Author: Human Rights Watch

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has outlined concrete steps governments should take to address racial discrimination in health care.  Racism and prejudice have a global impact on health rights. Racism can shape the social determinants of health, such as income, employment, education, food, and housing; the benefits and burdens of financing […]

South Korea’s commitment to equal rights has suffered a dangerous setback with the appointment of Ahn Chang-ho as chairperson of the government’s National Human Rights Commission of Korea. A former Constitutional Court justice, Ahn has drawn widespread criticism for his opposition to antidiscrimination protections, particularly for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. Ahn has taken several […]

Vietnam’s new president, To Lam, is one of many world leaders with poor human rights records visiting New York City this week for the United Nations General Assembly high-level meeting. He will meet with United States President Joe Biden on Wednesday and is expected to meet with Meta and Google executives. As minister of public security, […]

(New York) – World leaders gathering for the United Nations General Assembly’s annual General Debate should call for action to end the global human rights crises, Human Rights Watch said. During the sessions from September 20 to 30, 2024, the situations in Palestine, Sudan, Ukraine, Haiti, Myanmar, Venezuela, and Afghanistan should top the agenda. At the UN Summit of the Future, leaders […]

The United Kingdom Labour Party is about to meet for its annual conference. Now that Labour is in government, with their leader Keir Starmer as prime minister, it should act to strengthen social security, and tackle poverty and inequality. The first concrete step should be immediately ending the cruel “two-child limit” policy. The “two-child limit” […]

A September 9 internal report by the United Nations Population Fund, the UN agency tasked with improving reproductive and maternal health, found that 268 out of the 348 women held in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Makala prison – nearly 80 percent – were victims of rape and other sexual violence when an attempted […]

The International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) July advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is a landmark ruling. The ICJ’s findings are legally and morally persuasive, and set out obligations on all states, and on the United Nations itself. Two of its important conclusions are with respect to […]

Earlier this month, Meta’s Oversight Board found that three Facebook posts containing the phrase “From the River to the Sea” did not violate Meta’s content rules and should remain online. The majority of the Oversight Board members concluded that the phrase, widely used at protests to show solidarity with Palestinians, is not inherently a violation of […]

The Indonesian government’s suppression of widespread protests after a 2019 attack on Papuan university students highlighted longstanding racial discrimination against Indigenous Papuans.   Indonesian security forces have committed arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, extrajudicial killings, and mass forced displacement, but are seldom held to account for these abuses. Indonesia’s new government should urgently review existing policies […]

Last Friday, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a law making, among other provisions, one year of pre-primary education compulsory, further strengthening the right to education for South Africa’s children. From a human rights perspective, compulsory education is primarily an obligation on governments to ensure quality education is free, accessible, and inclusive. The law also […]