Author: Human Rights Watch

(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 […]

(Berlin) – Uzbek authorities should immediately quash the convictions and release two wrongfully imprisoned activists, Human Rights Watch and Uzbek Forum for Human Rights said today. An appeals court in Qarshi is scheduled to resume hearings in the case of Nargiz Keldiyorova and Dildora Khakimova on September 18, 2024. A court in Kashkadarya on July […]

September 17 marks three years since the Taliban banned secondary education for girls in Afghanistan, shortly after their return to power in August 2021. While the issue of Afghan girls’ secondary education has generated much discussion globally, governments and international institutions have yet to take meaningful action to reverse the Taliban’s ban. The Taliban are […]

Far from the front lines where bulldozers tear down tropical forests, European Union officials are preparing to implement a crucial law that will require EU-based companies to ensure their imports and exports are “deforestation-free” and not driving human rights abuses. With 10 football field-sized tracts of climate-critical forest razed per minute globally in 2023, the […]