Author: Human Rights Watch

(Beirut) – Civilians are at grave risk of abuse as the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah escalates, Human Rights Watch said today. In the early hours of March 2, 2026, Hezbollah fired rockets and drones into northern Israel, after which the Israeli military carried over 70 strikes across Lebanon, including on southern and eastern […]

An Athens court in a landmark ruling on February 26 delivered the first convictions in Greece’s “Predatorgate” scandal. The court found three executives of the Greek spyware company Intellexa, and another prominent businessman, all guilty of unlawfully accessing information systems, violating communications privacy, and interfering with personal data systems, using spyware. The ruling is an important step […]

(Sydney) – Australia’s government should invest in community-based alternatives to immigration detention rather than spending millions of dollars per person each year on its abusive offshore regime, Human Rights Watch said in a recent submission to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee of the Australian Senate. Since November 2025, the committee has been holding […]

On Thursday, the European Union 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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

(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 […]

A Cambodian government-controlled court sentenced two journalists to 14 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 […]

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 […]