Author: Human Rights Watch

After months of silence from Burkina Faso’s military junta, the United Nations Human Rights Office announced on June 30 that it would permanently close its operations in the country, ending its ability to monitor, document, and report on human rights abuses at a time when conflict continues and violations are rampant. The government suspended the UN […]

(Beirut) – Libyan authorities have used incendiary rhetoric and pursued a campaign of mass detention and expulsions of migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees, sparking anti-migrant protests, Human Rights Watch said today. Following months of incendiary anti-migrant rhetoric from authorities in the east and west of Libya, protests erupted on June 4, 2026, calling for the expulsion of […]

Last week, Mali’s media regulator silenced one of the country’s few remaining public forums, the popular radio phone-in show, Allô Klédu. On June 25, the High Authority for Communication ordered the suspension of the show, broadcast on the private station Radio Klédu, for two months. The media regulator said the program had become “a platform for listeners […]

(Manila) – Philippine police and their agents carry out extrajudicial killings with impunity as part of the government’s anti-drug campaign, Human Rights Watch said today, 10 years to the day after then-President Rodrigo Duterte began his vicious “war on drugs.”  The current Philippine president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., has never repudiated the “war on drugs” as a […]

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s High Military Court in Kinshasa, the capital, has convicted on appeal the Congolese army Colonel Jean de Dieu Mambweni of the war crime of murder for orchestrating the assassinations of Zaida Catalán and Michael J. Sharp. The United Nations experts were abducted and executed in March 2017 while investigating mass killings in […]

On June 12, the Central African Republic accepted 18 men and women of other nationalities deported from the United States, despite its own fragility as a country recovering from decades of conflict and suffering a protracted humanitarian crisis. The new arrivals included people from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Cameroon, Egypt, and Tunisia, all […]

As Europe swelters through the second intense heat wave of 2026, governments are issuing warnings, closing schools or adjusting class hours, and urging people to stay indoors. Extreme heat is a weather event, but its consequences for people whose specific needs are overlooked in government climate planning or adaptation policies can be perilous. Age, needs and accommodations […]

The European Union’s obligation to ban trade with Israel’s illegal settlements is not in question. But its leadership’s will to comply has long been. Following growing pressure from civil society, trade unions, legal scholars, some EU governments and members of the European Parliament, and a series of unilateral bans by some EUmember states, the European Commission could finally present a “list […]

(Tokyo) – Beijing has restructured Hong Kong’s governance to answer to Party leadership rather than Hong Kong’s people six years after imposing the draconian National Security Law, Human Rights Watch said today. “Hong Kong’s highly repressive national security regime and bureaucracy have erased long-protected rights and cast a deeply troubling shadow over its future” said Elaine Pearson, […]

(Nairobi) – Islamist armed groups and Malian armed forces and their allies have committed serious abuses against civilians since fighting escalated in Mali in April 2026, Human Rights Watch said today. On April 25, the Al-Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, or JNIM) carried out coordinated attacks across Mali. JNIM […]