Kenneth Roth is an American attorney and has been the executive director of Human Rights Watch since 1993.

Roth was born to a family of German refugees of the Third Reich. He studied at Brown University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts, and at Yale Law School, where he obtained a Juris Doctor.

He worked as a private litigator, before working as a federal prosecutor for the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He also investigated the Iran-Contra affair.