Aryeh Neier
Aryeh Neier, the president of the Open Society Institute and a founder of Human Rights Watch, is the author, most recently, of Taking Liberties: Four Decades in the Struggle for Rights.
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2012-01-17
| For months now, it has been clear that no peaceful, even satisfactory, resolution of the conflict in Syria is possible without external intervention. One way to intervene with the aim of securing legitimacy and minimizing further bloodshed would be for the Arab League to establish a tribunal modeled on the International Criminal Court.... read |
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2011-04-14
| Richard Goldstone’s retraction of his conclusion that Israel intentionally targeted Palestinian civilians during the 2008-09 war in Gaza is either not warranted by the evidence on which he says that he now relies, or it is premature. The available evidence is clearly too paltry to warrant such a shift.... read |
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2011-01-12
| Arguments that it is legitimate to make blasphemy a crime have, disturbingly, gathered increasing support, often on the grounds that it is a form of hate speech. But criminalization of blasphemy is a far greater threat to freedom of expression than are restrictions on hate speech.... read |
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2009-05-12
| Perhaps no country on earth – not even Iraq, Afghanistan, or Sudan – has suffered more gravely from armed conflict in the past decade and a half than the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In these dismal circumstances, a recent development has provided a rare ray of hope: the extraordinary mobilization of Congolese civil society in defense of the DRC’s nascent democratic institutions.... read |
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2009-03-05
| Many governments’ leaders are now engaged in strenuous efforts to block the International Criminal Court's indictment of Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. Despite the ICC's inability to arrest indictees, those leaders who fear that they, too, could one day face such charges have good reason to be concerned.... read |
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2008-12-03
| One way to think about the six decades that have elapsed since the adoption of the Universal Declaration is as a struggle to implement its promises. Unfortunately, that struggle appears to be coming full circle, with the progress of the 1980's and early 1990's giving way to the rise of increasingly powerful authoritarian states like China, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela.... read |
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2008-07-22
| Whenever sitting heads of state are accused of war crimes, critics cry out that criminal charges will obstruct the search for peace. But, in case after case - from Radovan Karadzic and Slobodan Milosevic to Charles Taylor - they have been wrong, and they may be wrong again in the case of Sudanese Preseident Omar Hassan al-Bashir.... read |
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2008-04-30
| Earlier this year, the African Union, through the good work of former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, averted a calamity in Kenya after a disputed election led to widespread violence. The danger in Zimbabwe appears to be comparable, and similar intervention is required.... read |
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2007-09-17
| While Robert Mugabe runs Zimbabwe into the ground, southern African countries dither. They must tell him that the time has come for him to step aside, and then take responsibility for managing an electoral process whose result Zimbabweans will recognize as fair, thereby providing the legitimacy needed for recovery to begin.... read |
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Milosevic’s Trial Was Not in Vain
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Aryeh Neier 
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Slobodan Milosevic cheated justice, and by doing so demonstrated the futility of attempting to deal with war crimes and crimes against humanity through international prosecutions. That, at least, is the conclusion that some people have reached after Milosevic’s death in a Hague prison: the fact that he was able to drag out his trial for four years and still escape a verdict is considered proof that the international community is wasting its resources by putting such people on trial for their misdeeds.... read
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2006-01-09
| How will President George W. Bush’s administration be remembered historically? After five years in office, and with another three years to go, some answers are already apparent. Others are emerging gradually. The latter category includes an increasing assault on civil liberties within the United States that now compares to that of Richard Nixon’s administration more than thirty years ago. ... read |
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2006-03-20
| Slobodan Milosevic cheated justice, and by doing so demonstrated the futility of attempting to deal with war crimes and crimes against humanity through international prosecutions. That, at least, is the conclusion that some people have reached after Milosevic’s death in a Hague prison: the fact that he was able to drag out his trial for four years and still escape a verdict is considered proof that the international community is wasting its resources by putting such people on trial for their misdeeds.... read |
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2005-01-20
| The extraordinary international response to the tsunamis that devastated South Asia is a remarkable political phenomenon. Though it is too soon to predict all the effects, some good consequences are already evident, as are some that are troublesome and others whose impact will play out over time. ... read |
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2004-11-11
| If you judge a government on the basis of its good intentions, those who support an American foreign policy that emphasizes the promotion of human rights internationally should cheer President George W. Bush’s reelection. Indeed, no US president has spoken out more frequently and more forcefully about America’s mission to promote freedom in the world. ... read |
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2008-04-30
| Earlier this year, the African Union, through the good work of former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, averted a calamity in Kenya after a disputed election led to widespread violence. The danger in Zimbabwe appears to be comparable, and similar intervention is required.... read |
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2008-07-22
| Whenever sitting heads of state are accused of war crimes, critics cry out that criminal charges will obstruct the search for peace. But, in case after case - from Radovan Karadzic and Slobodan Milosevic to Charles Taylor - they have been wrong, and they may be wrong again in the case of Sudanese Preseident Omar Hassan al-Bashir.... read |
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2008-12-03
| One way to think about the six decades that have elapsed since the adoption of the Universal Declaration is as a struggle to implement its promises. Unfortunately, that struggle appears to be coming full circle, with the progress of the 1980's and early 1990's giving way to the rise of increasingly powerful authoritarian states like China, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela.... read |
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2011-01-12
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| Arguments that it is legitimate to make blasphemy a crime have, disturbingly, gathered increasing support, often on the grounds that it is a form of hate speech. But criminalization of blasphemy is a far greater threat to freedom of expression than are restrictions on hate speech.... read |
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2003-07-16
| Britain continues to be America's staunchest ally in the US-led war in Iraq, and Prime Minister Tony Blair remains unwavering in his support. But his government does have a serious quarrel with the Bush administration. The American President's designation of two Britons to be among the first six of 680 prisoners held at the US base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to face a military trial has been condemned across the political spectrum in the United Kingdom. ... read |
