Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. My guest today has been dubbed

the godfather of the human rights movement, which, if nothing else, is a testament to his

remarkable longevity. Kenneth Roth was appointed executive director of New York-based

Human Rights Watch back in 1993. He only relinquished the post a few months ago.

Back then, the group had a tiny staff and a limited ability to conduct field research.

Now it has a staff of more than 500 and covers more than 100 countries.

In 1997, Roth and his team shared the Nobel Peace Prize for their campaign to ban

anti-personnel mines. But along with the plaudits, there has been plenty of condemnation

too. Countries as far afield as China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Israel

have accused HRW of bias and misrepresentation. Roth's views on Israel have come under particular

scrutiny, not least in recent months when he was awarded a fellowship at Harvard University, which was then

rescinded and finally reinstated after a very public controversy. After his three decades of

human rights campaigning, it seems the world is further away

than ever from a general acceptance and general implementation of universal human rights and freedoms.

Why is repression on the rise? Well, Kenneth Roth joins me now from Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Welcome to Hard Talk. Great to be back, Stephen. It's good to be with you.

It's good to have you on the show. It is indeed quite something leading one of the world's

highest profile human rights advocacy groups for some three decades. Did you leave that job

with a sense of defeat? No, not at all. In fact, I mean, maybe I should start with your introduction

because, you know, your introduction was the common wisdom, you know, that democracy is in decline,

that autocracy is ascendant. In fact, I think it's a bit more complicated than that. I mean,

we are seeing the rise of autocratic voices, you know, the trumps of the world in Western democracies.

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