Author: Human Rights Watch

On Monday, a Telegram channel belonging to Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, released videos of six Israeli hostages whose bodies were recovered Saturday, filmed before their death. The Israeli government says the four men and two women were fatally shot by their captors shortly before its troops reached the tunnel in Gaza where they […]

LAION, the German nonprofit organization that manages a dataset used to train popular artificial intelligence (AI) tools, has removed from its dataset some children’s photos that were secretly included and misused to power AI models that in turn could generate photorealistic deepfakes of other children. The move follows the Stanford Internet Observatory’s December 2023 report that found known […]

Pope Francis is in Indonesia as part of a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. His visit comes as numerous discriminatory regulations in Indonesia target religious minorities around the country. Just a short drive from the Vatican Embassy in Jakarta is the parish of St. Joannes Baptista in Parung, where the local Catholic community had bought land to build […]

(Bogota) – Venezuelan authorities are committing widespread human rights violations against protesters, bystanders, opposition leaders, and critics following the July 28, 2024, presidential election, Human Rights Watch said today. Concerned governments should push for independent verification of the electoral results and support international efforts to ensure accountability.  International observers have raised serious concerns about the […]

(Beirut) – The Lebanese Armed Forces and Cypriot authorities work together to keep refugees from reaching Europe, then deport them to danger in Syria, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The 90-page report, “‘I Can’t Go Home, Stay Here, or Leave’: Pushbacks and Pullbacks of Syrian Refugees from Cyprus and Lebanon,” documents […]

(Berlin) – A Tashkent regional appeals court on August 21, 2024, upheld a woman’s 30-month restricted freedom sentence for alleged anti-constitutional activity in gross violation of her right to freedom of expression, Human Rights Watch said today. Sevara Shaydullaeva, 31, had sent her mother a video clip of Uzbekistan’s late President Islam Karimov speaking to […]

Teams of prominent scientists and ethicists have called for the end of medically unnecessary nonconsensual surgeries on intersex children in two new papers.   On the heels of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s first-ever resolution affirming the rights of intersex people, the papers signal growing international resolve to address rights violations experienced by people born with […]

This month, Netflix released “The Goat Life,” a movie centered on the experiences of an Indian migrant worker, Najeeb Muhammed, who worked in Saudi Arabia in the early 1990s and, after being stranded in the desert, was forced to work as a goat herder. It is based on the 2008 bestselling book, “Goat Days,” which […]

Last week, a 17-year-old boy died by self-harm in his cell at Banksia Hill Detention Centre in Western Australia. This tragic event was the second death of a child within the state’s youth detention system in less than a year. In October 2023, Cleveland Dodd, a 16-year-old, lost his life by self-harm in Unit 18, a repurposed […]

North Korean athletes who took selfies with their South Korean and Chinese counterparts at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games are reportedly facing intense scrutiny and possible punishment upon their return home. In North Korea, even an innocent selfie can have stark implications, given the government’s strict ideological controls and repression. While the athletes’ selfies were celebrated by […]