Pakistan: Lift Swat Curfew for Trapped Civilians

The Pakistani authorities should immediately lift a 24-hour curfew in place since May 18 in the Swat valley and adjoining areas of the Malakand Division of Pakistan’s Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (PATA), Human Rights Watch said today. Severe shortages of food, water, and medicine are creating a major humanitarian crisis for the hundreds of thousands of civilians still trapped in the region where Pakistani armed forces are fighting Taliban insurgents. More...

China: Tiananmen’s Unhealed Wounds

Twenty years after the Chinese army killed untold numbers of unarmed civilians in Beijing and other cities on and around June 3-4, 1989, the Chinese government continues to victimize survivors, victims' families, and others who challenge the official version of events, Human Rights Watch said today. More...

Human Rights Council: Sri Lanka Session Should Focus on Displaced

The United Nations Human Rights Council should use its special session on May 26, 2009, to seek commitments from the Sri Lankan government to address the country's disastrous humanitarian situation, Human Rights Watch said today. "By holding a special session, the Human Rights Council is acknowledging that respect for human rights is just as essential after a conflict ends," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "Although the fighting has stopped, the humanitarian situation is still alarming and real improvements are needed now." More...

Israel/Gaza: Cooperate With Goldstone Investigation

Israel and the Hamas authorities in Gaza should cooperate fully with the United Nations fact-finding mission, headed by Justice Richard Goldstone, to investigate allegations of serious violations of the laws of war in Gaza and southern Israel, Human Rights Watch said today. In letters to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and 27 European Union foreign ministers, Human Rights Watch called on them to endorse the Goldstone investigation and to urge Israel and Hamas to cooperate. More...

US: Deportation Splits Families

Three quarters of non-citizens deported from the United States over the last decade after serving criminal sentences were convicted of nonviolent offenses, and one in five had been in the country legally, sometimes for decades, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. More...

Kenya: End Abuse and Neglect of Somali Refugees

Hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees in Kenya face abuse by corrupt and violent police and a rapidly growing humanitarian emergency in the world's largest refugee settlement, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. Kenya should immediately rein in abusive police and grant new land for additional camps, while the United Nations and international donors should urgently respond to Somali refugees' basic needs. More...

US/Yemen: Break Impasse on Yemeni Returns from Guantanamo

The United States and Yemen should quickly move to develop a humane repatriation plan for the nearly 100 Yemeni prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Unless the impasse in repatriation negotiations is swiftly resolved, the Yemenis will remain the biggest obstacle to President Barack Obama's plan to close the detention facility. More...

Israel: White Phosphorus Use Evidence of War Crimes

Israel's repeated firing of white phosphorus shells over densely populated areas of Gaza during its recent military campaign was indiscriminate and is evidence of war crimes, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. More...

Sri Lanka: No Let-Up in Army Shelling of Civilians

The Sri Lankan army, despite government denials, is indiscriminately shelling the "no-fire zone" in northern Sri Lanka where thousands of civilians are trapped by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Human Rights Watch said today, citing new information from the region. More than 2,700 civilians have reportedly been killed over the last two months, and the number of casualties rises daily. More...

Middle East and North Africa: US Cuts Cluster Bomb Supply

A new US law permanently banning nearly all cluster bomb exports by the United States will end a long period of transfers of the weapon to Israel and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa, Human Rights Watch said today. The measure should spur the countries in the region as well as the US to join the international treaty prohibiting cluster munitions, Human Rights Watch said. More...

New York: Stop Sending Prison Drug Users to ‘the Box’

New York State's practice of sentencing inmates to months, even years, in disciplinary segregation for drug use and possession and denying them effective drug dependence treatment constitutes cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. More...

In Misery, in Danger, Hidden and Unheard

Human Rights Watch researchers visited nine detention centers in Florida, Texas, and Arizona, and interviewed 48 women detained or recently released from immigration detention, as well as detention facility staff and health care providers, immigration officials, immigration attorneys and advocates. The FIAC report is based on interviews, phone conversations and correspondence with detainees and jail and immigration officials. It also includes information from US government materials, newspaper articles and other data. More...

International Film Festival - London 18 -27 March 2009

From March 18-27 the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival returns for its 13th year in London with nine days of screenings and discussions focusing on some of the most pressing stories of our times. More...

UN Drug Summit: Undo a Decade of Neglect

On March 11-20, 2009, the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) will meet, opening with a high-level segment that will set the international drug policy agenda for the next decade. In many countries around the world, drug control efforts result in serious human rights abuses - torture and ill-treatment by police, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, and denial of essential medicines and basic health services. UN drug control agencies have paid little attention to whether international drug control efforts are consistent with human rights protections, or to the effect of drug control policies on fundamental human rights. More...

China: Hundreds of Tibetan Detainees and Prisoners Unaccounted for

The first extensive analysis of official Chinese accounts regarding the arrests and trials of Tibetan protesters from March 2008 shows that by the Chinese government's own count, there have been thousands of arbitrary arrests, and more than 100 trials pushed through the judicial system, Human Rights Watch said today. New Human Rights Watch research and analysis point to a judicial system so highly politicized as to preclude any possibility of protesters being judged fairly. More...

Mexico: Stop Blocking Abortions for Rape Victims

Officials in the Mexican state of Guanajuato should stop preventing pregnant rape victims from having abortions, though the law guarantees them access, and should stop prosecuting other women seeking abortion services, Human Rights Watch and Centro Las Libres said today in letters to the state government. More...

ICC: Bashir Warrant Is Warning to Abusive Leaders

The International Criminal Court's (ICC) issuance of an arrest warrant for President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan signals that even those at the top may be held to account for mass murder, rape and torture, Human Rights Watch said today. ICC judges granted the warrant for Bashir, its first for a sitting head of state, on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes for his role in orchestrating Sudan's abusive counterinsurgency campaign in Darfur. More...

Israel/Gaza: Donors Should Press Israel to End Blockade

International donors to Gaza's reconstruction and development should call on Israel to end its punishing blockade of the territory and to allow needed humanitarian assistance and normal commerce to resume, Human Rights Watch said today. Even after the enormous war damage to civilian life in Gaza, Israel continues to block desperately needed aid from entering the territory and to strangle Gaza's economy. More...

US: Drug Arrests Skewed by Race

Blacks have been arrested nationwide on drug charges at higher rates than whites for nearly three decades, even though they engage in drug offenses at comparable rates, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Using data obtained from the FBI, the report reveals the extent and persistence of racial disparities in US drug-law enforcement. The data also show that most drug arrests are for nothing more serious than possession. More...

60 Kilos

60 Kilos explores how policy intended to improve cities actually impacts the livelihoods of the poor in fundamental ways. It uses waste as an entry point and examines the interplay of widespread corruption, poverty, privatization of municipal services and criminalization of the informal recycling sector in Delhi , India. It was mostly shot earlier this year in one of Delhi's so called 'most dangerous neighborhoods' and challenges many given ideas about development and the poor. A Film by Vishal Bhargava & Bharati Chaturvedi, © 2006. More...

Sri Lanka: End ‘War’ on Civilians

Army Shells and Detains Displaced Persons, Tamil Tigers Prevent Their Flight. The Sri Lankan government should immediately cease its indiscriminate artillery attacks on civilians in the northern Vanni region and its policy of detaining displaced persons in internment camps, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Since early January 2009, civilian casualties have skyrocketed in the fighting between the Sri Lankan armed forces and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. More...

UN: Send More Troops to DR Congo

Urgent Security Council Action Needed as LRA Attacks on Civilians Escalate. The United Nations Security Council should act with urgency to send additional peacekeepers to northern Democratic Republic of Congo, where the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) continues its brutal attacks on civilians, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The Security Council is expected to discuss the situation in Congo on February 17, 2009. More...

UN: Strengthen Action to End Use of Child Soldiers

Ex-Child Soldiers, Other Youth Appeal to Secretary-General on Treaty Anniversary. Former child soldiers and other youth representing a grassroots campaign from around the world will present thousands of symbolic "red hands" to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today to demand stronger action by international leaders to end the use of child soldiers.
A UN treaty prohibiting the forced recruitment or use of children under the age of 18 in armed conflict, the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, has been ratified by 126 countries and entered into force on February 12, 2002, a date commemorated annually as "Red Hand Day." But child soldiers are still being used in 15 countries or territories, including some that have ratified the treaty. More...

ICC First Warrants Requested for Attacks Darfur Peacekeepers

The request on November 20 by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for arrest warrants for three rebel leaders believed to be responsible for attacks on international peacekeepers in Darfur is an important step toward protecting those who protect civilians, Human Rights Watch said today. Repeated attacks on international peacekeepers have severely compromised the effectiveness of peacekeeping operations in Darfur. More...

Burma/India: End Abuses in Chin State

Burma’s military government should end human rights abuses against the ethnic Chin population in Burma’s western Chin state, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Human Rights Watch also called on the Indian government and newly elected Mizoram state government to extend protection to Chin who have fled to neighboring India to escape ongoing abuses and severe repression in Burma. More...

DR Congo: Arrest Bosco Ntaganda

The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo should arrest Bosco Ntaganda, a former rebel commander charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC), Human Rights Watch said today in a public letter to President Joseph Kabila. Human Rights Watch expressed deep concern that the government is considering appointing Ntaganda to a top position in the Congolese army, despite the accusations that he had responsibility for using child soldiers, as well as for committing several atrocities in Ituri district in northeastern Congo. More...

Child Labor Banned in India

Indian law already prohibits the employment of children under 14 in "hazardous" industries. Yet child labor remains widespread in India, despite the country's emerging economic power. At least 12 million Indian children work instead of going to school, according to government estimates. Advocacy groups say the real figure could be as high as 60 million. Image: An Indian woman holds the hand of her eight-year-old daughter after she hammered her finger last year while breaking rocks on the banks of a river in Siliguri, India. More...

Child Labour

An estimated 158 million children aged 5-14 are engaged in child labour, one in six children in the world. Millions of children are engaged in hazardous situations or conditions, such as working in mines, working with chemicals and pesticides in agriculture or working with dangerous machinery. They are everywhere but invisible, toiling as domestic servants in homes, labouring behind the walls of workshops, hidden from view in plantations: In Sub-Saharan Africa around one in three children are engaged in child labour, representing 69 million children; In South Asia, another 44 million are engaged in child labour; The latest national estimates for this indicator are reported in Table 9 (Child Protection) of UNICEF's annual publication The State of the World's Children. More...

Children working in Sierra Leone mines

Child labour problems remain unsolved in post-war Sierra Leone, where thousands of youngsters continue to work in mines. Children as young as seven work at the mines During Sierra Leone's 10 year civil war, children were used as combatants and labourers in the diamond mines of Koidu in the north-eastern district of Kono. With the war over, government's efforts to get them out of the mines and back into schools are proving to be painfully slow. No-one seems to know the exact number of children working at the diamond mines in Koidu, because with every passing day, more youngsters drift into these mines. More...

China's growing underclass

Internal migrant workers in Chiona are paying the cost of the country's economic miracle". Most find themselves denied their rights - shut out of the healthcare system and state education, living in appalling, overcrowded conditions and routinely exploited by their employers. More...

Saudi Arabia: Amnesty International calls for end to arrests and expulsions of foreign migrant workers on discriminatory grounds

Amnesty International is calling on the Saudi Arabian government to halt expulsions of foreign migrant workers on account of their religious beliefs and affiliations.
The organization made this call after at least 14 foreign nationals, all migrant workers and members of their families from different countries, were expelled from Saudi Arabia during the past week. The workers, most of whom had been employed in Saudi Arabia for years, were all ordered to leave the country apparently because of their actual or suspected connection with the Ahmadiyya Community, a religious community which considers itself a sect of Islam. None are known to have been charged with any criminal offences, let alone tried and convicted. More...

South Korea: Migrant workers exploited and abused

Tens of thousands of migrant workers in South Korea face discrimination, exploitation and appalling working conditions, according to a new report by Amnesty International. Many face a spiral of debt and are forced to work illegally because their employers withhold their salaries and existing laws make it hard to change jobs legally.
South Korea is the first country in Asia to protect the rights of migrant workers in law. But two years after the Act Concerning Employment Permit for Migrant Workers (EPS Act) came into force on 17 August 2004, foreign workers still face multiple abuses, industrial hazards and few possibilities for obtaining redress, according to Amnesty International's findings. More...

Jordan: Drastic improvement needed for domestic works

Tens of thousands of domestic workers in Jordan live in appalling conditions with many forced to work up to 19 hours per day and denied their salary. Amnesty International is urging the Jordanian authorities to ensure that the current review of employment regulations leads to a drastic improvement in their working conditions.
Jordan has some 40,000 registered women migrant domestic workers. Many come from South and South East Asia, mostly from Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka. According to recent Amnesty International research, the majority of these women are abused and exploited with little or no protection from the authorities. More...