Human Rights Watch

     Carroll Bogert, Deputy Executive Director of External Relations, works for Human Rights Watch (HRW). HRW is an organization that conducts field investigation where conflicts are occurring. HRW's main goal is to eliminate human rights abuse from occurring or continuing all over the world. They work in 90 countries, and preform extensive interviews with the people of the region to get a first hand account of the accusations of human rights abuse. The organizations three main goals are to investigate, expose and bring about change to an area afflicted with conflict. All of their money is privately raised; they receive no money from the government. Bogert's man take away from her talk was how the United States is a great ally on human rights, yet are also at fault for creating issues again human rights.

     Bogert talked about how one of the countries HRW operates in, Central African Republic, was inflicted with human rights abuse throughout the whole country. There was a split between the Muslims and other religions. The population was around 4 million and very poor, and was also land locked. After a lot of tension the muslims took over control of the Government creating a coup. Once in charge they began targeting christian villages and began to slaughter them. It was turing into genocide just like in Rwanda. The christians started to fight back and began mass killing the muslim population. Back in America, the US ambassador noticed the issues made present from HRW and made sure to bring about change in that CAR.  She personally went to the CAR and instead change and was able to receive the help of France, too. Together they convinced the United Nations to send peace keepers so they could maintain peace. UN sent 12,000 peace keepers, because the US mobilized and spoke out against the UN and ended up making a big difference.

   Bogert also stressed how the US had also been part of the problem and not the solution. The people of Bahrain felt that they were in a monarchy under the United States. Bahrain is located by the Persian Gulf, and is where the US 7th fleet is stationed. While the US had its presence in Bahrain, security guards were just killing and throwing people into jail just for the heck of it. The so called officials of the area had no control and would randomly size people off the streets and either kill them on the spot or throw them into jail. The people could go to prison "for insulting the king" (calling for a republic). Despite the 7th fleet being stationed in Bahrain, the US did nothing to intervene or try to suppress the problems at hand. Bogert kept stressing how countries will find one issue more important than another and leave it for someone else to take care of it, and others where everyone steps in at once.

     Another main topic Bogert kept stressing was immigration, especially in the United States. The US immigration policies are very hard on families and children. If a immigrant child is seized by the Us government most of the time the children get mixed in with actual criminals until everything is processed out. The immigrants are scared for their lives, they need to be treated like humans, not as criminals. Most of the time immigrants are fleeing because of hardship in their country, but once in the US they continue to fear because technically they are "illegal". They are humans and they have rights, too. If there was anything to take away from the talk it would probably be no matter who you are you still have you human rights and no one should try to take them away from you. People have to realize where the other person is coming from before they can judge them. I'm sure that if things started to get tough around here and I fled to another country becoming an immigrant; i know id want to keep my rights with me. Sometimes people don't have a choice and they need to get out. In the end we need to be more open and willing to help people and especially protect their rights as human beings.