Category: Human Rights

Nearly 100 years ago in June 1924, the US Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act, granting citizenship to the Indigenous peoples who had long lived on the land that became the United States. Nonetheless, some US states regularly denied Native citizens the right to vote through the 1960s, with Maine, Utah, and New Mexico being […]

(Nairobi) – Mali’s military authorities have arrested a colonel from the gendarmerie who recently published a book about abuses by the Malian armed forces, raising fears of an enforced disappearance, Human Rights Watch said today. Various sources, including one who spoke to Human Rights Watch, said that on March 2, 2024, unidentified men abducted gendarmerie […]

In February, plainclothes security officers detained Batte Urgessa, a spokesperson for the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), an opposition political party, and French journalist Antoine Galindo, as they met for an interview in a hotel in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. More than twenty-four hours later, they were brought before the Addis Ababa City Administration Court. The […]

High Representative Josep Borrell and Commissioner for Crisis Management, Janez Lenarčič, have issued the following statement: “We strongly condemn the recent ban by the Sudanese de facto authorities on the delivery of cross-border humanitarian assistance from Chad to Sudan to the civilians suffering at the hands of both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid […]

In an update to the UN Human Rights Council, Mr. Türk described 2024 as a “mega election year” with more than 60 countries slated to hold elections involving nearly half of the world’s people. “Every election – even an imperfect one – constitutes an effort to at least formally acknowledge the universal aspiration to democracy,” the […]

Religious leaders in Iraq conduct thousands of marriages each year, including child marriages, that flout Iraqi laws and are not officially registered. These marriages create a loophole around legal restrictions on child marriage and have disastrous effects on women and girls’ ability to get government services, register their children’s birth, and claim their rights. Iraq […]

(Nairobi) – The killing of a potential presidential candidate during an assault by Chadian security forces on an opposition party headquarters raises serious concerns about the environment for elections scheduled for May 6, 2024, Human Rights Watch said today. On February 28, members of the security forces killed Yaya Dillo, the president of the Socialist […]

A new wave of deadly attacks in the northern Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado by an armed group linked to the Islamic State (ISIS) is forcing thousands of people to flee. The attacks, by fighters known as Al-Shabab or Mashababos, include raids on villages in Chiure district, where at least four civilians were killed, and […]

President Daniel Ortega and other high-level officials should be held accountable “as should Nicaragua, as a State that goes after its own people targeting university students, indigenous people, people of African descent, campesinos and members of the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations,” they said in a statement.  The accusation comes in their latest report […]

(Sydney, March 2, 2024) – An Australian youth forced as a child to live under the Islamic State, who was believed to have died while wrongfully detained by anti-ISIS forces, appears to be alive in a prison in northeast Syria, Human Rights Watch said today. The Australian government should take immediate steps to confirm whether […]