Category: Human Rights

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on September 14 that it is repealing limits on climate-warming pollution from coal and gas-fired power plants, the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country. By gutting the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards, the EPA is eliminating most of the limits on power plants’ carbon […]

In the Fuerte Guaicaipuro military facility, prisoners have been confined in pit-like cells dug below ground level, exposed to cold, food deprivation and other degrading practices the UN qualifies as torture. These observations from the independent Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela published on Tuesday are part of a broader finding: following the US military rendition of then-President Nicolás […]

In the same report, released Monday, investigators found that the Iranian Government committed crimes against humanity by murdering, imprisoning and torturing those who participated in the 2025-2026 protests. The Fact-Finding Mission on Iran – whose investigators do not receive a salary for their work – linked the allegations in a press release on Thursday noting that civilians […]

Satirist and political commentator Azamat Omarov, who had been in pre-trial detention in Kazakhstan since mid-April on “inciting discord” charges, struck a plea bargain with the prosecution, under the terms of which he pled guilty, and on September 15, was released. While Omarov avoided what could have been a long and unjustified prison sentence, he […]

This week 25 former political prisoners arrived in Vilnius, Lithuania having been released from detention in Belarus. Their release was negotiated by the United States special envoy to Belarus John Coale with president Aliaksander Lukashenka. In exchange, the US lifted sanctions on two Belarusian companies. Among those released are journalist Andrei Aleksandrau and activist Iryna […]

(Berlin, September 17, 2026) – The convictions of Kosovo’s former President Hashim Thaçi and three senior former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) leaders for war crimes on September 16, 2026, are an important step toward accountability for victims of the 1998-1999 Kosovo conflict, Human Rights Watch said today.  The Kosovo Specialist Chambers, based in The Hague, found Thaçi, […]

(New York) – A new Chinese government decree expands the discretion of administrative authorities to arbitrarily bar people from leaving China, violating the internationally protected right to leave a country, Human Rights Watch said today. The State Council’s 19-article Regulations on Exit-Entry Administration, known as Decree No. 841, took effect on September 15, 2026. The new decree […]

Hungary’s new government has taken an important step toward dismantling a key discriminatory legacy of the Orbán era—the legal targeting of LGBT people. The job is not finished, however. The government submitted legislation to Parliament on September 14 to remove several provisions of the 2021 so-called “child protection” law that restrict the “portrayal” or “promotion” of sexual […]

The UN Human Rights High Commissioner said on Tuesday that this “painstaking” recovery effort raises serious questions about compliance with international law, and that war crimes may have been committed.  Volker Türk called for investigators to be given access to the territory. Palestinian authorities say thousands of bodies remain buried under rubble, but Israel is […]

These transfers, known as remittances, grew by 94 per cent between 2016 and 2025, far outpacing the 28 per cent increase in the number of migrants from those countries.  The gap shows that growth is not simply the result of more people migrating: on average, migrants abroad are sending larger amounts home. Some 220 million […]