Author: Human Rights Watch

More than a year after Ukrainian forces captured two North Korean soldiers in Russia’s Kursk region, the men’s future remains undecided. Under the Third Geneva Convention applicable to the armed conflict in Ukraine, prisoners of war (POWs) may be held until the end of active hostilities, but they can be repatriated or transferred to a […]

A Cambodian government-controlled court sentenced two journalists to fourteen years in prison for treason after they appeared in a photograph with Cambodian soldiers near the disputed Thai-Cambodian border. The journalists, Phorn Sopheap of the Battambang Post TV Online and Pheap Pheara of TSP 68 TV Online, were arrested last July and charged with “supplying a […]

Japanese lawmakers and Uyghur activists gathered on February 25 at an event hosted by the Japan Uyghur Association in Tokyo to address the Chinese government’s atrocity crimes in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. “It’s important to send a big message to the world” about the Chinese government’s rights abuses against Uyghurs, said Keiji Furuya, a […]

On Thursday, the European Commission announced that the European Social Fund can be used by member states to fund safe abortions and improve access to abortion. This is in response to the European Citizens’ Initiative—My Voice, My Choice—which requested that “the EU does what is in its power to ensure safe and accessible abortion for all.” […]

In an overdue but welcome step, Egypt’s Ministry of Finance has published data showing state owned enterprises, following 2024 tax reforms to remove their tax exemptions, contributed 67 billion pounds (US$1.4 billion) in tax revenue in FY2024/25 and is expected to raise 87 billion pounds (US$1.7 billion) in FY2025/26.  While Human Rights Watch cannot verify the […]

United Nations human rights experts issued a damning public critique of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) plans to “sex test” all women athletes.  Last year, the IOC started a secret process to “protect the female category,” and it appears the result is an impending announcement that all women athletes will undergo genetic sex testing for the Los […]

(New York) – Pakistani authorities should quash the unjust conviction of Junaid Hafeez, who was sentenced to death in 2013 under Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy laws, Human Rights Watch said today. Hafeez’s 13 years in prison raise grave concerns about the lack of due process and the broader misuse of the country’s blasphemy laws. Police in Punjab […]

Led by Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders Mary Lawlor, five United Nations experts have issued a damning critique of Greece’s latest attempt to criminalize human rights defenders working to support migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. In a letter to the Greek government, made public on February 24, the experts warn that a new migration law adopted on […]

Last February, Thai authorities in Bangkok loaded 40 Uyghur men into blacked-out trucks and forcibly returned them to China. Their fates remain unknown. The men had spent over a decade in Thai immigration detention after having fled repression in Xinjiang in northwest China. Because the men faced grave risks of torture and other abuses in China, Thailand’s […]

(Beirut) – The Lebanese government should take immediate, concrete steps to help secure access to justice, truth, and reparations for thousands of civilian victims of abuses stemming from the armed conflict with Israel, five Lebanese and international human rights organizations said today in a letter to Lebanon’s justice minister and deputy prime minister, who heads Lebanon’s National […]