World’s Autocrats Face Rising Resistance
By Kenneth Roth,
Executive Director, Human Rights Watch
In some ways this is
a dark time for human rights. Yet while the autocrats and rights abusers may
capture the headlines, the defenders of human rights, democracy, and the rule
of law are also gaining strength. The same populists who are spreading hatred
and intolerance are spawning a resistance that keeps winning its share of
battles. Victory in any given case is never assured, but it has occurred often
enough in the past year to suggest that the excesses of autocratic rule are
fueling a powerful counterattack. Unlike traditional dictators, today’s
would-be autocrats typically emerge from democratic settings. Most pursue a
two-step strategy for undermining democracy: first, scapegoat and demonize
vulnerable minorities to build popular support; then, weaken the checks and
balances on government power needed to preserve human rights and the rule of
law, such as an independent judiciary, a free media, and vigorous civic groups.
Even the world’s established democracies have shown themselves vulnerable to
this demagoguery and manipulation. Autocratic leaders rarely solve the problems
that they cite to justify their rise to power, but they do create their own
legacy of abuse. At home, the unaccountable government that they lead becomes
prone to repression, corruption, and mismanagement. Some claim that autocrats
are better at getting things done, but as they prioritize perpetuating their
own power, the human cost can be enormous, such as the hyperinflation and
economic devastation in once oil-rich Venezuela, the spree of extrajudicial
killings as part of the “drug war” in the Philippines, or China’s mass
detention of upwards of 1 million Turkic Muslims, primarily Uyghurs. Because
they dislike human rights scrutiny, autocratic leaders also tend to retreat
from the defense of human rights beyond their borders. This retrenchment has
made it easier for brutal leaders to get away with large-scale atrocities, such
as Syria’s war on civilians in areas held by anti-government forces, the
Saudi-led coalition’s indiscriminate bombing and blockade that are killing and
starving Yemeni civilians, and the Myanmar army’s mass murder, rape, and arson
against Rohingya Muslims.
1 WORLD REPORT 2019 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH X The Dark Side of
Autocratic Rule
Despite the mounting
resistance, the forces of autocracy have been on the rise. For example, Brazil
elected as president Jair Bolsonaro—a man who, at great risk to public safety,
openly encourages the use of lethal force by the military and police in a
country already wracked by a sky-high rate of police killings and more than
60,000 homicides per year. Established autocrats and their admirers continued
their disregard for basic rights. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and
Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi persisted in silencing independent
voices and civic groups and locking up thousands for their presumed political
views. Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte encouraged more summary
executions, supposedly of drug suspects, but often of people guilty of no more
than being poor young men. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán implemented
his brand of “illiberal democracy.” Poland’s de facto ruler, Jarosław
Kaczyński, sought to stack his country’s courts with his preferred judges,
undermining the judiciary’s independence. Italy’s interior minister and deputy
prime minister, Matteo Salvini, closed ports to refugees and migrants, scuttled
efforts to save migrants’ lives at sea, and stoked anti-immigrant sentiment.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi failed to halt the demonizing of Muslims
while attacking civic groups that criticized his rights record or environmental
policies. The Cambodian prime minister, Hun Sen, tightened his grip on power by
holding sham elections from which the opposition party was banned. US President
Donald Trump disparaged immigrants and minorities and tried to bully judges and
journalists whom he deemed to stand in his way. Russia under President Vladimir
Putin continued its multiyear crackdown on independent voices and political
opposition. China closed off any possibility of organized opposition to the
increasingly one-man rule of Xi Jinping. Beyond the immediate victims, some of
the economic costs of autocratic rule became more visible over the course of
the year. Oil-rich Venezuela once enjoyed one of Latin America’s highest
standards of living but today, under the autocratic rule of President Nicolás
Maduro, Venezuelans suffer severe shortages of food and medicine, causing
millions to flee the country. President Erdogan, persisting with large-scale
building projects that often benefited his allies, oversaw a plummeting
currency and a skyrocketing cost of living in Turkey. Mozambique discovered
that $2 billion in government funds had disappeared from its treasury.
In response to these disturbing trends, new alliances of
rights-respecting governments, often prompted and joined by civic groups and
the public, have mounted an increasingly effective resistance. Political
leaders decide to violate human rights because they see advantages, whether
maintaining their grip on power, padding their bank accounts, or rewarding
their cronies. This growing resistance has repeatedly raised the price of those
abusive decisions. Because even abusive governments weigh costs and benefits,
increasing the cost of abuse is the surest way to change their calculus of
repression. Such pressure may not succeed immediately, but it has a proven
record over the long term. Much of this pushback has played out at the United
Nations—a noteworthy development because so many autocrats seek to weaken this
multilateral institution and undermine the international standards that it
sets. The UN Human Rights Council, for example, took important—sometimes
unprecedented—steps in the past year to increase pressure on Myanmar, Saudi
Arabia, and Venezuela. The opponents of human rights enforcement, such as
China, Russia, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, traditionally carry considerable weight
in these settings, so it was impressive to see how often they lost this past
year. Given the recent reluctance of many large Western powers to promote human
rights enforcement, the leaders of this resistance were often coalitions of
smaller- and medium-sized states, including some non-traditional allies.
Significant pressure in defense of rights was also asserted outside the UN.
Within the past year, that included efforts to prevent a bloodbath in Syria, to
resist autocratic trends in Europe, to defend the longstanding ban on chemical
weapons, to convince an African president to accept constitutional limits on
his reign, and to press for a full investigation into the murder of Saudi
journalist Jamal Khashoggi. This mounting pressure illustrates the possibility
of defending human rights—indeed, the responsibility to do so—even in darker
times. The promise of rights-respecting democratic rule—of accountable
governments that answer to the needs of their citizens rather than the power
and wealth of high-level officials—remains a vital, mobilizing vision. The past
year shows that battles in its defense remain very much worth waging.
The Dark Side of Autocratic Rule
Despite the mounting resistance, the forces of autocracy
have been on the rise. For example, Brazil elected as president Jair
Bolsonaro—a man who, at great risk to public safety, openly encourages the use
of lethal force by the military and police in a country already wracked by a
sky-high rate of police killings and more than 60,000 homicides per year.
Established autocrats and their admirers continued their disregard for basic
rights. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Egypt’s President Abdel
Fattah al-Sisi persisted in silencing independent voices and civic groups and
locking up thousands for their presumed political views. Philippines President
Rodrigo Duterte encouraged more summary executions, supposedly of drug
suspects, but often of people guilty of no more than being poor young men. Hungary’s
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán implemented his brand of “illiberal democracy.”
Poland’s de facto ruler, Jarosław Kaczyński, sought to stack his country’s
courts with his preferred judges, undermining the judiciary’s independence.
Italy’s interior minister and deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, closed
ports to refugees and migrants, scuttled efforts to save migrants’ lives at
sea, and stoked anti-immigrant sentiment. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi
failed to halt the demonizing of Muslims while attacking civic groups that
criticized his rights record or environmental policies. The Cambodian prime
minister, Hun Sen, tightened his grip on power by holding sham elections from
which the opposition party was banned. US President Donald Trump disparaged
immigrants and minorities and tried to bully judges and journalists whom he
deemed to stand in his way. Russia under President Vladimir Putin continued its
multiyear crackdown on independent voices and political opposition. China
closed off any possibility of organized opposition to the increasingly one-man
rule of Xi Jinping. Beyond the immediate victims, some of the economic costs of
autocratic rule became more visible over the course of the year. Oil-rich
Venezuela once enjoyed one of Latin America’s highest standards of living but
today, under the autocratic rule of President Nicolás Maduro, Venezuelans
suffer severe shortages of food and medicine, causing millions to flee the
country. President Erdogan, persisting with large-scale building projects that
often benefited his allies, oversaw a plummeting currency and a skyrocketing
cost of living in Turkey. Mozambique discovered that $2 billion in government
funds had disappeared from its treasury.
China’s much-touted “One Belt, One Road” initiative to
develop trade infrastructure fostered autocratic mismanagement in other
countries. In keeping with Beijing’s longstanding practice, Belt and Road loans
come with no visible conditions, making Beijing a preferred lender for
autocrats. These unscrutinized infusions of cash made it easier for corrupt
officials to pad their bank accounts while saddling their people with massive
debt in the service of infrastructure projects that in several cases benefit
China more than the people of the indebted nation. In Malaysia, Prime Minister
Mahathir bin Mohamad cancelled three major infrastructure projects financed by
Chinese loans amid concerns that his predecessor, Najib Razak, had agreed to
unfavorable terms to obtain funds to cover up a corruption scandal. Unable to
afford its enormous debt burden, Sri Lanka was forced to surrender control of a
port to China, built with Chinese loans but without an economic rationale in
the home district of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Kenya came to rue a
Chinese-funded railroad that offered no promise of economic viability.
Pakistan, Djibouti, Sierra Leone, and the Maldives all expressed regret at
having agreed to certain Chinese-funded projects. Talk of a Chinese “debt trap”
became common. The Pushback The growing pushback against autocratic rule and
the corruption it frequently fueled took various forms over the past year.
Sometimes elections or public pressure were the vehicle. Malaysian voters
ousted their corrupt prime minister, Najib Razak, and the ruling coalition in
power for almost six decades, for a coalition running on an agenda of human
rights reform. Maldives voters rejected their autocratic president, Yameen
Abdulla Gayoom. In Armenia, whose government was mired in corruption, Prime
Minister Serzh Sargsyan had to step down amid massive protests. Czech Prime
Minister Andrej Babis faced growing protests against his alleged corruption.
Ethiopia, under popular pressure, replaced a long-abusive government with a new
one led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who embarked on an impressive reform
agenda. US voters in the midterm elections for the House of Representatives
seemed to rebuke President Trump’s divisive and rights-averse policies.
UN Human Rights Council
Against this challenging backdrop, a critical mass of human
rights supporters has regularly risen to the occasion. The 47-member UN Human
Rights Council was an especially important venue. It proved significant even
though the Trump administration ordered the United States to withdraw from
it—the first country ever to do so—in a failed effort to discredit the
council’s regular criticism of Israel. Washington objected to the council’s
focus on Israel, which occurs in part because many US administrations,
including that of President Trump, use the US veto at the UN Security Council
to shield Israel from any criticism there. The Human Rights Council has
repeatedly taken important steps to defend rights in North Korea, Syria,
Myanmar, Yemen, Sudan, South Sudan, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of
Congo—all countries with deeply problematic human rights records that the US
government has long said it wants addressed. Yet President Trump was willing to
jeopardize that in the name of weakening the council because it denounces such
Israeli policies as the crippling closure of Gaza and the discriminatory and
illegal settlement regime in the West Bank. The Human Rights Council made major
advances despite—and in one case arguably because of—the US absence. For example,
the possibility of a Chinese, Russian, or even American veto at the UN Security
Council appeared to doom any effort to refer Myanmar to the International
Criminal Court (ICC) for its army’s mass atrocities—foremost the crimes against
humanity that sent 700,000 Rohingya fleeing for their lives to Bangladesh. In
response, the Human Rights Council, where there is no veto, stepped in to
create a semi-prosecutorial investigative mechanism to preserve evidence,
identify those responsible, and build cases for the day when a tribunal becomes
available to judge these crimes. That effort won overwhelmingly, with 35 in
favor and only 3 against (7 abstained), sending the signal that these
atrocities cannot be committed with impunity, even as senior leader Aung San
Suu Kyi and the army continued to deny they occurred. The European Union
co-presented the council’s resolution on the Rohingya along with the
Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which until Myanmar’s attacks on the
Rohingya had opposed all resolutions criticizing any particular country other
than Israel. And in what may be an alternative route to the International
Criminal Court (ICC) that does not depend on the Security Council, the ICC prosecutor
opened a preliminary examination into the alleged deportation of Rohingya from
Myanmar, using for jurisdiction the fact that the crime was completed when the
Rohingya were pushed into Bangladesh, an ICC member state. With the
Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland, and Canada taking the lead, the
Human Rights Council also rejected a heavy-handed Saudi effort to avoid
scrutiny of war crimes in Yemen, such as the Saudi-led coalition’s repeated
bombing and devastating blockade of Yemeni civilians that have left millions on
the brink of starvation in what UN officials describe as the world’s worst
humanitarian crisis. One month before the vote, apparently to signal the
possibility of broader retaliation, Saudi Arabia lashed out at and imposed sanctions
on Canada for Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland’s wholly justified criticism
of its crackdown on women’s rights activists. (Saudi Arabia’s crown prince,
Mohamed bin Salman, preferred to portray his concessions on women’s rights,
such as granting the right to drive though not lifting the “guardianship” rules
that treat women as children, as matters of royal grace rather than as
acquiescence to popular demand). Yet the Human Rights Council resolved to
continue an international investigation started last year of war crimes in
Yemen by a vote of 21 to 8 with 18 abstentions. For the first time, the Human
Rights Council condemned the severe repression in Venezuela under President
Maduro. A resolution, led by a group of Latin American nations, won by a vote of
23 to 7 with 17 abstentions. This followed the US government’s departure from
the council, making it easier for resolution sponsors to show they were
addressing Venezuela as a matter of principle rather than as a tool of
Washington’s ideology. In addition, five Latin American governments and Canada
urged the International Criminal Court to open an investigation of crimes in
Venezuela—the first time that any governments have sought an ICC investigation
of crimes that took place entirely outside their territory. Other governments,
including France and Germany, supported the move. A group of Latin American
governments led by Argentina also organized in the context of the Human Rights
Council the first joint statement, signed by 47 countries, on the worsening repression
in Nicaragua, as President Daniel Ortega responded with violence to growing
protests against his repressive rule.
European Institutions and the Chemical Weapons Agency
Beyond the Human Rights Council, governments mounted
important defenses of human rights in other venues as well. One was the
Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which had been
empowered to determine in any given case only whether chemical weapons have
been used, not who used them. Russia opposed empowering any international
investigation to attribute responsibility, given its backing of and cover for
the Syrian government as it repeatedly used chemical weapons, and its own
apparent use of the Novichok nerve agent in an attempted assassination of a
former spy in Britain. For example, Moscow vetoed renewal in the UN Security
Council of a separate investigation that could identify perpetrators, the
UN-OPCW Joint Investigative Mechanism on Syria. The pushback came in an
initiative led by France and Britain, over the opposition of Russia, which
resulted in the member states of the OPCW voting 82 to 24 to grant it the
mandate to begin identifying the users of chemical weapons. A Russian effort to
block funding for this new mandate was also rejected. In the European Union, in
response to the Polish government’s efforts to undermine the independence of
the judiciary and Orbán’s implementation of his “illiberal democracy” in
Hungary, the EU launched a process that could end with the imposition of
political sanctions under article 7 of the EU Treaty; the European Commission
acted in the case of Poland and a two-thirds majority of the European
Parliament acted in the case of Hungary. Although Poland and Hungary have the
power under unanimity rules to shield each other from the actual imposition of
such sanctions, the article 7 process lays the groundwork for using the
leverage provided by the EU’s next five-year budget, which should be adopted by
the end of 2020. Poland is the largest recipient of EU funds, and Hungary is
among the largest per capita recipients. Both the Polish and Hungarian
governments have used these funds to their political advantage, so it is
reasonable to ask whether the EU should continue to generously fund their
attacks on the EU’s core democratic values. Europe’s top intergovernmental
human rights body, the Council of Europe, pushed back against attempts by
Azerbaijan’s authoritarian government to improperly influence members of the
council’s Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) to soften criticism of the country’s
human rights record. Following reports by jour nalists and activists, the
Council of Europe launched an investigation that found “a strong suspicion” of
“activity of a corruptive nature” by certain current and former PACE members
due to illicit Azerbaijani government lobbying. The investigation led to
resignations, various penalties, and the introduction of new lobbying rules.
Syria and Saudi Arabia The multilateral action that may have saved the most
lives over the past year focused on Syria. In recent years, as the Syrian
military—with backing from Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah—gradually retook one
enclave after another held by antigovernment forces, many of the residents who
feared retaliation or detention in the government’s notorious torture and
execution chambers were given the option of moving to Idlib province and
surrounding areas in northwest Syria, where anti-government forces retained
control. Today, an estimated three million people live there, at least half of
them displaced from elsewhere in Syria. But with Turkey having closed its
border (after having received 3.5 million Syrian refugees) and the
Syrian-Russian military alliance threatening an offensive against Idlib, a
bloodbath seemed likely, given the indiscriminate way that the Syrian and
Russian militaries have fought the war to date. The Kremlin held the keys to
whether this feared slaughter of civilians proceeded because the Syrian
military was incapable of sustaining an offensive without Russian aerial
support. Intensive international pressure on the Russian government ultimately
persuaded President Putin to agree with Turkish President Erdogan to a
ceasefire in Idlib, beginning in September. Whether that ceasefire fails, as
others have, or holds remains to be seen at time of writing in early December,
but its existence shows that even in as complicated a situation as wartime
Syria, concerted pressure can save lives. The aftermath of the Saudi
government’s gruesome murder of Jamal Khashoggi at its Istanbul consulate
provided another example of widespread though still selective multilateral
pressure. It is unfortunate that it took the killing of a prominent journalist,
rather than of countless unknown Yemeni civilians, to mobilize global outrage
at Riyadh’s human rights record, but this single murder turned out to be
galvanizing. The Saudi government advanced a series of changing cover stories,
each refuted with evidence released piece-by-piece by the Turkish government
(which continued to persecute its own journalists, activists, academics, and
politicians who dared to criticize President Erdogan). Gradually, the United
States and Canada imposed targeted sanctions against many of the Saudis
implicated in the murder. In Europe, Germany took the unprecedented step of
barring 18 Saudi officials from entering the 26-nation Schengen Zone, while
Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Finland stopped arms sales to the
kingdom. Yet President Trump pointedly refused to endorse the CIA’s reported
finding that the Saudi crown prince had likely ordered Khashoggi’s murder,
offering a cavalier and effectively exculpatory, “Maybe he did and maybe he
didn’t!” Trump, like his British and French counterparts, refused to stop
lucrative arms sales to Saudi Arabia, as if an indeterminate number of domestic
jobs outweighed the large-scale loss of Yemeni civilian lives. Many members of
the US Congress from both parties—along with members of the US media and
public—denounced this callous calculation. Africa Pressure from a group of
African states was key to finally persuading President Joseph Kabila of the
Democratic Republic of Congo to schedule elections for his successor. Barred
from seeking re-election by constitutional term limits yet reluctant to give up
power, Kabila had deployed security forces to detain and even fire upon
pro-democracy activists. He relented only after coordinated pressure from
African states—foremost Angola and South Africa—as well as such Western
governments as the United States and Belgium. At time of writing, it was
unclear whether the elections scheduled for December 23 would take place and
whether conditions would be free and fair. The threat of mass African
withdrawal from the International Criminal Court continued to ebb in the wake
of pushback from African governments and civic groups supporting the ICC. To
date, the only African state to have withdrawn is Burundi, whose president,
Pierre Nkurunziza, hopes to avoid criminal charges for his brutal repression of
opposition to his amending constitutional term limits on his tenure. The UN
Human Rights Council repudiated Nkurunziza’s quest for immunity by reaffirming
UN scrutiny of Burundi’s rights record by a vote of 23 to 7 with 17
abstentions.
China
Multilateral pressure also began building on the Chinese
government, which represents a dangerous challenge to human rights not only
because of the severity of its repression—the worst since the violent
suppression of the Tiananmen Square democracy movement of 1989—but also because
it represents an autocrat’s dream: the prospect of long-term power and economic
gain without human rights, democracy, or the rule of law. But the last year saw
greater scrutiny of the downside of such unaccountable government. Some critics
focused on Chinese authorities’ mass-surveillance ambitions—the deployment of
systems that use facial-recognition software, artificial intelligence, and big
data to more effectively monitor the population and predict, among other
things, political loyalty. International businesses also came under growing
pressure not to become complicit in these intrusive practices. The issue
receiving the most attention was the Chinese government’s mass arbitrary
detention for “re-education” of upwards of 1 million Muslims in the Xinjiang
region, mostly ethnic Uyghurs, to force them to disown their Muslim faith and
ethnic identity. This brainwashing effort is not limited to China’s burgeoning
detention facilities: the government has deployed some 1 million officials to
live in Muslims’ homes and spy on them to ensure their political and cultural
loyalty. In response, China faced tough questions from many countries during a
periodic review at the UN Human Rights Council, and a coalition of 15 Western
ambassadors, spearheaded by Canada, sought to challenge Xinjiang’s party
secretary, Chen Quanguo, over these abuses. Speaking to the Human Rights
Council just one week after her appointment, the new UN high commissioner for
human rights, former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, expressed concern at
the crackdown on Uyghurs and called for access to the region. However, having
come to the defense of Muslims persecuted by Myanmar, the 57 Muslim-majority
countries of the OIC at time of writing had yet to speak out in defense of
China’s Muslims, other than Turkey raising the issue at the UN and Malaysia’s
Anwar Ibrahim, the leader of the country’s ruling coalition, speaking publicly
about it.
Immigration and Asylum
In the West, the most
divisive issue seized upon by autocratic politicians was immigration, even in
such places as Poland and eastern Germany that have relatively few immigrants.
Some centrist politicians calculated that the best way to defeat this
autocratic threat was to ape it, even at the cost of mainstreaming its rhetoric
of hate and divisiveness. That strategy failed miserably, for example, for
Germany’s interior minister, Horst Seehofer, whose Christian Social Union fared
poorly in elections in its Bavarian home, while the far right gained. By
contrast, the most outspoken German opponents of the far right, the Greens,
enjoyed unprecedented success. The results of local elections in the
Netherlands and Belgium and general elections in Luxembourg sent similar
messages. But the pushback against the xenophobic response to immigration—and
the Islamophobia that often accompanied it—was not as strong as needed.
European governments, for example, have expended too little energy assessing
policies that have poorly integrated longstanding immigrant communities. That
failure, in turn, facilitates the demonizing of newcomers. Instead, European
leaders sought to close their borders even to asylum seekers, who are entitled
to an opportunity to make the case that they deserve protection. They also
sought to make it easier to deny asylum even to those who do arrive, on the
grounds they could have sought protection in a country outside the EU that it
considers “safe,” even though many lack the capacity to process asylum claims
or to provide effective protection. And the deportations of migrants who
arrived seeking economic opportunities, who mostly have no right to enter or
remain, were often not conducted humanely or safely. Hungary, Bulgaria, Croatia,
Poland, Spain, and Greece forced people back to non-EU countries, in some cases
violently. Italy led efforts to get the Libyan Coast Guard to return migrants
to nightmarish conditions of detention in Libya and blocked humanitarian rescue
efforts in the Mediterranean Sea, apparently with the callous hope that more
drownings at sea would deter further migration. The EU also enlisted
problematic governments such as Sudan and Mali to reduce the number of migrants
and asylum seekers reaching Europe. In the United States, President Trump used
the perceived threat of a caravan of asylum seekers fleeing Central American
violence to mobilize his political base just before the US congressional
elections. He went so far as to deploy 5,000 US troops along the Mexican border
in a wasteful political stunt. He also ordered the separation of immigrant
children from their parents and illegally restricted the right of asylum
seekers to present their case upon arrival at the border. Despite widespread
criticism of the family separation policy, Trump’s political opponents largely
failed to articulate an alternative positive vision on immigration—for example,
one that distinguishes between long-time immigrants who have effectively become
Americans in all but papers (often with US citizen children and spouses and
established places in the workplace and the community) and recent arrivals who
are not seeking asylum and typically have no strong claim to stay. Despite the
divisiveness of US politics, a broad consensus for immigration reform has been
forged in the past, so it should be possible to articulate a vision that
facilitates strong border enforcement while respecting asylum for refugees and
the human equities that should protect most long-term immigrants from
deportation.
Beyond an Anniversary,
The challenges of the past year arose as the world
celebrated the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—as
well as the 20th anniversary of the treaty founding the ICC and the 40th
anniversary of Human Rights Watch. Clearly this is no moment for complacency.
Just as human rights standards have become deeply entrenched as a way of
measuring how governments treat their people, human rights are under threat.
Despite the unfavorable winds, the past year shows that defending human rights
remains a worthy imperative. When governments see political or economic
advantage in violating rights, rights defenders still can raise the price of
abuse and shift the cost-benefit calculus to convince governments that
repression does not pay. The terrain for the fight has shifted, with many
long-time participants missing in action or even switching sides. But effective
coalitions have emerged to oppose governments that are not accountable to their
people and respectful of their rights. With this report, Human Rights Watch
seeks to expand this re-energized global defense of a rights-respecting future.
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