Author: Human Rights Watch

The world’s leading experts on hunger, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Famine Review Committee, found that famine has spread in Sudan. In August it had already identified famine in North Darfur’s largest displacement camp, Zamzam. Today it announced that famine had spread to other camps in North Darfur and that Sudan’s Nuba Mountains – […]

Rıfat Roni has spent more than a decade as an official court interpreter facilitating communication for Kurdish speakers in legal proceedings. This week, he found himself in the dock facing charges. Roni, 59, stood trial on the widely used charge of “membership of an armed  organization” on the basis of his involvement in a civil […]

This week, Brazil’s National Data Protection Authority banned the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, from using the personal data of its child users in Brazil to train its artificial intelligence (AI). The data regulator also banned X from sharing children’s personal data with third parties to train generative AI and ordered the company to amend […]

Liberia’s Prince Y. Johnson, who rose to prominence first as a warlord and then politician, was implicated in serious abuses during the country’s two civil wars between 1989 and 2003. His death on November 28, without ever being prosecuted, highlights the need to bring those responsible for international crimes to account and uphold the promise […]

(Nairobi) – Cameroon’s authorities should immediately reverse the suspension of a prominent human rights group, Human Rights Watch said today. The arbitrary suspension lacks a lawful basis and violates the right to freedom of association under both Cameroonian law and international human rights law.  On December 5, 2024, the minister of territorial administration, Paul Atanga Nji, […]

(Washington, DC, December 18, 2024) – Guatemala’s attorney general is carrying out politically motivated prosecutions against members of President Bernardo Arévalo’s administration, Human Rights Watch said today.  Since President Arévalo took office in January 2024, the Attorney General’s Office has moved forward with criminal investigations against the Arévalo administration that appear to be based on […]

As many as 1,360 children have never been reunited with their parents six years after the United States government forcibly separated them at the US border to deter migrants. The program constituted enforced disappearance and may have constituted torture. US efforts to help separated families have not adequately reckoned with the severe harm inflicted on […]

(Seoul) – The South Korean National Assembly’s 204 to 85 vote to impeach President Yoon Suk-yeol on December 14, 2024 after his rejected imposition of martial law has reinforced democratic rule and checks and balances in South Korea, Human Rights Watch said today.  All 300 National Assembly lawmakers participated in the vote, with 204 votes […]

(Beirut) – Saudi Arabia is hosting a major United Nations conference on internet governance while dozens of people remain imprisoned for peaceful online speech, Human Rights Watch said today. Many are charged under the country’s abusive counterterrorism law, and the authorities conduct invasive surveillance of civil society members at home and abroad.  The 19th annual […]

(Beirut) – Several recent cases confirm the continuation of Iran’s longstanding policy of denying political prisoners medical care as a tool to silence dissent, Human Rights Watch said today. This worsens the health conditions of detainees who should not have been imprisoned in the first place, causes unnecessary suffering, and leads to preventable deaths. Human Rights Watch […]