Kenneth Roth

Kenneth Roth has been the executive director of Human Rights Watch since 1993. Human Rights Watch investigates, reports on and seeks to curb human rights abuses in some 70 countries. From 1987 to 1993, Mr. Roth served as deputy director of the organization.

Previously, he was a federal prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York and the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington. He also worked in private practice as a litigator.

Mr. Roth has conducted human rights investigations around the globe, writing over 80 articles and chapters in such publications as the International Herald Tribune. He also regularly appears in the major media and speaks to audiences around the world.

A graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University, Mr. Roth was drawn to the human rights cause in part by his father's experience fleeing Nazi Germany in 1938. In his thirteen years as executive director of Human Rights Watch, the organization has quadrupled in size, greatly expanding its geographic reach and programming.