supervise i mean trump is in the process of attacking the w.h.o. was a way of diverting attention from his own mismanagement of the crisis but you know if you look at for example what happens with say it's a polio war you know other infectious diseases where there is a global effort to. provide vaccination to everyone we're going to need something like that for the crown a virus once a vaccine is available and it's a matter again of self-interest because you know we may well paxson a people in parts of the world but if their whole area is where the the coronavirus flourishes it's going to remain a threat because even in the west can bassinet everyone how realistic are multilateral approach is can i mean if you're if you're just a realist on this because we have a u.s. president who is not a strong supporter of multilateral approaches or human rights efforts for that matter i'm looking at him you know quitting the u.n. human rights council the united states also a history of the band doing multilateral commitments you mentioned pledges to defund the w.h.o. also the paris climate court that i'm thinking about you know how damaging has it

been on the international stage the lack of u.s. leadership right now. i mean look at trump is a disaster on every front when it comes to enforcing international standards or her commitment to international cooperation so he's a lost cause and you know at least through next november that's what we have. it really shows the importance of leadership from european governments and other governments i mean at the un human rights council for example where you know trump abandon it because you criticize just too much in his view we've seen a whole range of government step forward not only the you know the traditional western supporters of human rights but also a whole range of latin american governments when it comes to say on venezuela even a muslim majority states that have often kind of issued these kinds of issues have come to the fore to try to protect grow hinge on muslims from persecution in myanmar so i think there's a recognition that everybody needs human rights you can't just trust the united

states to do it especially under trump and so you know you either abandon the field and go back to pre world war 2 where there were no international standards of this sort or new new leaders have to step forward and fortunately many new leaders have assume the mantle of enforcing human rights global standards whether it's fine with health care or other urgent needs we've also seen leaders stepping forward when it comes to filling some of the gaps in this crisis and i'd like to ask you for your take on that because the country where this virus initiated china has offered leadership in an effort to stamp out the virus how does this change the overall global power dynamics if even democratic countries for example are counting on china for their next delivery of face masks for example. yeah i mean that's a real double edged thing i mean on the one hand of course you know whatever china can do to provide basic medical needs so much the better but the chinese government is not beyond them at all to use those kinds of necessities as

a way of enforcing censorship and you see this for example where there was a lot of media attention just recently to african immigrants in china who are facing persecution and chinese diplomats in africa are running around telling governments you either stop criticizing ups or we're going to stop giving you ate and that's classic behavior by beijing they're always trying to use their economic clout to stop criticism of them to enforce their sensors we all around the world and the only way to fight back against that is through the safety of numbers i mean if governments band together and say you know no we're not going to stop talking about the detention of 1000000 muslims in shipping you know we're not going to stop talking about what happened and why you know we're not going to put we couldn't even see can i mean the e.u. couldn't even face up to china i mean we saw recently in the past week it came to light the fact that the e.u. edited a report on this information in china. in favor of preserving its trade ties

no no no and that was hugely disappointing and we've seen the european union for example they did band together twice now once at the un human rights council in geneva once of the un general assembly in new york. to condemn china's detention of 1000000 we good muslims and she drank so it's doable but this time around when it came to saying you know why is beijing locking up journalists who go to investigate what happened you know why are they were fusing to allow any independent inquiry into the origins of the virus the european union allowed the chinese censors to tell european leaders what they could say i mean that's ridiculous and i hope we can get to you know more courageous that here instead principle on the part of european union leaders then that let's talk a little more about principle can recently. you faced reports that you accepted a big donation from a billionaire businessman from saudi arabia a country not exactly known for its emphasis on human rights this was reportedly on the condition that you would not report on l g b

t rights in the region and your own organization as it turns out had earlier documented coercive labor practices at this particular firm. tell us you've returned the gift you've apologized what motivated you to accept this donation at all you actually would you do what you're describing there is not quite accurate we did accept a gift from a saudi donor on the condition that we not use hughes gift for helgi but he writes in the region but it was always understood that we would continue to use other funds to enforce your rights in the region and indeed you did that extensively including me personally so i mean in retrospect we shouldn't even accept that a limitation on his gift because it was you know understood retrospectively as an endorsement of his bigotry and so you know i apologize for that but we never would have agreed to limit our actual work i know you're pretty right and indeed we never did and we've had a vigorous program defending the rights of people throughout the middle east

throughout that period it never stopped and it never would also believe there was a condition in there in the initial memorandum that you signed back in 2012. yeah you know there was a condition on hugh's money he wanted his money to go not be so if china or comes to you if china comes to you can and says to you i'm going to give you $5000000.00 and i don't want you to report on the human rights abuses in china are you willing to accept that i mean what's your price. we should be clear we don't take any government money at all this was an individual downer and we don't preclude donations from individuals just because they have to be saudi or anything else and we take no government money but what we've done now is made clear about you know what we do except you have to say you know here's money to promote women's rights or here's money to promote rights in africa we want not as a matter of principle anymore except any gift that is limited this is you cannot report on you know x.

type of victims ok as far as we know if you don't have we ever did that it would never do it again so you changed the policy but ultimately you know this memorandum of understanding was signed back in 2012. and now it's 8 years later after the donation came to the public's attention you called it a deeply regrettable decision why did it take you so long to take action. it actually only came to light again recently because it described old former employee is reached out to us and so you know we forgot about it to be honest i mean it just wasn't on anybody's mind once they were caught once we were contacted again we recognize that it is something we shouldn't do and we disclosed it and return the gift and make clear that we would not accept such an exclusionary condition in any as i said this i think is the only time we've ever done that and we'll never do it again ok i want to ask you about challenging situations around the world because israel recently became the 1st democracy to expel a human rights watch employee over his alleged call of a boycott of the country over its settlements in the occupied west bank also in

january you were barred from entering hong kong for a news conference spotlighting beijing's deepening assault on international efforts to uphold human rights how do you have a positive impact in countries that accuse you of bias or won't allow you to work there how do you change your methods. well 1st i'm each of those cases totally backfired on the part of the government so the chinese government blocked me from holding a press conference in hong kong releasing our annual world report where we spotlighted china's efforts to undermine the global human rights system and they're blocking me ended up being exhibit a we got massive media attention when they blocked me and 2 days later i held a press conference at the united nations in new york and got massive attention again so they totally shot themselves in the foot similarly with israel human rights watch has never endorsed a boycott of israel but the reason they expelled our research it was because she had been instrumental in highlighting israel's egal settlements in the west bank

and particularly the companies that are making those settlements possible by providing services like in the basic all those companies to live up to their human rights responsibility not to be complicit in these war crimes so again they expelled him massive media attention more people focused on the problem that had ever been the case before now your question to how do we operate you know we've dealt with governments for many many years where we can't get in it's either block us or it's too dangerous or what have you and these days there are lots of ways to still get information electronic means obviously through his telephone email social media and the like but we also increasingly are using a remote sensing so we we have a partnership with a satellite company where we can actually get a picture of any place in the world every single day and that allows us to see a lot we do a lot of open source research so people post images video and the like and social media we can put it together and help to reconstruct events so how can our lots of

you can follow what's going on even if you can't physically be there but ultimately can and just briefly i'd like to ask you do you ever despair that the positive changes that you're hoping to affect in the world are as allusive as ever. look at my view of this is that governments by their nature are tempted to violate human rights you know it's just it's in their nature to try to do what promotes their political interests even at the expense of people's rights are driving human rights watchers to raise the cost of that happening it doesn't mean it never happens but it becomes more costly and ultimately this is a cost benefit analysis and if we can raise the cost enough by shining a spotlight of stigma on what they're doing by enlisting the support of sympathetic governments we can tip that balance and make it just not worth it to violate human rights and that's when to make progress and we see that kind of progress every single day through our work kenneth roth thank you for joining us on conflicts on.

thank you.

for their government into the. dark themselves privileges enforcement officers the citizens.

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