"It’s possible for governments to walk and chew gum at the same time." That's Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth’s advice to the Dutch government when it comes to pressuring other governments on human rights abuses, while at the same time promoting trade with that same country.

On Thursday Mr Roth was in the Netherlands, where he met with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal and took part in a discussion at the cultural and intellectual centre De Balie in Amsterdam.

One year ago, Mr Roth wrote that he decried "the failure of the expected champions of human rights to respond to the problem, defend those people and organizations struggling for human rights, and stand up firmly against abusive governments."

Meaningless and fruitless
He said it was shameful when governments that should be promoting human rights fail to do so:

"Defending human rights is rarely convenient. It may sometimes interfere with other governmental interests. But if governments want to pursue those interests instead of human rights, they should at least have the courage to admit it, instead of hiding behind meaningless dialogues and fruitless quests for cooperation." Human Rights Watch World Report 2011

He could have been speaking directly to the Dutch government, which had just taken power at the time. The current cabinet under Prime Minister Mark Rutte has taken a step back from the Netherlands' historic role in promoting human rights, saying the priority now lies in promoting Dutch trading interests.

Receptor approach
A year later, Mr Roth is willing to give Mr Rutte and his foreign minister, Uri Rosenthal, the benefit of the doubt.

"What was interesting about the meeting today was how much they went out of their way to dispel that view and wanted to reinforce that human rights are still important to them."

Try as they might, the Dutch leaders were not able to entirely remove Mr Roth’s uncertainties. Specifically, the Human Rights Watch director is concerned about the so-called receptor approach to promoting human rights. This is an attempt to overcome the perceived Western bias in the concept of universal human rights. It is being developed in partnership by a Dutch professor and a Chinese professor, and is championed by Minister Rosenthal.

The essence of the receptor approach is that foreign governments should be given the leeway to abide by human rights standards in their own way, according to their own traditions, and through their own institutions. This is a new and still developing concept, and has already raised some questions in the Dutch parliament as to how effective it will turn out to be.

Unacceptable
Mr Roth says it is too early to judge how the receptor approach will work. And his conversation with Mr Rosenthal raised as many questions as it answered. He says at one point Mr Rosenthal defined the approach to mean governments must  "practice what they preach" and live up to their commitments. But at another point, Mr Rosenthal told Mr Roth that a government should be able to abide by its own traditions.

Mr Roth finds this second reasoning unacceptable, since in many cases, traditions have not proven compatible with modern human rights standards.

"I hope our conversation today helped sharpen his thinking so that he does reinforce international standards rather than come up with a novel excuse for ignoring them."

RNW asked the foreign minister for his thoughts on the meeting. Mr Rosenthal was not available to comment.

Tolerance
As for the domestic situation, Kenneth Roth expressed concern about the rise of intolerance in Europe in general and in the Netherlands in particular. Without mentioning the anti-Islam political Geert Wilders by name, Mr Roth called it an ironic rationale that you can be intolerant toward a group or a religion in the name of tolerance.

Some politicians, he went on, pursue policies intolerant of Islam on the basis that Islam itself is intolerant towards women or homosexuals. He says, in the first place, this is a caricature of Islam and does not represent the many variations in the religion. But there's another principle at stake here as well.

"You cannot build a politics of tolerance based on intolerance. It’s worrying when these political traditions gain ascendancy."

Trained as a lawyer, Kenneth Roth has worked for Human Rights Watch since 1987. A week ago, he was in Cairo to present the annual Human Rights Watch World Report, with an emphasis this year on the uprisings in the Arab world. He squeezed in a visit to the Netherlands between participating in the Davos conference last week and the Munich Conference on Security Policy this weekend.

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