Approximately 20 years after initially coming to international attention, an estimated 20 million people in Bangladesh – mostly rural poor – still drink water contaminated over the national standard.
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Boko Haram’s attacks on schools, students and teachers in northeast Nigeria have had a devastating impact on education. The conflict has left nearly one million children with little or no access to...
Sudanese security forces have used sexual violence, intimidation, and other forms of abuse, to silence female human rights defenders across the country. The government should investigate all allege...
Child marriage in Africa often ends a girl’s education, exposes her to domestic violence and grave health risks from early childbearing and HIV, and traps her in poverty, Human Rights Watch said to...
Climate change and regional development projects are threatening the health and livelihood of indigenous peoples in the Turkana region of northwest Kenya.
(Nairobi, September 28, 2015) – Mobs in Kenya’s coastal region have repeatedly attacked people based on their sexual orientation and gender identity, PEMA Kenya and Human Rights Watch said in a rep...
(Nairobi, September 24, 2015) – The Rwandan authorities are arbitrarily arresting and unlawfully holding some of the country’s most vulnerable people in an unofficial detention center, Human Rights...
(Washington, DC, September 17, 2015) – Gambia’s government commits serious human rights violations against perceived critics and political opponents, perpetuating a climate of fear and repression, ...
(Nairobi, September 2, 2015) – A Sudanese government special force has gone on two sprees of killings and mass rape of civilians in dozens of Darfur villages and towns since October 2014, Human Rig...
(The Hague, August 27, 2015) – The trial of the military commander Bosco Ntaganda for grave crimes in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is scheduled to begin on September 2, 2015, at the Interna...
In 2013, the Dominican Constitutional Tribunal retroactively removed citizenship from tens of thousands of Dominicans. Most of them are of Haitian descent – a historically marginalized community. T...
(Buenaventura, March 4, 2015) Paramilitary successor groups are abducting, “disappearing,” and dismembering residents of the mostly Afro-Colombian port of Buenaventura, despite government measures ...
(Mexico Cite, October 24, 2014) Tens of thousands of patients with terminal illnesses in Mexico suffer unnecessarily from severe pain and other symptoms because they cannot access adequate end-of-l...
(Kingston, October 21, 2014) LGBT Jamaicans are vulnerable to both physical and sexual violence and many live in constant fear. They are taunted, threatened, fired from their jobs, thrown out of th...
Mike Wilson, a volunteer with the Tucson, Arizona-based Humane Borders, places containers of water in the desert in the hope of preventing more migra...
Robin Reineke, director of the Colibrí Center for Human Rights, holds the personal effects of unidentified border crossers. Such personal effects are...
Angie and Peter Kim came to the United States from South Korea with their parents when they were 9 and 7 years old respectively. According to them, t...
Fermina Lopez Cash, a 47-year-old woman from Guatemala, sits in her home with a photo of her 13-year-old son, Omar, who died in July 2010 in the Ariz...
Marta Garcia left Mexico for the United States more than 20 years ago, settling in California with her husband and her three children, all US citizen...
In 2010, border guards beat and shocked Anastasio Hernandez Rojas with a stun gun at the San Ysidro port of entry near San Diego, California. He died...
(November 17, 2015) More than 800,000 asylum seekers and migrants have arrived in Europe by sea in 2015, with most traveling onward to northern and western EU countries. According to UNHCR, the Uni...
More than 400,000 Syrian refugee children living in Turkey are not attending school. While the Turkish government has been generous in its response toward the Syrian refugee crisis, Turkey has stru...
Women suffering domestic violence in Kyrgyzstan lack adequate protection and access to justice due to insufficient police and judicial response. The government is doing too little to provide shelte...
September 11, 2015 - Migrants and asylum seekers are being held in abysmal conditions in the two Röszke migrant detention centers on the Serbian border, Human Rights Watch said today after obtaini...
Thousands of patients with advanced cancer in Armenia suffer from avoidable, severe pain every year because they cannot get adequate pain medications. While effective, safe, and inexpensive pain me...
(Moscow, June 18, 2015) – The government’s response to a decade-long insurgency in Dagestan, a southern Russian republic, has been marked by serious human rights violations, Human Rights Watch said...
Police in Athens frequently harass and abuse homeless people, people who use drugs, and sex workers. Police stops and arbitrary detention of people who live or spend considerable amounts of time on...
On May 13, 2005, government forces opened fire on thousands of mostly peaceful protesters in the central square in the town of Andijan, a city in the Fergana Valley in eastern Uzbekistan. The prote...
The European Union (EU) should act immediately to prevent further deaths at sea, Human Rights Watch said. As many as 700 migrants and asylum seekers are feared dead in a single shipwreck in the Med...
(Berlin) – Azerbaijan’s international partners should insist on the release of wrongfully detained and imprisoned critics as the country prepares to host the first European Games, Human Rights Watc...
Government and Russia-backed rebel forces repeatedly used cluster munitions in eastern Ukraine in January and February, 2015, killing at least 13 civilians, including at least one child. The use of...
(New York, September 22, 2015)—As Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in Washington for a state visit, Human Rights Watch urged United States President Barack Obama to welcome independent civil so...
(Washington, DC, June 22, 2015) The World Bank Group has done little to prevent or dissuade governments from intimidating critics of the projects it funds, or monitor for reprisals. Governments and...
Garment workers in Bangladesh face poor working conditions and anti-union tactics by employers including assaults on union organizers. In the two years since more than 1,100 workers died in the cat...
(Phnom Penh, March 12, 2015) – The Cambodian government is failing to protect garment workers who are producing for international apparel brands from serious labor rights abuses. The predominantly ...
(Kabul, January 20, 2015) Violence and threats against Afghanistan’s journalists by the government and security forces are increasing. These attacks put at risk the gains in media freedom in Afghan...
(Bangkok, December 15, 2014) The Thai government has failed to clean up toxic lead in a stream in western Thailand, threatening hundreds of families with serious and irreversible health problems. T...
(New Delhi, December 3, 2015) - Women and girls with disabilities in India are forced into mental hospitals and institutions, where they face unsanitary conditions, risk physical and sexual violenc...
Approximately 20 years after initially coming to international attention, an estimated 20 million people in Bangladesh – mostly rural poor – still drink water contaminated over the national standard.
Louisiana fails to provide basic HIV services to thousands of inmates in parish jails, endangering the health of individuals and the communities to which they return. Only a handful of the state’s ...
People with psychosocial disabilities (mental health conditions) in Indonesia are shackled or forced into institutions where they often face physical and sexual violence, involuntary treatment incl...
(Washington, DC, December 9, 2015) – The United States government and tobacco companies are failing to protect teenage children from hazardous work in tobacco farming, Human Rights Watch said today...
Climate change and regional development projects are threatening the health and livelihood of indigenous peoples in the Turkana region of northwest Kenya.
Thousands of patients with advanced cancer in Armenia suffer from avoidable, severe pain every year because they cannot get adequate pain medications. While effective, safe, and inexpensive pain me...
(Bangkok, December 15, 2014) The Thai government has failed to clean up toxic lead in a stream in western Thailand, threatening hundreds of families with serious and irreversible health problems. T...
(Mexico Cite, October 24, 2014) Tens of thousands of patients with terminal illnesses in Mexico suffer unnecessarily from severe pain and other symptoms because they cannot access adequate end-of-l...
(Lusaka, July 15, 2014) The nearly two million people with disabilities in Zambia face significant barriers to HIV prevention, testing, and treatment. While the Zambian government has made signific...
(Nairobi, June 24, 2014) Thousands of people in a poor urban district outside Mombasa face serious health consequences from toxic lead from a battery recycling plant. The crisis is the result of th...
(Nairobi, September 28, 2015) – Mobs in Kenya’s coastal region have repeatedly attacked people based on their sexual orientation and gender identity, PEMA Kenya and Human Rights Watch said in a rep...
(Moscow - December 15, 2014 ) – Russian authorities have failed in their obligation to prevent and prosecute homophobic violence. Growing numbers of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) p...
(Kingston, October 21, 2014) LGBT Jamaicans are vulnerable to both physical and sexual violence and many live in constant fear. They are taunted, threatened, fired from their jobs, thrown out of th...
(Moscow, February 4, 2014) -- The Russian authorities need to address a deteriorating situation of widespread and concerted abuse against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people and ac...
(Bishkek, January 29, 2014) -- Police in Kyrgyzstan have extorted, threatened, arbitrarily detained, beaten and sexually abused gay and bisexual men. Although consensual sex between men was decrimi...
(Banjul, October 21, 2013) Southern Africa's Anglican archbishop calls for an end to violence and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. "Respect the gift of differe...
(Dar es Salaam, June 18, 2013) -- Tanzanians who are most at risk of HIV face widespread police abuse and often can't get help when they are victims of crime, Human Rights Watch and the Wake Up and...
(Yaoundé -- Thursday, March 21, 2013) Cameroon prosecutes people for consensual same-sex conduct more aggressively than almost any country in the world, four human rights organizations said in a re...
(Nairobi, February 13, 2013) -- The government of Cameroon should immediately take action against a series of death threats made over the last four months to two lawyers who represent clients accus...
(Berlin, December 18) -- The Ukrainian government should condemn homophobic speech and attacks on a peaceful protest in Kiev on December 8, 2012, Human Rights Watch said today. The rally by lesbian...
Saudi Arabia-led coalition airstrikes using United States-supplied bombs killed at least 97 civilians, including 25 children, in northwestern Yemen on March 15, 2016. The two strikes, on a crowded ...
The enforcement of the country’s draconian drug law sends thousands of Tunisians to prison each year merely for consuming or possessing small quantities of cannabis for personal use. Tunisian autho...
(Jerusalem) – Businesses should stop operating in, financing, servicing, or trading with Israeli settlements in order to comply with their human rights responsibilities, Human Rights Watch said in ...
(Beirut, January 12, 2016) – Lebanese authorities are imposing regulations that effectively bar many Syrian refugees from renewing their residency permits, heightening risks of exploitation and abu...
"If the Dead Could Speak" reveals some of the human stories behind the more than 28,000 photos of deaths in government custody that were smuggled out of Syria and first came to public attention in ...
The Saudi Arabia-led coalition carrying out attacks against the Houthis in Yemen has failed to investigate its apparently unlawful airstrikes that have killed hundreds of civilians. The United Stat...
Bahraini security forces are torturing detainees during interrogation. Institutions set up after 2011 to receive and investigate complaints lack independence and transparency.
(November 17, 2015) More than 800,000 asylum seekers and migrants have arrived in Europe by sea in 2015, with most traveling onward to northern and western EU countries. According to UNHCR, the Uni...
More than 400,000 Syrian refugee children living in Turkey are not attending school. While the Turkish government has been generous in its response toward the Syrian refugee crisis, Turkey has stru...
Houthi forces and allied forces loyal to the country’s former president have repeatedly fired mortar shells and artillery rockets indiscriminately into populated neighborhoods in the southern Yemen...
(Beirut, September 22, 2015) — The Egyptian military’s mass home demolitions and forced eviction of about 3,200 families in the Sinai Peninsula over the past two years violated international law.
Louisiana fails to provide basic HIV services to thousands of inmates in parish jails, endangering the health of individuals and the communities to which they return. Only a handful of the state’s ...
(Washington, DC, December 9, 2015) – The United States government and tobacco companies are failing to protect teenage children from hazardous work in tobacco farming, Human Rights Watch said today...
Obama administration claims that legal obstacles prevent criminal investigations into torture by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are unpersuasive, and risk leaving a legacy of torture as a po...
From 2007 to 2012, over a quarter of a million non-citizens, including lawful permanent residents, were deported from the United States after a drug conviction. Many of these deportations involved ...
(Washington, DC - May 18, 2015) – US military service members who report sexual assault frequently experience retaliation that goes unpunished, Human Rights Watch said. https://www.hrw.org/news/201...
Jail and prison staff throughout the United States have used unnecessary, excessive, and even malicious force against prisoners with mental disabilities. Correctional staff have deluged prisoners w...
(December 9, 2014) “The Senate report summary should forever put to rest CIA denials that it engaged in torture, which is criminal and can never be justified,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director...
Mike Wilson, a volunteer with the Tucson, Arizona-based Humane Borders, places containers of water in the desert in the hope of preventing more migra...
Robin Reineke, director of the Colibrí Center for Human Rights, holds the personal effects of unidentified border crossers. Such personal effects are...
Angie and Peter Kim came to the United States from South Korea with their parents when they were 9 and 7 years old respectively. According to them, t...
Fermina Lopez Cash, a 47-year-old woman from Guatemala, sits in her home with a photo of her 13-year-old son, Omar, who died in July 2010 in the Ariz...
Marta Garcia left Mexico for the United States more than 20 years ago, settling in California with her husband and her three children, all US citizen...