Category: Human Rights

(Nairobi) – Burkina Faso‘s military authorities are misusing an emergency law to unlawfully conscript magistrates – prosecutors and judges – who have opened legal proceedings against junta supporters, Human Rights Watch said today. These recent conscriptions come amid the Burkinabè junta’s growing repression of dissidents, journalists, human rights defenders, and political opponents. Between August 9 […]

(Sydney) – Australian leaders should discuss human rights issues with Indonesian President-elect Prabowo Subianto Djojohadikusumo during meetings in Canberra on August 20, 2024, Human Rights Watch said today. Australia should seek commitments from Prabowo to uphold religious freedom, protect Indigenous and religious minorities, and revise government policies that discriminate against women and girls, people living […]

(Beirut) – The Israeli airstrikes on Yemen’s Hodeidah port on the evening of July 20, 2024, were an apparently unlawful indiscriminate or disproportionate attack on civilians that could have a long-term impact on millions of Yemenis who rely on the port for food and humanitarian aid, Human Rights Watch said today. The Israeli strikes came a day […]

High Representative/Vice-President Josep Borrell and Commissioner for Crisis Management, Janez Lenarčič, have issued the following statement: “Tomorrow, we mark World Humanitarian Day to celebrate the indispensable and tireless life-saving efforts of aid workers worldwide. When disasters strike, crises erupt and conflicts arise, humanitarians are among the first ones on the spot delivering emergency assistance to those affected. This […]

“It is unthinkable for me to go out. I could get a heatstroke,” Esther Laforge, 35, messaged me earlier this month. Esther, who lives outside of the Spanish city of Seville where temperature is expected to hit 40 degrees Celsius this week, has a physical disability that affects her body temperature regulation. As Spain experiences […]

Around 110,000 people have been displaced inside Lebanon since October, 35 percent of them children, the agency has reported. It is estimated that almost 150,000 people remain within the 10-kilometre Blue Line. Since the Hamas-led terror attacks of 7 October there have been 16 recorded attacks on healthcare, with 21 paramedics killed during hostilities, according […]

Summer is here and it’s the season of wedding parties throughout Türkiye. But for some Kurdish men, women, and children, joyful dancing and singing of Kurdish political folk songs at wedding parties or elsewhere has ended in arrest and charges of “spreading terrorist propaganda.” This crime is punishable with up to five years in prison. […]

Special Rapporteur Ashwini K.P., said at the end of a 12-day fact finding mission, that members of marginalised racial and ethnic groups in Brazil – including those of African descent and from indigenous groups – are experiencing “pervasive manifestations of systemic racism, as legacies of colonialism and enslavement.” This form of racism, she said, has […]

(Beirut) – Iraq’s parliament is moving forward an amendment to the country’s Personal Status Law that would allow Iraqi religious authorities, rather than state law, to govern marriage and inheritance matters at the expense of fundamental rights, Human Rights Watch said today. The Iraqi parliament, which completed its first reading of the bill on August 4, 2023, […]

On August 13, Eswatini’s Supreme Court overturned a 2016 High Court decision that declared several repressive provisions of the 1938 Suppression of Terrorism Act (STA) and 2008 Sedition and Subversive Activities Act (SSA) invalid. The 2016 High Court decision had declared that several sections of SSA and STA violated the rights to freedom of association, expression, and […]