Author: Human Rights Watch

(Bangkok) – The Myanmar military junta subjects women political prisoners to torture, sexual violence, and life-threatening denial of medical care, Human Rights Watch said today. Among the over 30,000 political prisoners detained since the junta’s February 2021 coup are about 6,600 women and 640 children. Former prisoners and their families have reported beatings, rape, squalid conditions, and […]

(Nairobi) – Niger’s junta has provisionally stripped five more exiled opposition figures of their nationality, extending a controversial policy increasingly used against critics of the military authorities, Human Rights Watch said today. On September 17, 2026, Gen. Abdourahamane Tiani, who has led Niger’s junta since the July 2023 coup, signed a decree removing the nationality of five […]

The discovery of several women’s bodies on the outskirts of South Africa’s commercial capital, Johannesburg, has caused fear, anxiety and outrage across the country. All the women were found naked or partially clothed, according to police. Some of the bodies had bruising. At least three suspects are already in custody as authorities continue to examine […]

When Bhutan’s Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay meets world leaders at the United Nations general assembly in New York this week, they should urge him to release the at least 28 political prisoners who are still held in dreadful conditions in his country’s jails. The small Himalayan kingdom projects itself to the world as the land […]

Ruben Vardanyan, a former senior official in Nagorno-Karabakh’s de facto administration who is serving a 20-year prison sentence in Azerbaijan, says that he and 18 other Armenian prisoners are being denied regular family contact, adequate exercise, medical tests, and other rights provided under Azerbaijani law. In an audio appeal recorded on September 16 and published two […]

A national cybercrime court in Mali on September 14 sentenced a prominent journalist, Abdramane Keïta, to two years in prison on bogus charges, in the military government’s latest attack on media freedom. Security forces arrested Keïta, director of the newspaper Le Témoin (The Witness), on June 9 in Bamako, Mali’s capital, days after he commented on a television program that […]

(Washington, DC) – Since ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haiti in late July 2026, US authorities have deported hundreds of Haitians back to their country, where they face threats to their lives and safety and receive little to no support, Human Rights Watch said today. The US Senate should urgently pass House-approved legislation that would reinstate […]

World leaders at the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City from September 22-28, 2026, should commit to defending human rights, Human Rights Watch said. They should counter attempts to undermine accountability for grave international crimes and the work of the UN and other vital international institutions.  Dozens of leaders […]

(New York) – Pakistani authorities on September 17, 2026, rearrested human rights lawyers Imaan Mazari-Hazir and Hadi Ali Chattha soon after the Supreme Court granted them bail, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities should immediately release the two and drop the criminal charges against them, which appear aimed to punish peaceful expression and human […]

(Washington, DC) – Venezuela needs to take urgent measures and carry out institutional reforms to protect people’s basic rights, Human Rights Watch said today, following its first official visit to the country since 2008.  Human Rights Watch visited Caracas this week and met with interim President Delcy Rodríguez, other government officials, human rights groups, journalists, relatives […]