Author: Human Rights Watch

(Istanbul, September 4, 2025) – The trial of 13 law enforcement officers charged with the death in custody of Ahmet Güreşçi and the torture of his older brother Sabri Güreşçi on February 11, 2023, offers a rare opportunity for justice, Human Rights Watch said today. The first hearing in the trial begins on September 9, 2025, in First Assize Court in the southern province of Hatay.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International documented the case of the two men in a report about abuses by police and gendarmes in rural areas, in the aftermath of the devasting February 6, 2023 earthquakes in Hatay and the surrounding region. The case is among the most egregious in a pattern of security forces mistreating people they accused of theft during that period.

“The trial of 13 gendarmes in connection with the death in custody of Ahmet Güreşçi and the torture of Sabri Güreşçi is a test of whether the authorities are willing to deliver justice for these egregious crimes,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Given Türkiye’s impunity for abuses by police, gendarmes and soldiers, it is important to send a clear message that the absolute prohibition on torture in custody is to be respected and enforced.”

Gendarmes arrested Sabri Güreşçi, 27, and Ahmet Güreşçi, 37 at the time, in the Büyükburç district of Altınözü, Hatay province, on February 11, 2023, on suspicion of looting and other crimes. Sabri Güreşçi and four others arrested in the same investigation testified before prosecutors that they were taken to a storage room rather than a cell at the Altınözü Central District Gendarmerie Station Command.

They allege that there, gendarmes, who were later identified by Sabri, tortured him and Ahmet, including by beating them with batons and cudgels, squeezing their testicles, and attempting to rape them with batons, in an effort to make them confess to crimes. They allege that as a result of the beating Ahmet lost consciousness and ultimately died.

Hospital records and security camera footage show that gendarmes took Ahmet to hospital wrapped in a blanket and at 6:15 p.m. that day a doctor pronounced him dead after failed efforts to revive him.

İbrahim Güreşçi, the father of the two men, testified to the prosecutor that he had waited outside the gendarmerie station for news of his sons, had seen gendarmes carry a body wrapped in a blanket out of the station and had followed them to the hospital fearing it might be his son Sabri.

Prevented from entering the hospital, he returned the next morning and after persuading an official to let him see if his son was among the bodies in the morgue, was shown Ahmet’s corpse which had visible signs of multiple injuries. He alleges that gendarmes told him that Ahmet had been released and later attacked by members of the public.

A report from Türkiye’s Forensic Medicine Institute based on autopsy results, which included multiple injuries and bruising to Ahmet Güreşçi’s body, limbs and head, determined that he died as a result of a brain hemorrhage caused by blows to the head. Sabri Güreşçi secured a report from the Çukurova Hospital forensic medicine department, which determined that the injuries, bruising and broken bones on his body were commensurate with his allegation that gendarmes had beaten him.

The Hatay prosecutor’s indictment, dated February 20, 2025, and seen by Human Rights Watch, charges 13 members of the gendarmerie of various ranks with torture resulting in Ahmet Güreşçi’s death, as well as the torture of Sabri Güreşçi resulting a broken bone. The gendarmeries could face sentences up to aggravated life imprisonment for Ahmet Güreşçi’s death and up to 15 years for torturing his brother.

The 13 gendarmes deny the accusations. They allege that the brothers already bore signs of injuries on arrest, that Ahmet Güreşçi’s blows to the head were from banging his head against a metal bar in the vehicle he was placed in after arrest or against a wall in the gendarmerie station.

Multiple witnesses refuted the gendarmes’ allegations, and the forensic medical reports alone provide clear evidence of torture, Human Rights Watch said.

None of the gendarmes were arrested or held in pretrial detention during the criminal and administrative investigations of their actions. While media reported that three were initially suspended from duty, lawyers for the family told Human Rights Watch that they believe that most or all remain on active duty. While there are immense obstacles to the effective investigation of torture and ill-treatment and deaths in custody in Türkiye and few prosecutions, a May 8 trial verdict in Hatay province proved an exception. The Hatay Fifth Assize Court convicted four ranked soldiers at the time stationed at the Kavalcık Sehit Er Gökhan Çakır Border Army Station to life in prison on charges of torturing to death two Syrian nationals Abdurrezzak Kastal and Abdulsettar Elhaccar and torturing four others who had crossed the border into Türkiye on March 11, 2023.

Human Rights Watch had documented the cases in a April 2023 report. The four soldiers remain in detention and their conviction is subject to an appeal.

“Sabri Güreşçi and his family have a right to justice, and this trial also has national implications,” Williamson, said. “Tolerance and acquiesce in police abuses, torture and other serious human rights violations has been on the rise in Türkiye, and this trial provides hope that it will end.”

As the Chinese government celebrated the 80th anniversary of China’s victory in World War II and the country’s military might this week, criticism of the Chinese Communist Party’s human rights record is building. 

For 50 minutes on August 29, large slogans projected on a building in Chongqing, one of China’s major cities, urged the Chinese people to “rise up against fascism” and “take back our own rights.” The cleverly executed feat was unprecedented—the activist had already fled China before remotely projecting the slogans—while the swift police response against his family was not. Yet the real significance lay in the continued willingness of fearless citizens to boldly and publicly criticize Chinese leader Xi Jinping and call for democratic reforms in the face of ever-growing government repression. 

The current trend can be traced to a man known as Peng Lifa who hung large anti-Xi and pro-democracy banners on a bridge in heavily secured Beijing ahead of the Chinese Party Congress in October 2022. “Bridge Man’s” act seems to have emboldened others in the wake of the government’s draconian Zero Covid policies, which for many in China recalled harsh and oppressive Communist Party decrees as happened during the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward.

Similar messages sprouted in cities across the country in the December 2022 White Paper protest and the banners of Fang Yirong in Hunan and Mei Shilin in Sichuan. Peng has reportedly been sentenced to nine years in prison, and Fang and Mei’s fates are unknown. But that has not deterred copycat protests. This August, a man held up an anti-Xi sign at a World War II site and another wrote one on his motorcycle. Slogans have also appeared on streetlights and at public toilets.

This week’s military pageantry in Beijing masks the underlying weakness of the Chinese Communist Party’s repressive policies: that after over 70 years in power, the Party should most fear its own people, simply for their acts of courage in their calls for human rights and democratic reform. 

(Bangkok) – Cambodia’s National Assembly passed amendments to its citizenship law on August 25, 2025, that allow the government to silence dissent by reworking Cambodian citizenship, Human Rights Watch said today. The amended citizenship law strips nationals, naturalized citizens, and dual citizens of the most basic protections of nationality if convicted by ruling Cambodia People’s Party-controlled courts of treason or “collusion with foreign powers.”

“The Cambodian government has created a dangerous tool to silence dissent by giving the courts sweeping powers to decide who is and isn’t Cambodian,” said Bryony Lau, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “This law undermines the fundamental right to nationality and risks leaving activists, journalists, opposition politicians, and ordinary citizens stateless.”

The former prime minister and current Senate president, Hun Sen, announced on June 27 that he had instructed the justice minister to study revoking citizenship for Cambodians who “side with foreign nations to harm our country.” He said that “if you have a plan to conspire with a foreign country to destroy Cambodian interests, then you should be [afraid]. And, if you are like that, you should not remain a Cambodian.”

On July 2, the Constitutional Council approved an amendment to Article 33 of the Constitution that removes the prohibition on depriving a citizen of their nationality. On July 11, Cambodia’s National Assembly voted unanimously to amend article 33 to allow the “acquisition and loss of Khmer nationality, including the revocation of Khmer citizenship, [to] … be determined by law.” The Senate endorsed the change on July 15, and the king signed it into effect later that month.

Following the constitutional amendment, the implementing law – the amendment to the Nationality Law – was debated and passed by the National Assembly on August 25, 2025, with all 120 lawmakers present voting in favor.

On August 24, a coalition of 50 Cambodian nongovernmental organizations issued a joint statement warning that the law was “vaguely worded … to target people on the basis of their ethnicity, political opinions, speech, and activism,” and that the government “should not have the power to arbitrarily decide who is and is not a Cambodian.”

Interior Minister Sar Sokha attempted to reassure critics, stating that the law applies “only to traitors.” Human Rights Watch has long documented that Cambodian authorities routinely use the politically motivated terms “treason” or “collusion with foreign powers” to harass or prosecute critics of the government and political opposition leaders.

While countries have broad discretion to determine citizenship, Cambodia’s new law violates international human rights law restrictions on citizenship rights, Human Rights Watch said. Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is widely considered reflective of customary international law, guarantees that “everyone has the right to a nationality” and “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality.”

The principle is also embedded in Article 12(4) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and Articles 7 and 8 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, both treaties Cambodia has ratified. The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) has underscored that the right to a nationality and the prohibition on arbitrary deprivation are “fundamental principles of international law” binding on all states.

The law also risks creating statelessness. UNHCR notes that stateless people are often denied basic rights and services, including health care, education, and freedom of movement. Stateless people may be unable to get a job, go to school, marry, migrate, or return to their own country. Cambodian civil society groups warned that “if we are stripped of citizenship, we will lose the foundation for every right we have in our home country…. We risk becoming stateless, rightless, and prisoners in our own homeland.” 

“The Cambodian government is disregarding its international human rights commitments by wielding the threat of citizenship loss as a political weapon,” Lau said. “Concerned governments should publicly weigh in with the Cambodian government to reverse this latest assault on dissent.”

(Beirut) – The United Kingdom government should publicly pledge to incorporate strong human rights conditions before a Free Trade Agreement between the UK and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is signed, a coalition of 14 human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, and trade unions said in a letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer today. 

“Without strong rights protections in the forthcoming Gulf trade pact, the UK risks further contributing to pervasive abuses against migrant workers that are entrenched within the state economies of Gulf countries” said Joey Shea, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The UK government’s enthusiasm to sign post-Brexit trade agreements should not come at the expense of human rights standards.”

For decades, rights groups have documented systematic human rights violations against migrant workers in all six Gulf Cooperation Council countries: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Gulf states have systematically failed to prevent or remedy widespread labor violations against the millions of migrant workers who make up a significant proportion of these countries’ workforces. 

A trade agreement with these countries risks contributing to abuses against migrant workers by further facilitating wage abuse, employer exploitation, and situations that amount to forced labor. The UK has itself failed to protect migrant workers’ rights in the UK, including by failing to ratify the international Migrant Workers Convention.

The coalition of rights groups and trade unions expressed deep concern around the lack of transparency and rights protections in the forthcoming agreement. An agreement without explicit rights protections heightens the risks that UK businesses would become complicit in grave human rights abuses, the groups said. 

 

The Washington Post reports that the US government is requiring organizations receiving federal funding, including from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), not to “operate any program that benefits illegal immigrants” in the aftermath of disasters.

But the foundational principle of human rights is that everyone, regardless of race, religion, nationality, or legal status, is entitled, by virtue of their shared humanity, to be treated according to the same basic precepts. This moral code is especially critical during crises when “us versus them” instincts often prevail. 

The practical implications of these new contract requirements are still unclear, but they raise alarming questions. Will the Red Cross and the Salvation Army have to check documents before providing food and shelter to disaster-displaced people? Out of fear that they will lose their jobs and their organizations their funding, will humanitarian workers avoid the darker-skinned person who asks for help in a foreign language? 

In the aftermath of the Holocaust and World War II, the nations of the world, including the United States, agreed to a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognized “the inherent dignity and … the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family.” 

At issue is a core values question: Is there any universal humanitarian principle that takes precedence over the raw animus toward undocumented people that now seems to be a bedrock principle of US government policy?

My work centers on refugees worldwide, whose own governments have persecuted them or otherwise failed in the core obligation to protect them. They seek asylum based not on their claim to citizenship but rather on their claim to a common humanity. Governments have recognized their obligation not to return them to places where their lives or freedom would be threatened, a universal principle that has saved countless lives.

Rising flood waters, wildfires, and earthquakes not only cause enormous hardship to the survivors but also take and threaten lives. The Washington Post cited an anonymous former FEMA official saying the new standards are not limited to nonprofits but could apply to all agencies that work with FEMA, including search-and-rescue groups. Do Americans really want emergency responders to check IDs before throwing a lifeline? Americans need to decide when “humanity first” should be the most relevant principle to guide US policy.

Last week, Belarusian authorities declared the Belarusian Association of Human Rights Lawyers (BAHRL) an “extremist formation.” The action against the group, which works to protect the rights to a defense and a fair trial, is the latest attack on the country’s legal profession.

Since its formation by exiled Belarusian lawyers arbitrarily deprived of their right to practice law, BAHRL has been promoting the independence of the legal profession, shedding light on repression against their colleagues in Belarus and showcasing violations of fair trial rights.

After the State Security Committee (KGB) imposed the “extremist formation” label on BAHRL, the Ministry of Internal Affairs added the organization and six lawyers seen by the state as associated with it to the national list of organizations and individuals involved in “extremist activities.” Some of the six lawyers named, including Belarus-resident Dmitri Laevski, aren’t even members of BAHRL.

Naming an organization an “extremist formation” carries the risk of criminal prosecution for its alleged members, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. 

Since the mass protests against rigged presidential elections in 2020, Belarusian authorities have increased repression against political dissent across the country.

As part of this campaign, the authorities have targeted lawyers who represent clients in politically motivated cases or denounce human rights abuses. Dozens of such lawyers have faced arbitrary revocation of their licenses, searches, administrative fines, and arrests. Seven lawyers are currently behind bars on fabricated charges.

Over the past five years, the Ministry of Justice has subjugated the legal profession in Belarus, diluting the bar’s independence and seeking to turn the bar into an instrument promoting the government’s agenda.

Belarusian authorities should stop their crackdown on the country’s lawyers and ensure they can carry out their duties without fear of government reprisal.

Children from across the globe have expressed support for expanding an international human rights treaty to require countries to provide free pre-primary and secondary education. More than 8,000 children from 40 countries responded to a United Nations survey requesting their views. Their message was loud and clear: education should be free, inclusive, and available for everyone throughout childhood.

“If I were the boss of all the schools in the world,” one preschooler responded, “I’d make it so all children could go to pre-school for free … and all the teachers in every school are kind, give hugs, and help.”

Country delegates will meet at the UN in Geneva in early September to decide whether to draft a fourth optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In a historic first, five children – from Croatia, Indonesia, Liberia, Mexico, and the United Kingdom – will also participate in the negotiations.

If adopted, the new optional protocol would require countries to provide free public pre-primary education, beginning with at least one year, as well as free public secondary education. Many countries already do.

Children surveyed said this was important. Many said pre-primary education is out of reach for many children because of unaffordable fees. “It is not fair that access to [education] depends on how much money parents have,” a preschooler in France said in a message.

Teenagers identified multiple barriers to universal free secondary education, notably school fees and hidden costs. Blaming high registration fees “which parents cannot afford,” a group of children from Madagascar said that “[i]n our community, almost none of the children go to school because of poverty.”

But the children didn’t just highlight problems, they proposed solutions. Australian students responded that the optional protocol “represents a powerful opportunity to redefine education not just as a basic service, but as a foundation for democracy, dignity, and full societal participation.” They said that a new treaty that “embeds inclusive, accessible, and free education from early childhood through secondary schooling is a critical step toward a world where no child is left behind—not because of who they are, where they live, or what they need to thrive.”

Children have spoken with clarity and urgency. Adults should show they’re listening.

• Mauritanian security forces committed serious human rights violations between 2020 and early 2025 against migrants and asylum seekers.
• The European Union and Spain, bilaterally, have continued to outsource migration management to Mauritania, despite its rights violations.
• Recent steps by the Mauritanian government may improve protection for migrants and their rights. These should continue, and the EU and Spain should ensure that their migration cooperation with Mauritania prioritizes rights and saving lives.

(Nairobi) – Mauritanian security forces committed serious human rights violations between 2020 and early 2025 against largely West and Central African migrants and asylum seekers, often when they were seeking to leave or transit the country, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. However, recent steps and commitments by the Mauritanian government may improve protection for migrants and their rights.

The 142-page report, “‘They Accused Me of Trying to Go to Europe’: Migration Control Abuses and EU Externalization in Mauritania,” documents abuses by the Mauritanian police, coast guard, navy, gendarmerie, and army during border and migration control, including torture, rape, and other violence; sexual harassment; arbitrary arrests and detention; inhumane detention conditions; racist treatment; extortion and theft; and summary and collective expulsions. The crackdowns and rights violations were exacerbated by the European Union and Spain, bilaterally, continuing to outsource migration management to Mauritania, including through years of support to Mauritania’s border and migration control authorities.

“For years, Mauritanian authorities followed an abusive migration control playbook – sadly common across North Africa – by violating the rights of African migrants from other regions,” said Lauren Seibert, refugee and migrant rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “But Mauritania’s recent reforms show that a new approach is possible. The government should build on these efforts, scale up monitoring of security forces, and halt collective expulsions.”

Between 2020 and mid-2025, Human Rights Watch interviewed 223 people by phone and in person during visits to Mauritania, Mali, Senegal, and EU institutions in Brussels. In addition to 102 migrants and asylum seekers from Senegal, Guinea, Mali, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, Human Rights Watch interviewed government, United Nations, and EU officials; members of nongovernmental and civil society organizations; relatives of abuse victims; witnesses; experts; lawyers; community members; and others.

Human Rights Watch examined injuries from alleged abuse; collected photos, videos, and documents to corroborate accounts; and, in 2022 and 2023 in Mauritania, visited migrant detention centers and Dar Naïm prison, which held people on migrant smuggling charges.

Human Rights Watch documented violations by Mauritanian security forces between 2020 and 2025 against 77 migrants and asylum seekers – men, women, and children – and a Mauritanian man, who said police tortured him during migrant-smuggling-related interrogations in 2022.

Increasing numbers of migrants and asylum seekers between 2020 and 2024 attempted the “Atlantic Route” by boat from northwest Africa to Spain’s Canary Islands, with many departing from Mauritania. Some have fled conflict or persecution in their countries – including many from Mali, where armed conflict has worsened alongside government repression – while others aimed to escape poverty and find work. In 2024, a record 46,843 people arrived by boat in the Canaries. About 11,500 people arrived between January and July 2025.

Mauritania has also long attracted West and Central Africans seeking work, and it hosts about 176,000 registered asylum seekers and refugees, the majority from Mali. Some migrants seek to transit Mauritania toward Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara, Morocco, or Algeria.

In 2024, Mauritania signed a new migration partnership with the EU in exchange for €210 million in funding to reduce irregular migration, comparable to other EU deals with Tunisia and Egypt. Spain increased its bilateral support to the same end, while maintaining deployment of Spanish police and civil guard in Mauritania to assist authorities with migration control.

Dozens of people who had been held in Mauritania’s police-run migrant detention centers described inhumane conditions and treatment, including lack of food, poor sanitation, adolescent children at times detained with unrelated adults, and some beatings by guards.

Between 2020 and mid-2025, Mauritanian police expelled tens of thousands of African foreigners of multiple nationalities – generally without formal legal procedures or an opportunity to challenge their expulsion – to remote locations along the borders with Mali and Senegal, where limited aid, plus worsening insecurity in Mali’s Kayes region, has put people at risk. In the first half of 2025, Mauritania expelled over 28,000 people, the government said.

Marco Gibson, a Liberian man, said Mauritania’s military arrested him with a group of over 40 migrants near Mauritania’s northern border in December 2024, as they were leaving toward Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara: “The Mauritanian army … beat us with sticks … [and] a rubber whip…. I’ve never seen such a brutal attitude.” Following detention, police expelled him and around 20 others, including children, to Mali’s border town of Gogui, in the Nioro du Sahel area of Kayes region, he said. Days later, an Islamist armed group attacked Nioro.

Human Rights Watch has documented police use of prolonged, painful restraints, limited food and water, and other mistreatment during expulsions, as well as cases of children, asylum seekers, and people with valid legal status in Mauritania among those expelled.

The report also highlights the negative impacts of Mauritania’s interceptions and forced returns of migrant boats, supported by the EU and Spain, while search-and-rescue in the Atlantic remains insufficient, contributing to ongoing deaths.

By funding, equipping, and collaborating with Mauritanian forces for years to bolster border and migration controls without ensuring adequate human rights safeguards, the EU and Spain incentivized repression of migration and share responsibility for abuses in Mauritania, Human Rights Watch said. In some cases, Spanish forces were present during abusive arrests and detention of migrants by Mauritanian authorities. The EU also funded renovations of two former migrant detention centers, set to open this year to receive migrants intercepted or rescued at sea.

In a reply to questions from Human Rights Watch, the Mauritanian government said it “reject[s] allegations of torture, racial discrimination, or systematic violations of migrants’ rights.” It cited recent steps to improve respect for rights, including a “ban on collective expulsions” and new standard operating procedures (SOPs) adopted in May 2025 to regulate disembarkations and “management” of migrants, with strong rights and protection guarantees.

The European Commission, in its reply to Human Rights Watch, said its partnership with Mauritania was “solidly anchored” in respect for rights and cited EU support for the SOPs and other rights-focused initiatives.

“The Mauritanian government’s steps to improve respect for migrant rights are much needed,” Seibert said. “By going further to end abuses, Mauritania could potentially lead the way toward rights-respecting migration management in North Africa. For their part, the EU and Spain should ensure that their migration cooperation with Mauritania prioritizes rights and saving lives, instead of supporting security crackdowns that lead to abuses.”

(New York) – Ecuador’s government should expedite the closure of the approximately 240 oil wells operating in the heart of Yasuni National Park in the Amazon rainforest, Human Rights Watch said today. 

On August 20, 2023, the Ecuadorian people voted to halt all current and future oil drilling in the Ishpingo, Tambococha, and Tiputini (ITT) block of Yasuni National Park, one of the most intact sections remaining in the Amazon River Basin. The historic referendum came after decades of organizing led by a coalition of Indigenous peoples, youth, and activists from across the country. Two years later, though, extraction continues, and only a handful of the block’s approximately 240 wells have been closed. 

“The Ecuadorian government’s decision to maintain oil production for the next five years in Yasuni National Park ignores the 2023 referendum result, which directly impacts the rights of the peoples who live in the park and all Ecuadorians,” said Richard Pearshouse, environment and human rights director at Human Rights Watch. “The government should respect the will of the Ecuadorian people and immediately end oil extraction in the area protected by the referendum.” 

Yasuni National Park is home to Indigenous peoples, including the Waorani and Kichwa as well as the Tagaeri and Taromenane peoples, who live in voluntary isolation. Human Rights Watch has documented how fossil fuel production, which drives catastrophic climate change, harms the rights of communities adjacent to fossil fuel infrastructure. 

Even before the vote, in May 2023, Ecuador’s Constitutional Court held that, if voters approved the referendum, the government had to immediately halt oil extraction and shut down all wells by August 31, 2024. In September 2024, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found that continued operation of the oil block violated the rights of the Tagaeri and Taromenane peoples and ordered the state to close the block by March 2026.  

Publicly available reports vary somewhat on the small number of wells that have been closed since the referendum result. The government says it closed five wells in 2024, while media reports say that the government closed 10 wells in 2024 and plans to close another 48 in 2025. 

Yet the overwhelming majority of wells in the block are still pumping oil. According to state data, in the first half of 2025 roughly 44,000 oil barrels were extracted daily in the block. The nearly 240 wells in the ITT area are a small fraction of the country’s estimated 5,000 wells. 

A group of Ecuadorian economists has suggested practical steps to close the block without harming communities, the environment, and the economy. Waorani leaders have proposed a set of principles for a rights-respecting closure.  

The government had cited the country’s security crisis to justify pausing compliance until at least August 2025 and claims it might need five years to close the block, far beyond court-ordered timelines. 

In May 2024, President Daniel Noboa created a committee to plan the closure; this committee has been criticized by civil society and Indigenous peoples for omitting their participation. More than a year later, the government has yet to develop a plan to shut down the rest of the wells in the ITT block.  

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights recently confirmed that governments must set binding, time-bound greenhouse gas emission reductions from fossil fuels and protect the Amazon rainforest.  

Ecuador should stop extracting oil in the Ishpingo, Tambococha, and Tiputini block and adopt and implement an expedited and rights-respecting plan to close the wells. It should also ensure Indigenous representation and participation in the committee established to plan the closure.

Regional leaders are meeting in Colombia on August 22, 2025, at the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization summit to commit to higher rainforest protection in the lead up to global climate talks. Heads of state, including Ecuador’s president, should commit to pursuing similar measures across the Amazon that protect Indigenous peoples and critical ecosystems from fossil fuels. 

“Ecuador has a clear obligation to begin to phase out fossil fuels in a way that respects the will of its people, the courts, and the human rights of affected communities,” Pearshouse said. “Complying with the referendum by closing the wells is long overdue.” 

On August 15, while United States President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin were en route to their Alaska meeting, 26-year-old Nataliia Makarenko buried her mother, Tetiana Litvin, 60, in Kherson, southern Ukraine. Tetiana had died two days earlier in an artillery strike.

Almost a year ago, Nataliia buried her father, Petro, 67. A Russian drone targeted the minivan he was driving in Kherson, and he died from his injuries. Nataliia was one of dozens of Kherson residents my colleagues and I spoke with last year to document Russian forces’ use of drones to deliberately attack civilians, a war crime. These attacks were designed to instill terror and constitute potential crimes against humanity.

After Petro’s death, Tetiana and Nataliia had evacuated to Chornobaivka, north of Kherson. Tetiana coped with her grief by gardening and caring for the family’s pets.

On August 13 at 5:50 a.m., Nataliia heard shelling. A sudden blast wave hit her. “I tried to get to my mother’s room, but then came the second and third strikes,” she told me. Part of the house collapsed, burying Tetiana. Local authorities reported that the attack injured at least four other village residents. Nataliia had minor injuries.

Because of the drone threat, emergency workers had to leave their vehicle en route and walk to Nataliia’s house. While four workers dug out Tetiana’s body, a radio operator warned of drones overhead.

Nataliia buried her mother next to her father. Also due to the drone threat, the priest performed a brief ceremony standing beside the car, doors open, with the coffin inside.

“I had a family, a mother and a father,” Nataliia said. “They stayed together all their lives. Now they are gone.”

While numerous rounds of negotiations on Ukraine—including the August 18 White House meeting—rarely mention justice, Ukrainian civilian casualties continue to rise, recently reaching their highest monthly numbers since May 2022, according to the United Nations. As stakeholders pursue a quick political deal, Russian forces responsible for grave crimes, including indiscriminate bombing and shelling, unlawful attacks on civilians, torture and ill-treatment in occupied areas and Russian prisons, and the torture and executions of prisoners of war cannot go unpunished.

Nor should Russia’s deliberate drone attacks on civilians in Kherson. Nataliia and Ukrainians like her deserve justice and reparations for all they have lost and endured.