Event: In conversation with Kenneth Roth, The Politics of Fear

Join Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth as he discusses the politics of fear and how fear drove global developments of 2015.

The estimated one million asylum seekers who have fled to Europe by sea in the past year are among the more than 60 million people now displaced by war or repression — the highest figure since World War II. The biggest driving force recently has been the brutal conflict in Syria, due in part to atrocities committed by ISIS and other armed groups but foremost to Bashar al-Assad’s government indiscriminately attacking civilian population centres. The fear of what an influx of asylum seekers could mean for their societies led many governments in Europe and elsewhere to close their gates.
 
Meanwhile, political and economic pressures have led authoritarian governments to fret about the combination of civil society and social media. Civil society is under more aggressive attack than at any time in recent memory. Governments around the world have begun working to silence civil society by depriving them of their right to seek funding abroad and censoring their use of social media.
 
As the global community becomes more connected — as travel and communication become easier — it is important to recognise that human rights issues rarely present themselves in the isolation of a single country. Atrocities in Syria or Afghanistan spark refugee crises in Europe. Europe’s response, or lack thereof, affects the ability to build societies elsewhere that respect people of different cultures, religion, and sexual orientation.

Kenneth Roth is the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, one of the world’s leading international human rights organisations, which operates in more than 90 countries. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch in 1987, Roth served as a federal prosecutor in New York and for the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington, DC. A graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University, Roth has conducted numerous human rights investigations and missions around the world. He has written extensively on a wide range of human rights abuses, devoting special attention to issues of international justice, counterterrorism, the foreign policies of the major powers, and the work of the United Nations.