. I’m very aware that people have enormous capacity for evil. And I don’t believe that there is sort of necessarily inherent goodness in people. People can go either way depending on the circumstances. And so in many respects, I view the task of the human rights movement as building up the . . . the . . . the ethics, the morality, the personal constraints that allow people to resist evil temptations, and to act toward their fellow human beings as they would want people to act toward them. And that is a constant challenge. It’s not something that’s ever going to be finished. So I . . . I don’t believe even that there’s necessarily linear progress or progress at all at any given moment. I feel there’s a consequence of struggle, and that there are forces pushing back on the human rights movement – darker forces that . . . that don’t respect the individual. And our task is to push back; to counter those darker forces; and to do it by gradually building a broader network of individuals, and governments, and organizations that are committed to these values and that are willing to stand behind them. So you could look at it almost as a civilizing task – one that is not grounded on . . . on any necessity or . . . or any objective reality; but one that . . . that does reflect a set of values that could win or lose. And . . . and our ability to have them prevail is entirely dependent on our ability to rally others behind them.

Recorded on: 8/14/07

Transcript: I don’t have a fully formed philosophy. I don’t come to this out of any particular religious tradition. Indeed if anything, I’ve seen the consequences of religion as ideology; as a justification for trumping the rights of the individual. I’ve . . . I’ve . . . I’ve seen a lot of that, although I’ve also seen times where people, out of religious sentiment, come to the human rights cause and stand with its values. But I think that at a personal level, I’m probably more motivated by almost a Contian perspective. I really do tend to identify with the other person as if it’s myself. And I do at a pretty profound level think that I shouldn’t treat other people in any way that I wouldn’t want to be treated myself. And that basic sense of sort of fairness, or . . . or recognition of the human decency, or the . . . just the human being in any person I think is a lot of what pushes me. You know when I . . . when I see victims, when I speak to people around the world, I do have this tendency to identify with them and to recognize that there but for the grace of God go I, and that I should, you know, uphold their humanity if I want mine own respected. And . . . and that . . . I think that more than anything else – which is not so much religious, it’s just kind of a world view – is what tends to motivate me.

Recorded on: 8/14/07

Transcript: Well one of my fears is that human rights will be perceived by some critical mass of people as a value that we can no longer afford. I do think that the values of human rights are pretty well entrenched today; but we’ve also seen that when people feel that they are personally threatened, that they’re personally at risk, that there is a tendency to dispense with those rights; particularly if you can dispense with them against, you know, another targeted group of people; and you feel that somehow by targeting those other people, you’re not really jeopardizing your rights. I think about this in the context of 9/11 where there was a broad feeling in the United States that, you know, maybe torture was okay. You know maybe it was okay to imprison people without trial because, after all, our lives are at risk; and the people that we’re targeting, those are those “other people”. You know they are . . . they are . . . they are Muslims. They are . . . they are people from the Middle East or South Asia. They are young males. They’re a discreet group of people who many Americans felt were not “me”, and won’t become me. And therefore my rights aren’t at risk when I jeopardize their rights. And it’s that kind of willingness to compromise under threat that I worry about. I do think that America has moved a long way since then, and has recognized that the initial reaction to 9/11 was an overreaction, much the way say the . . . we now look back to the Japanese internment during World War II as a mistake, as an overreaction to . . . to the threats of . . . of the Japanese attack on world . . . on Pearl Harbor. So I hope that the nation has gained the wisdom of a little distance; but inevitably there’s going to be another terrorist attack. And inevitably people are going to be fearful again. And so what I worry about is the extent to which those fears will __________ further compromises in basic rights. Because if we lose the west as a group of people who stand behind these basic rights, I think we . . . we risk setting back the movement tremendously. The human rights movement has taken hold around the world, but we have to recognize that . . . that in the face of . . . of dictators and tyrants, the west is often the most important defense. And if the western defense waivers because it’s not so sure that these rights are of paramount importance in light of other threats and concerns, I think the whole movement will be very much at risk.

Recorded on: 8/14/07

Question: How do you contribute?

Transcript: Well I think that the . . . the major contribution of the human rights movement has been to build up the idea that there are limits to what governments can do to people. And this is a very new concept. I mean if you think back even to World War II and the kind of carpet bombing that took place, or the reprisal executions and the like, there were all kinds of atrocities that were just done. And “this is just the way wars are fought,” or “the ways governments behave”. And . . . and since that horrible low point moment of genocide, there have been initially a series of treaties; but more important, I think, a series of human rights groups that began to enforce those treaties not by going to the court, but by building up public expectations about how governments should behave. And so today if a government resorts to ___________ executions, or detentions without trials, or the various kinds of abuses that today we all recognize as abuses, the public responds. They respond disapprovingly. Now that doesn’t mean that you necessarily stop the abuse. We know that there are human rights violations committed every day. But it means that there is a cost, and that cost of violating public expectations is the real strength of the human rights movement. It is a work in progress. It is not something that is finished, or frankly will ever be finished. I think there is a need for constant vigilance. There is a need to always build up a public morality of expectation for respect for human rights as a way of hemming in governments and forcing them to do what they otherwise might not be inclined to do. But I think that the real contribution of the human rights movement is to build that public morality, or to have built it; and to continue to expand it and reinforce it, because that ultimately is all we have. You can have lots of treaties and pieces of paper, but they don’t do you any good unless there’s a public expectation of compliance behind them.

Question: What is your proudest achievement?

Transcript: Well personally I’ve gotta say that I’m proud of having helped to build Human Rights Watch. I . . . I came in when it was already a ________ enterprise. I was very fortunate to have had as a mentor Aryeh Neier who was the first and only other director of Human Rights Watch; but who very much taught me over the five and a half years that I worked for him that it’s possible to promote rights with both a deep commitment, but also a professionalism. He . . . He, I think, showed me more than anyone else has that enforcing rights is not just a matter of being an activist screaming in the streets, or protesting, or the ways that one tends to think about these things; but there’s . . . that there’s a professional way of going about it – that if you were scrupulous in your fact finding; that if you are highly professional in your advocacy, that you can, through the deployment of information, make an enormous difference in the world. And . . . and that approach, I think, has very much shaped the way that I’ve then gone about trying to build Human Rights Watch. And I took it from very much a _________ enterprise, but have been able to expand it substantially so that today, in the 13, 14 years that I’ve been running the organization, it’s now, you know, five times the size that it was. It has significant presence around the world. The reputation is . . . is much widely known. And I feel that we are a much stronger organization – and frankly a stronger movement – as a result of Human Rights Watch having emerged as one of the two major human rights organizations of the world.

Recorded on: 8/14/07

Transcript: Well probably the . . . the most dramatic effect that technology has had on the human rights movement is making it easier for us to disseminate our information around the world. If you think about it, traditionally, saying going back 20 years, Human Rights Watch would issue a report, and we had to physically deliver that report to people. We had to, you know, mail it. I’m not even sure if there was Fed Ex at that time, but there was some version of that. But you know as quickly as you could, you would courier the report to journalists wherever they would be. And it would be a complicated endeavor very limited by expense and just physical capacity. Today by contrast, we keep e-mail lists. There’s almost no cost involved. And we can disseminate, you know, in electronic form, our findings instantaneously to thousands and thousands of people. In fact, just the people who sign up for our list serves to receive these reports are in the realm of 50,000 for any given report. So it’s . . . You know it’s quick, rapid dissemination. Now the news cycle has adjusted to that. And so whereas, you know, 20 years ago it may have been sufficient for us to put a report out on an event two, three months down the road; today we’ve gotta respond to it within a news cycle. And so that’s forced us to speed up. But it’s possible to operate at that speed because we can use e-mail to communicate with our colleagues in the field; to make sure that we’ve brought in the perspective of Brussels, or Jakarta, or Buenos Aires or whatever matters and merge it all together in the course of kind of a quick e-mail back and forth and then put out our response. And so that . . . that speed is a challenge, but it’s also very much a new capacity. And . . . and in the process, it’s allowed us to be more global – global in the sense of collecting the information more easily from around the world; global in terms of being able to build partnerships around the world; and global in terms of being able to more readily disseminate that information to people who matter.

Recorded on: 8/14/07

Transcript: The international human rights movement depends on the media to get things done. It’s not as if we can just go to court and . . . and sue a government because most of the places where we work don’t have courts that are functioning. So one of the important tools we use is that of shaming. We essentially shine a spotlight on a government’s human rights abuses and expose them to the world. And that process of exposure is inherently embarrassing, because nobody wants to be known as a human rights abuser. It’s like being known as a child abuser. It’s just something that is never acceptable. Even somebody like Saddam Hussein hid his atrocities. He didn’t want them known. And so if we can expose those abuses, we can put pressure on governments to change because they . . . they develop a serious public relations problem which can be resolved only by changing their practices. Now the press is essential for all of that. Today in the . . . the age of the Internet, Human Rights Watch can put our reports, as we do, on our web site, and we will get, you know, tens of thousands every day who will come and read them. But it is still much more important for us to be able to put major articles in . . . in the principle newspapers around the world; to go on TV; to go on radio; and to really advertise these atrocities around the world. And that very visible shaming is what governments tend to notice. They recognize that if articles about their abuse end up in the New York Times, or the Guardian, or the ___________, or ___________ or what have you, that that changes global perception of them to their detriment. It makes it harder for them to have the prestige summits that they want with global leaders. It makes it harder for them to attract investment. It makes it harder for them to travel around the world and be respected individuals. And for many, you know, very concrete and pragmatic reasons, they don’t like it. And so in that sense, the press is a critical partner in what we do. I mean it doesn’t see itself necessarily as a partner, because the press usually is in the business of just objectively reporting. But if we can make news by exposing abuses that are not widely known; and if we can do it accurately, and carefully, and reliably, the press will report on what we do. And they thus play a role in the shaming process that’s absolutely essential.

Recorded on: 8/14/07