GJIA: The Trump administration has floated this concept of “forcible transfer” for the war in Gaza. How do you interpret this term under international law, and what are the implications of Trump’s “U.S. takeover” and proposal to relocate Palestinians in Gaza?
Kenneth Roth: It might make sense to contextualize Donald Trump’s proposal with the traditional solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The first option gaining credence these days is equal rights within a one-state reality, stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. However, the Israeli government prefers the status quo. It rules with a large Jewish majority over an endless occupation, which all serious human rights groups and a growing number of people now recognize as apartheid. Although the Israeli government claims that the current arrangement is just temporary during the so-called “peace process,” there is no peace process. The Oslo Accords have effectively collapsed, and the Israeli leadership has little incentive to pursue negotiations that would lead to Palestinian sovereignty. This second option, or apartheid, is increasingly understood appropriately as a crime against humanity. The third option, or the best option in my view, is the two-state solution: a Palestinian state living side by side with an Israeli state. Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to avoid that at all costs, preferring the status quo where Israel retains control and Palestinians remain without a sovereign state.
Trump proposed a fourth option that has been lingering in the background: just as the Israeli far-right has long wished for—to “solve” the Palestinian problem by getting rid of the Palestinians. If Israel could get away with it in Gaza, it would do the same in the West Bank. The forcible transfer is a blatant war crime according to Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Given the magnitude, it would be a crime against humanity. Trump, who could not care less about international law, is openly advocating a criminal solution. Now, the good news is that the Arab states rejected this unanimously.
The only real hope here is Trump’s desire for a bigger deal. Now, he wants Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel. The Saudi crown prince has made it clear that normalization will not happen without a clear path to a Palestinian state, which is also a prerequisite to the United Arab Emirates helping rebuild Gaza. Trump needs to recognize that the big deal he wants requires twisting Netanyahu’s arm to accept a Palestinian state, much as he did to secure the temporary ceasefire that began at the end of January. It is an uphill battle, but a far superior result than the massive crime that Trump has been advocating.
GJIA: How can international law be strengthened to better protect civilians in asymmetric conflicts and enforce accountability?
KR: The problem is not international law. If you look at the Geneva Conventions and their protocols, which are the essence of international humanitarian law, the law is fine. The question is enforcement. I should note that these are not standards that Human Rights Watch and our allies wrote up. They were adopted by the leading militaries of the world as the best way to fight wars and avoid attacks on civilians that characterized the Second World War. The Geneva Convention was adopted in 1949 as a way to repudiate “total war.”
To enforce these standards, we begin by documenting what is happening. Human Rights Watch sends investigators to interview witnesses and gather evidence in these places of war. After putting it all together and analyzing the findings under international law, we report on these war crimes.
First, we are stigmatizing people because nobody likes to be known for committing war crimes. Second, we go to governments that purport to support human rights and say, “you should not be sending military aid, but you should be imposing targeted sanctions on the commanders.” The problem with Israel is that while many governments stopped sending military aid, the U.S. government continued. President Biden did stop sending the 2000-pound bombs that were devastating entire neighborhoods in Gaza—the epitome of indiscriminate warfare. But otherwise, Biden kept the military aid flowing, and Netanyahu, even facing protests, figured that he could just continue.
Beyond stigmatization and pressure from other governments, there is the possibility of criminal prosecution. Appropriately, Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the former defense minister of Israel, have been charged by the ICC with the war crime of starving civilians. Similarly, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Putin was charged with kidnapping Ukrainian children, and four Russian military commanders were charged with attacking civilian electrical infrastructure.
While these indictments do not guarantee prosecution, once you are charged, your world becomes much smaller. A hundred and twenty-five states around the world are obligated to arrest someone upon an ICC warrant. Are these governments really going to arrest Netanyahu? More likely, they will tell him not to show up, and Netanyahu’s area of latitude is much more constrained. That’s what Putin faced when he couldn’t attend the BRICS summit in South Africa.
GJIA: How do you measure the success of the human rights movement?
KR: I open my book with a quote from Martin Luther King about how the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. That is not the case. Later in that same speech, Dr. King admits that the fight for justice is incessant. Governments are always tempted to violate human rights to stay in power and get rid of opposition. The defense of human rights requires a constant effort to change the cost-benefit analysis of repression. The strategies by which we did that are what my book is about. We stopped Syria and Russia from bombing hospitals and apartment buildings in Idlib province, which at the time was the last part of Syria held by the armed opposition. It was a matter of documenting but also putting pressure primarily on Putin via Germany, France, and Turkey. In March 2020, the bombing stopped, and as now the Assad government has been overthrown, we have a clear win.
Other times wins are temporary. It took extensive pressure on Rwandan President Paul Kagame a decade ago, including threats to cut off aid from the U.S. and the UK, to finally get him to stop supporting the murderous March 23 Movement rebel groups in eastern Congo. As soon as that support was threatened, the M-23 crumbled. Now the M-23 is back. Even though governments are condemning Rwanda’s support and imposing token sanctions, these are not the strong reactions we saw a decade ago, in part because Kagame has taken various steps to try to make himself indispensable. He sent peacekeepers to Mozambique, offered the British government to take their asylum seekers, and sponsored sports teams like Arsenal. As a result of Western governments’ unwillingness to condition much of its aid, Rwanda is back to sponsoring this murderous group as a way of seizing minerals in eastern Congo. The European Union has a deal with Rwanda to buy minerals that Rwanda stole from Eastern Congo. There is a lot of Western complicity here.
A lot of times, you cannot even necessarily show that things are better. Sometimes, success is just preventing them from getting worse. One thing you can measure is the pushback from the targeted governments. If they are feeling the heat, you are affecting the cost-benefit analysis of repression. Their reaction is the barometer of the efficacy of our actions.
GJIA: In your book, you discuss ‘shaming’ as a tool against oppressive regimes, making your case with democratic leaders to exert pressure on autocrats to reverse course. How do you think the human rights movement changed over the years? What place do civil groups have in these crises, and how do you anticipate that changing in the years to come?
KR: When I say I shame a government, I am not in the psychology business trying to make a leader feel guilty. Every government today, as a matter of its basic legitimacy, has to pretend to respect human rights. When the human rights movement can document a discrepancy between that pretense and actual practice, that is shameful, stigmatizing, and delegitimizing. Every government hates it. They push back and lie. Ultimately, they recognize that the bad press is not going to end until they change their bad conduct.
International and local human rights groups are the ones on the ground collecting essential evidence of harm. The human rights movement today is much stronger and widespread than it was when I started in the 1990s.
The other big change, of course, is the revolution in communications technology. Social media allows anybody to publicize an abuse that they witness. It is almost inconceivable today, for instance, that the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia was able to kill 2 million civilians in the late 1970s without people on the outside knowing for sure. The greater availability of information and the ease of communication have enhanced the possibility of stigmatization. The adversaries also use social media to spread disinformation, hatred, and divisiveness. It is a two-way street, but it still produces a net positive. We are better off in a world where governments, restrained by the power of social media, are more accountable to more people.
GJIA: How and why did you come to write Righting Wrongs, and what lessons from your long career do you hope to share with readers?
KR: I got launched in this direction through the experience of my father, who fled Nazi Germany in July 1938 as a 12-year-old boy. I grew up with Hitler stories, aware of what it was like for a young Jewish boy to live under the Nazis. I understood the importance of preventing atrocities, not just for Jews but for everybody. The world would not be safe unless there were strong human rights standards that protect everybody.
In the years that I led Human Rights Watch, I have learned that even the most powerful governments care about something. It can be military aid, preferential trade benefits, or an invitation to a summit to be photographed with other legitimate leaders. Being effective in defending human rights is figuring out the angle. Where do we have leverage? What combination of stigmatization plus some targeted deprivation do these governments care about?
What I would take away from the book is that there is always something you can do. That is why I do not get depressed doing this work. The real power of the human rights movement is its ability to shine a spotlight on governmental misconduct. We can assess it formally under international human rights standards, but what matters more is the public’s sense of right and wrong. Everybody has a role here because, in today’s world, we tend to trust our friends and family members more than distant institutions. If you speak to people close to you, if you post on social media, and try to build a sense of right and wrong within your community, you are contributing to the moral foundation that we need to hold the government to account.
. . .
Kenneth Roth is the Charles and Marie Robertson Visiting Professor at the Princeton School for Public and International Affairs. Prior to August 2022, he served for nearly three decades as the executive director of Human Rights Watch, one of the world’s leading international human rights organizations. Before that, Roth was a federal prosecutor in New York and for the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington.
A graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University, Roth has conducted numerous human rights investigative and advocacy missions around the world, meeting with dozens of heads of state and countless ministers. Roth’s first book, “Righting Wrongs,” offers an insider’s view of the strategies used by Human Rights Watch to put pressure on governments to respect human rights, drawing on his years of experience.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Interview conducted by the GJIA Staff. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Georgetown University, or any of their affiliates.
Image Credit: Casey Lovegrove, Unsplash Content License, via Unsplash.
