Carroll Bogert: Humans Rights Watch

Carroll Bogert, a member of the Human Rights Watch, focused her talk on two key points. One being that people in power are abusing their power and need to be “watched” and the other being America’s role in human rights and how they have both been both beneficial and unbeneficial to help fix other countries human rights problems. America is known as the “world police” and are always trying to help reform other countries and resolve their problems which is why they are leader in human rights, but before they start trying to fix other countries human rights issues, they should fix their own first and then tend to other countries to better respond to their issues. America has both been a positive influence and a negative influence when it comes to human rights issue and the best example to show this from Bogert’s talk would be how the United States was a supporter of banning landmines, but in the processes of supporting this they violated their military treaty with South Korea. This is one of the many reasons why the Humans Rights Watch was formed so that they could find human rights issues and take action to help the world become a better place.  

Bogert really focused in on the Central African Republic and how the Human Right Watch was able to solve the human rights issue there. She began by detailing the war between Muslims and Christians extremists in the Central African Republic, where villages are being slaughtered over religious tensions. The Human Rights Watch was able to pick up on these and use their three step plan to resolve the issue: investigate violations of human rights, expose these violations to the public using many different mediums, and finally using public advocacy to try instituting change. The took the issue happening in the Central African Republic and was able to bring it to the attention of the media for people to become aware of the issue and more importantly the US government. The United States was then able to take it from there and use their assets to convince the United Nations to do something about the issue in which they did. This showed that the United States in this situation was beneficial towards the human rights issues in the Central African Republic. However, that is not always the case. An example of the United States not intervening and being unbeneficial to human rights issues would in Bahrain. The main reason why the United States didn’t get involved was because they had a naval base within the country and therefore didn’t do anything. While the US can be a positive influence for human rights issues in some countries,  it can also be negative influence for others.

Bogert wrapped up her talk by asking the audience one question: what is the United States afraid of when it comes to insuring equal human rights?  This question was very interesting to me and in my personal opinion, I don’t think the United States are afraid of insuring equal human rights. The United States act as the “world police” and want to help other countries by fixing their human rights problems and etc. and want to help resolve problems to make the world a better place. However, I do believe that the United States are avoiding their own human rights issues and need to fix their own problems before fixing other countries.