Author: Human Rights Watch

[ad_1] (Geneva) – Sri Lankan security forces still harass families of victims of forced disappearances and misuse the country’s draconian counterterrorism law a year since President Anura Kumara Dissanayake took office with promises of reform, Human Rights Watch said today. The United Nations Human Rights Council should renew the mandates for the UN to collect and analyze evidence […]

[ad_1] On August 17, police in Kazakhstan detained veteran human rights defender Bakhytzhan Toregozhina and held her for several hours apparently in connection to a criminal investigation on charges of participating in a banned extremist organization. She was picked up following social media posts she had made in support of Marat Zhylanbaev, an opposition activist who […]

[ad_1] Over the past two weeks, United Nations member countries started substantive negotiations for the first-ever UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation; a historic process that reflects major shifts in global economic policymaking and geopolitics. The treaty could replace the current patchwork system that deprives governments of considerable revenue and undermines their capacity to support […]

[ad_1] Earlier this week, Burkina Faso’s junta expelled the top United Nations representative in the country, Carol Flore-Smereczniak, declaring her “persona non grata” following a new UN report on violations against children in the country. Flore-Smereczniak is the second senior UN official to be expelled by the junta, after Barbara Manzi was declared persona non grata […]

[ad_1] In July, major news organizations published the image of 18-month-old Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, a Palestinian child so emaciated that his bones protruded through his back, while his mom cradled him in her arms. Instead of a diaper, he wore a black plastic bag.  Some online commentators have sought to downplay the image’s power […]

[ad_1] (Geneva) – The United Nations Human Rights office’s report on Sri Lanka details entrenched and systemic rights violations—including arbitrary detention, torture, and deaths in custody—under President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, Human Rights Watch said today. The new report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, also describes the misuse of draconian laws to silence […]

[ad_1] At the beginning of September, South Africa’s Western Cape High Court will hear a case that could finally end the criminalization of sex work in the country. It’s a moment decades in the making, which could bring real gains for the safety, dignity, and equality of sex workers. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International […]

[ad_1] For nine years, in Khar Yalla, authorities have effectively abandoned Senegalese families internally displaced from the Langue de Barbarie peninsula by coastal floods, violating their rights to an adequate standard of living, education, health, and to take part in cultural life. Senegalese authorities failed to include these families in a World Bank-funded planned relocation […]

[ad_1] (Beirut) – A law that Lebanon’s parliament adopted on July 31, 2025, includes positive reforms for Lebanon’s judiciary but falls short of guaranteeing judicial independence, Human Rights Watch said today.  The law includes some advances in terms of judicial independence, including greater judicial self-governance and the expansion of elections of judges by other judges. […]

[ad_1] (Washington DC) – Peruvian President Dina Boluarte has signed into law an amnesty bill that grants impunity for serious crimes committed during the country’s internal armed conflict, Human Rights Watch said today. Peru’s Congress passed the law on July 9, 2025, and President Boluarte signed it into law on August 13. It provides blanket amnesty to members […]