elegant dinners. now on bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk, i m stephen sackur. across the world, workers are finding their living standards squeezed by rising inflation. for some, it s not so much a squeeze as decapitation. technological change is driving job cuts in a host of industries. kenneth roth in cambridge, massachusetts. welcome to hardtalk. 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 thatjob with a sense of defeat? no, not at all. infact, 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 democracie
oppression are stronger. my guest today is kenneth roth, just retired after 30 years leading the campaign group human rights watch. he s been banned in a host of countries. is it time to acknowledge his brand of human rights campaigning isn t working? kenneth roth in cambridge, massachusetts. welcome to hardtalk. 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 thatjob with a sense of defeat? no, not at all. infact, 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. but if you look at the leading autocratic
declared in five regions, including auckland. now on bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i m stephen sackur. across the world, freedom and democracy are in retreat. almost a third of the world s people live under authoritarian rule. that number is rising and that has grave implications for basic human rights. it s not that liberal democracies can t be abusive of rights, but generally their safeguards against oppression are stronger. my guest today is kenneth roth, just retired after 30 years leading the campaign group human rights watch. he s been banned in a host of countries. is it time to acknowledge his brand of human rights campaigning isn t working? kenneth roth in cambridge, massachusetts. welcome to hardtalk. 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 thatjob with a sense of defeat
forthe trump stump, today president trump confirmed he was totally serious. the secretary of homeland security, working with myself and my staff, will begin immediate construction of a border wall. applause the united states of america gets back control of its borders, gets back its borders. can we go ahead? but, as previous presidents have found, it is one thing to sign and seal and another to deliver. on his second full day in office, president obama ordered the closing of guantanamo bay. but it stubbornly outlasted even his second term in office. his plans were locked up by an uncooperative congress. so might donald trump s wall meet similar obstacles? its obstacle is literary, build a wall. there are a lot of nuts and bolts in the process. first of all, the money has to be appropriated, it has to go to congress, and there is the question of what the physical wall looks like. if some of it fencing, and is some of it a virtual wall? today was basically a message that they a
warned today that it made a loss of nearly £7 billion last year. that is three times more than the loss they made the year before. our business editor simonjack takes a look at what s happening at rbs. a decade of losses. 2008 was the big one. since then, billions of losses year on year. it was £7 billion. £58 billion in for the ninth time in a row, fines and compensation for sins of the past have laid waste to any profits made, and further cost cutting could mean thousands of job losses. there will be job losses. i have not put a number out and i won t. my view is, always talk to our people first where they are affected. there will be job cuts in this organisation. there has to be, given that over the next four years we will take £2 billion of costs out of this organisation to reshape it to be a really good bank. but that is not going to happen quite yet. you will eventually see a coherent uk retail and commercial bank arising out of the ashes. but we re still a long, lo