Author: Human Rights Watch

(Abuja) – Nigerian authorities have charged 10 protesters who were arrested during protests across Nigeria in August 2024 with treason, which carries a possible death penalty, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should drop the charges.

According to legal sources consulted by Human Rights Watch, the 10 protesters are among the 124 people arrested in Abuja and other states, including Kano and Kaduna, after civil society-led protests, tagged #EndBadGovernance, began on August 1, calling for an end to economic hardship. On September 2 at a Federal High Court in Abuja police announced the charge of conspiracy to commit treason,  for attempting to destabilize Nigeria, seeking to remove the president, waging war against the government, and inciting mutiny, among other reasons.

“By charging protesters with treason, the Nigerian authorities are sending a troubling message about their intolerance for dissent,” said Anietie Ewang, Nigeria researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Instead of equating protesting with a crime punishable by death, the government should uphold Nigerians’ right to freedom of expression and listen to their grievances.”

Deji Adeyanju, a lawyer representing the 124 protesters, told Human Rights Watch that his legal team made several attempts to visit the protesters in custody at the Police Intelligence Response Team office in Abuja, but that the authorities refused to grant them access. He said that they had no contact with any of the detainees from the time of their arrest until the arraignment proceedings on September 2, and that the authorities had not officially informed them about the session. Adeyanju said the protesters charged were in handcuffs, looked malnourished, and had rashes on their bodies.

All 124 protesters, including children aged 14 to 17, were transferred from police custody to correctional or youth detention centers following an August 24 court order to hold them for 60 days until an investigation is concluded and charges are brought against them. This order appears to violate Nigeria’s administration of criminal justice law, which states that pretrial detention orders should not exceed 14 days, following which another application by the police can be made for 14 more days, stating why an extension is necessary.

The Federal High Court in Abuja set a bail hearing on September 11 for the 10 protesters charged. The authorities should protect due process rights for everyone, including the right to a fair trial, Human Rights Watch said.

Among those arraigned on September 2 was Angel Innocent, a 51-year-old single mother who participated in the protests at Moshood Abiola Stadium in Abuja. She was featured in a television interview shared on social media in which she accused government officials and other politicians of paying people 5,000 naira (about US$3) to disrupt the #EndBadGovernance protests at the stadium.

In recent months, the authorities have intensified a crackdown on critics and journalists, marked by numerous instances of abductions, unlawful arrests, and detention. On August 5, Issac Bristol, a social commentator alleged to be in charge of an anonymous social commentary account known as @PIDOMNIGERIA on X (formerly Twitter) was reported missing. Following public outcry, the police confirmed on August 24, almost 3 weeks later, that he was in their custody.

Bristol had been secretly arrested at a hotel in Port Harcourt, River State, and taken into police custody in Abuja. He was charged at a Federal High Court in Abuja with crimes including promoting the #EndBadGovernance hashtag, disseminating false information intended to disrupt law and order, obtaining and sharing classified information, and money laundering.

Other actions by the authorities have also raised significant concerns. In July, a federal legislator, Tajudeen Abass, introduced the Counter Subversion Bill, which he claimed was aimed at enhancing Nigeria’s counterterrorism framework by addressing subversive activities. The bill, which was eventually withdrawn following public outcry, was reported to include several troubling and overly broad provisions.

These included a penalty of up to 5 million naira (about $3,100) or a prison sentence of five to ten years, or both, for refusing to recite the national anthem; a fine of 4 million naira (about $2,500) or up to a two-year prison sentence for insulting, defaming, or discrediting community, religious, or government leaders; and a fine of 5 million naira or up to a 10-year prison term, or both, for activities that foster mistrust, intolerance, or violence threatening Nigeria’s peace and security.

Adeyanju said that “while critical issues like the economy and insecurity require urgent attention, the current administration is instead focusing on undermining human rights.” He said that “activists vocal on social media have expressed concerns about their safety, as individuals are being arrested and charged with treason merely for protesting or critiquing the government.”

“In their relentless effort to suppress dissent, the Nigerian authorities are not only violating more rights and the rule of law, but also deepening public distrust in the government,” Ewang said. “The authorities should immediately drop the charges brought against those rightfully exercising their rights and release them immediately.”

(Kinshasa) – Democratic Republic of Congo authorities should promptly and impartially investigate and provide a transparent, credible account of the deadly incident on September 2, 2024, at Makala Central Prison in the capital, Kinshasa, Human Rights Watch said today.

Congolese Interior Minister Jacquemain Shabani announced on September 2 that during an attempted prison break, 129 prisoners died, including 24 shot while trying to escape, and 59 were injured. Several female prisoners were raped. The minister also said that a mixed commission would be created to establish the facts around the incident, without offering details on its composition.

“The Congolese government’s decision to investigate is a positive step toward ensuring that such a tragedy does not happen again,” said Lewis Mudge, Central Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “But the authorities should also take decisive measures immediately to improve the living conditions at Makala prison, in compliance with Congo’s national and international obligations.”

Human Rights Watch interviewed three prisoners by telephone who said that suspected youth gang members, known as kulunas, attempted a mass escape in the early hours of the morning of September 2. Several prison buildings caught fire during the attempted escape.

Makala, like many prisons across Congo, has massive overcrowding, poor infrastructure, and inadequate resources. While details surrounding the escape attempt remain unclear, the authorities claim that officials fired “warning shots” before firing on escaping prisoners. The authorities said that most of the deaths were from a stampede. The prison’s administrative buildings have been destroyed, including its archives, creating significant problems in identifying the exact number and identities of the people who were held in the prison.

The United Nations Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials provides that law enforcement officers should only use firearms where there is an “imminent threat of death or serious injury” and “only when less extreme means are insufficient” to prevent such harm. The “intentional lethal use of firearms may only be made when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life.” Where warnings of firearm use can be given, there should be “sufficient time for the warning to be observed.”

The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights obligate governments to investigate and appropriately punish those responsible for abuses against people in custody and to provide reparations for victims.

The authorities should publicly provide information about the progress of the investigation and communicate the findings transparently, including about the prisoners killed and injured, Human Rights Watch said. They should also act urgently to provide survivors and victims’ family members with medical care, mental health support, and appropriate compensation.

“I watched women raped by more than one man, including an older woman who was raped,” a female prisoner told Human Rights Watch on September 4. “None of these women has received appropriate medication.”

Sexual violence is a longstanding problem in Congo’s prisons. In September 2020, a prison riot at Kasapa Central Prison in Lubumbashi caused a fire in the women’s section which forced the female prisoners into the main prison yard for three days, where the prison failed to provide them with any protection. For those three days, male prisoners repeatedly raped several dozen female prisoners, including a teenage girl.

The government should adopt urgent measures to preserve the safety and security of people in prison and ensure that everyone, particularly women and girls, is protected from sexual violence, Human Rights Watch said.

Malnutrition and related illnesses have long resulted in deaths in Congo’s prisons and jails. At best, prisoners get one meal a day, in part because food portions are budgeted according to prisons’ capacities rather than their actual populations. In 2020, the media reported that at least 17 people starved to death at Makala prison. Human Rights Watch has previously reported on severe overcrowding, malnutrition, unhygienic conditions, and lack of medical care in Congolese prisons, including Makala.

Security in Makala is also a serious problem. One prisoner told Human Rights Watch on September 4 that “it is not the military or the police, but the prisoners themselves who provide security in each prison block.”

Most people in prison across Congo, including at Makala prison, have not been convicted of any crime and are awaiting trial, and others have been arrested for nonviolent or minor offenses. Makala prison, built in 1957 toward the end of Belgian colonial rule, was designed for 1,500 people but is currently holding between 12,000 and 14,000.

Consistent with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the government should immediately address dangerous prison overcrowding by releasing everyone in pretrial detention for nonviolent crimes, subject to guarantees to appear for trial, Human Rights Watch said.

Under international law, government authorities have a duty to care for people in prisons, including to protect their rights to life, health, safety, and security. The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, in its 1995 Resolution on Prisons in Africa, said that African countries should conform to the “international norms and standards for the protection of the human rights of prisoners.”

The UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Mandela Rules) state that people in prison are to be treated with dignity and have prompt access to medical attention, and that in the case of deaths in custody, the prison will report the cases to independent judicial or other authorities to ensure a prompt, impartial, and effective investigation.

“The deaths of prisoners and sexual violence at Makala prison has shined a light on the horrendous, persistent, and systemic problems of Congo’s prison system,” Mudge said. “Further delays in tackling prison overcrowding and appalling detention conditions will continue to put lives at risk.”

In Ukraine’s western city of Lviv, today is a day of mourning.

On September 4 at about 6 a.m., Russian air attacks struck the city’s historic district, killing civilians and damaging civilian buildings and infrastructure.

Seven people were killed, Lviv Mayor Andryi Sadovyi reported on Telegram, including four members of the same family: a 43-year-old mother and her three daughters, ages 7, 18, and 21. Only their father survived. Sixty-six people, including 10 children, required medical assistance, and 12 were rescued from under the rubble, Sadovyi said.

Local authorities said the attacks damaged about 50 civilian objects, including homes, medical facilities, and local architectural landmarks, located in Lviv’s historic district, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The attacks also damaged seven educational facilities, including a primary school and three secondary schools, affecting 1,456 children. Because of the early hour, no children or staff were in the schools.

An official from the city council education department told Human Rights Watch that Lyceum No. 5 on Kokorudza Street suffered damage to dozens of windows and classroom doors, as well as the stairwell. The school remains closed. Lyceum No. 17 sustained damage to over 100 windows as well as doors and the main gate. It reopened the next day and some students from Lyceum No. 5 will temporarily attend classes there.

Russia’s war against Ukraine has had a devastating, lasting impact on Ukrainian children’s access to education. The Ukrainian government reported that nearly 4,000 educational facilities have been damaged or destroyed since the full-scale invasion in February 2022. In Russia-occupied areas, children are subjected to the Kremlin’s anti-Ukraine propaganda, in violation of international humanitarian law. Active hostilities put children at risk and disrupt education.

The Ukrainian government has worked to protect education, by endorsing the Safe Schools Declaration and ensuring continued learning. But the repair and reconstruction of damaged schools will continue to require time and major resources. It’s crucial that international support for Ukraine’s efforts to ensure safe education to all children continues through assistance with equitable reconstruction of schools across the country and providing equipment, technology, and devices to facilitate remote learning where necessary.

Russia should immediately cease all unlawful attacks on civilians and civilian objects in Ukraine. Civilians, including children, shouldn’t have to continue to bear the brunt of this war.

This week, Tunisia’s electoral commission confirmed only three candidates for the October 6 presidential election, including incumbent President Kais Saied and a detained candidate, disregarding major court rulings that had reinstated three other contenders to stand in the polls.

The Independent Electoral Commission for Elections (ISIE) confirmed Saied and two former parliament members, Zouhair Maghzaoui and Ayachi Zammel, as the sole presidential candidates; the same list it initially released on August 10. It had previously disqualified 14 prospective candidates, including serious contenders to Saied, for various reasons.

Three of the rejected candidates won appeals against the electoral commission before Tunisia’s administrative court: Abdellatif Mekki, a former health minister, Mondher Zenaïdi, a former minister under then-President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and Imed Daïmi, a former MP.

Decisions of the administrative court, which has exclusive jurisdiction over electoral candidacy disputes, are legally binding. Yet, Farouk Bouasker, the ISIE’s president, said on September 2 that the commission was “unable to enforce” the court rulings, and the list of presidential candidates “is final and not subject to appeal.”

The electoral commission has been under the control of Saied since he restructured it in April 2022; its seven members are now nominated by the president. Instead of ensuring the integrity of the upcoming election, the commission has intervened to skew the ballot in favor of Saied.

The electoral commission attempted to discredit the administrative court’s appeal rulings by filing a petition to disqualify judges; a flimsy attempt rejected by the court on August 31. It also initiated several complaints against President Saied’s political opponents or critics, some of which have led to convictions, including that of Free Destourian Party (Parti Destourien Libre) president Abir Moussi.

Tunisians are about to vote for president against a backdrop of increased repression of dissent, muzzling of the media, and continued attacks on judicial independence. Since the start of the electoral period July 14, authorities have prosecuted, convicted, or detained at least nine prospective candidates. Zammel, one of the few confirmed candidates, was placed in detention on September 4 pending trial on charges of falsifying endorsements.

Holding elections amid such repression makes a mockery of Tunisians’ right to participate in free and fair elections. The electoral commission should immediately reverse its decision, enforce the administrative court’s ruling, and end its political interference in this election.

(Sydney) – The Australian government should develop a clear policy on identifying and addressing cases of wrongful detention of Australian nationals abroad, Human Rights Watch said in a recent submission to the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Reference Committee. The Committee is currently reviewing the Australian government’s responses to the wrongful detention of Australian citizens overseas.

Oppressive foreign governments have detained Australians on fabricated or unsubstantiated charges, denied them due process rights, and used them as political bargaining chips. Governments have held Australians in poor conditions, with limited access to visits from lawyers, family and friends, and limited consular representation. When the detainees are released, it is often after significant public campaigning and high-level Australian government intervention in their cases.

“The Australian government needs a policy clearly defining wrongful detention abroad and then treat it in a more nuanced way than regular consular detention cases,” said Daniela Gavshon, Australia director at Human Rights Watch. “Otherwise, the government will continue to fail to identify cases of arbitrary detention or provide affected people and families the appropriate support.”

Human Rights Watch has over the years spoken to many relatives of Australians arbitrarily detained abroad, and to people who have been released. Many said that to their knowledge, their case was often passed around among various desk officers within Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). They found that there was often no adequate handover, and time was lost familiarizing consular officials with their case. The department has no single authority that handles arbitrary or wrongful detention cases.

The Australian government should create a senior role to deal with wrongful detention cases with a direct reporting line to the foreign minister or prime minister, Human Rights Watch said. This person should have specific expertise in hostage diplomacy. Their mandate should include engaging with all government departments as needed, speaking to families, providing people with information on contacting the detained person, coordinating rehabilitation and repatriation, as well as attending multilateral sessions on the issue.

“Experience from other countries has shown that when there is a single specialized senior official managing all aspects of hostage diplomacy cases, affected individuals and their families benefit,” Gavshon said. “Australia should promptly create a role like this for wrongful detention cases so the government can address the special circumstances of each case and allow families to get the support they desperately need.”

September 7 is the International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies. Each year, an estimated seven million people around the world are killed by effects from air pollution, which include cancer, strokes, and heart and lung diseases.

Around 99 percent of the world’s population lives in locations with air quality exceeding limits set by the World Health Organization (WHO). Pregnant people, children, older people, people with disabilities, and people with certain health conditions, such as respiratory and cardiovascular disease, are particularly at risk.

In 2022, Human Rights Watch documented air pollution’s devastating impact on people’s right to life and health in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the World Bank estimates that 3,300 people die every year from exposure to air pollution. The country’s heavy reliance on coal for heating and electricity generation makes its cities some of the most polluted in the world during the winter months.

After publishing our findings, Human Rights Watch urged the minister for energy and mining in Republika Srpska (RS) entity to not issue a permit for a proposed coal plant, to which he agreed. Since then, the permit has been the subject of challenges in RS courts, with the entity’s Supreme Court upholding the suspension in July 2024.

Meanwhile, in March 2024, after a decade of activism by local civil society groups, a plant in Zenica, an industrial city 50 kilometers from Sarajevo, whose pollution comes from burning coal at high temperatures for steel production, ceased operation and was decommissioned after domestic and international pressure on Bosnian authorities.

A 2023 report by the Ministry of Environment, obtained by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, revealed that the plant failed to mitigate industrial pollution.

Residents in Zenica are now breathing cleaner air. Dr. Samir Lemeš of Eko Forum Zenica recently told Human Rights Watch that after the plant’s closure, measured benzene, sulfur dioxide, and PM10 concentrations decreased below the safe limit for the first time in years. 

Air pollution is an issue of global significance. Outdoor air pollution is directly linked to climate change as it is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. Limiting the burning of coal, oil, and gas improves air quality and slows global warming. Breathing clean air is a fundamental human right, and the realization of that right impacts us all. 

This month, Netflix released “The Goat Life,” a movie centered on the experiences of an Indian migrant worker, Najeeb Muhammed, who worked in Saudi Arabia in the early 1990s and, after being stranded in the desert, was forced to work as a goat herder. It is based on the 2008 bestselling book, “Goat Days,” which was written by another migrant worker and author under the pen name Benyamin.

The movie has caused uproar in Saudi Arabia with Saudi nationals calling for a boycott of Netflix on social media and claiming that the movie “dramatically exaggerates” an isolated case of migrant worker abuse, reinforces negative stereotypes of Saudi culture, and is a fundamentally outdated and flawed depiction of Saudi Arabia’s treatment of its migrant workforce.

While the movie likely exaggerates some elements of Najeeb’s story for cinematic purposes and is based on a case from the 1990s, the abuses chronicled in the story are unfortunately more widespread than Saudi social media critics would like to admit. Najeeb also shared further details of his experiences in interviews promoting the movie.

The abuses portrayed in the movie center around animal herders’ isolation, and include the disproportionate control over workers enabled by Saudi Arabia’s kafala (sponsorship) system, rampant wage, and recruitment fee abuses, exposure to extreme heat, and lack of state oversight. These abuses have all been documented in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states for decades. Migrant animal herders, similar to domestic workers, suffer some of the worst abuses because they are excluded from Saudi Arabia’s labor laws, and are often victims of trafficking, isolation, and physical abuse.

Trying to dismiss discomforting portrayals of migrant worker abuses as racism, slander, or trying to deflect attention by “whataboutism” is a means of downplaying the abuses enabled by the kafala system, a racialized labor governance system. While Najeeb was held captive by a fraudulent sponsor posing as his employer who took him from the airport, this abusive sponsorship system is still not dismantled even 30 years after he left Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s global ambitions laid out in its Vision 2030 plans, including its recent 2034 FIFA Men’s World Cup host bid submission, relies extensively on migrant labor to make them a reality. The truth is that unless Saudi Arabia prioritizes bold labor protection measures alongside its ambitious projects, there will be many more stories like Najeeb’s, which publicly expose the horrific abuses suffered by migrant workers in Saudi Arabia. 

Last week, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres issued a global SOS– Save Our Seas – regarding rising sea levels. “Surging seas are coming for us all,” Guterres warned, making an urgent plea for global leaders to invest in “new adaptation and protection measures.” These measures must foreground disability rights.   

As sea levels rise, planned relocation – a process that involves moving entire communities from high-risk areas to new sites – is predicted to increase as a last resort after all efforts to adapt in place have failed. This process can take various forms. For example, some communities plan their own relocations and request governmental support, while in other instances, governments may force relocation against residents’ wishes. When relocation is unavoidable, Human Rights Watch advocates for a rights-based approach that ensures affected communities have a voice in the process. However, important questions remain about the long-term impacts of relocation, particularly for marginalized groups, such as people with disabilities.

When I asked Dr. Andreas Kopf, who focuses on climate adaptation in the Pacific, about this subject, he said: “I’m not aware of any study that explicitly addresses the inclusivity of people with disabilities in the relocation discourse.” This apparent gap is significant, given people with disabilities face unique risks and have unique contributions to offer climate adaptation efforts.

A 2022 analysis of more than 400 planned relocation cases revealed significant challenges for communities, including inadequate participation in planning processes and a lack of key services in new locations. When we spoke, disability rights activist and CEO of the National Forum of Women with Disabilities in Pakistan, Abia Akram noted that the negative impacts of relocation exacerbate existing inequities and disproportionately impact people with disabilities, emphasizing increased barriers related to “employment, transportation, and infrastructure accessibility.”

To address such disparities, planned relocation efforts should include early and continuous consultation with people with disabilities and their representative organizations. People with disabilities have developed critical resilience strategies that can inform more equitable and inclusive climate adaptation. Governments need to acknowledge these contributions in policies and practices, including by actively involving people with disabilities in relocation planning and decision-making.

As climate impacts accelerate, embedding disability rights into planned relocation processes is essential to achieving more just and effective adaptation efforts for all.

On Monday, a Telegram channel belonging to Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, released videos of six Israeli hostages whose bodies were recovered Saturday, filmed before their death. The Israeli government says the four men and two women were fatally shot by their captors shortly before its troops reached the tunnel in Gaza where they were held.

Qassam has not taken responsibility for their deaths but announced on Telegram that, following a hostage rescue by Israeli troops in June, its personnel guarding the hostages had been given “new instructions” on what to do if the Israeli military approached. It did not provide details regarding these instructions, but Qassam spokesman Abu Obeida said that “Netanyahu’s insistence to free prisoners through military pressure, instead of sealing a deal, means they will be returned to their families in shrouds.”

Intentionally killing hostages is a war crime.

The statement came as anger in Israel at the Israeli government spilled over into mass protests and a rare, impromptu general strike on Monday. In Israel, public expressions of solidarity with the hostages and their families runs deep. Photos of the hostages, including those killed last week, have dotted train stations, government buildings, restaurants, and billboards. Protestors accuse Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of sabotaging a US-brokered proposal for a ceasefire and release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners to avoid angering his ultra-nationalist coalition partners.

The six, five of whom were apparently civilians, were kidnapped from southern Israel on October 7 in a Hamas-led attack that killed more than 815 civilians and took more than 250 people hostage. Those acts constitute crimes against humanity.

Since October 7, all parties to the conflict have flouted laws of war protections for civilians, sparking the International Criminal Court prosecutor to request arrest warrants for senior Israeli and Hamas leaders. The devastation in Gaza has been unbearable, with more than 40,000 documented fatalities, most of the population displaced, civilian infrastructure decimated and famine-like conditions setting in, a product of the Israeli government’s unlawful attacks, obstruction of aid, and using starvation as a weapon of war.

War crimes by one side do not justify war crimes by another.

Under international humanitarian law, all civilian hostages must be released immediately and unconditionally. Legitimate “new instructions” to Qassam captors would be to obey the laws of war.

LAION, the German nonprofit organization that manages a dataset used to train popular artificial intelligence (AI) tools, has removed from its dataset some children’s photos that were secretly included and misused to power AI models that in turn could generate photorealistic deepfakes of other children.

The move follows the Stanford Internet Observatory’s December 2023 report that found known images of child sexual abuse in LAION’s dataset, as well as Human Rights Watch’s recent investigations that found personal photos of Australian and Brazilian children secretly scraped into the dataset.

Training on photos of real children enables AI models to create convincing clones of any child. The images we found in LAION’s dataset captured the faces and bodies of 362 Australian children and 358 Brazilian children without their consent and were used to train AI models used to create sexually explicit deepfakes of other children.

LAION confirmed our findings that some children’s photos were accompanied by sensitive information, which we reported made the children’s identities easily traceable. Human Rights Watch has confirmed the removal of the children’s photos identified to LAION from its newly released dataset.

LAION’s removal of these images is a positive step. It proves it is possible to remove children’s personal data from AI training datasets. It also acknowledges the gravity of the harm inflicted on children when their personal data is used to harm them and others in ways that are impossible to anticipate or guard against, due to the nature of AI systems.

But serious concerns remain. We reviewed only a tiny fraction – less than 0.0001 percent – of LAION’s dataset, and there are likely many more identifiable children whose photos remain in the dataset. AI models that were trained on the earlier dataset cannot forget the now removed images. Moreover, Human Rights Watch was only able to conduct this research because LAION’s dataset is open source; datasets that are privately built and owned by AI companies continue to go unexamined.

This is why governments should pass laws that would protect all children’s privacy through their data.

This month, the Australian government will announce whether it will honor its commitment to introduce the country’s first such law, a Children’s Privacy Code. And Brazil’s Senate will soon deliberate on a proposed law that protects children’s rights online, including their data privacy.

These are rare opportunities to meaningfully protect children. Lawmakers should do so.