Category: Human Rights

(Nairobi) – Military forces responsible for a coup in Niger should immediately restore fundamental human rights and protect people from harm, Human Rights Watch said today. Coup leaders should ensure that the deposed president, Mohamed Bazoum, and all others in custody, including Interior Minister Hamadou Adamou Souley, are treated lawfully and with respect and ensure a […]

(Istanbul) – Istanbul police wrongfully detained activists and mistreated them and their lawyers around a July 20, 2023 commemoration of an Islamic State (ISIS) suicide bombing in the southeastern Turkish town of Suruç in 2015 that killed 33 young socialist activists, Human Rights Watch said today. The police arbitrarily arrested and abused a group of […]

In a news release issued by his Office, Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, denounced “constant shrinkage” in Cambodia’s democratic space in recent years, which he said is undermining citizen’s fundamental freedoms and their right to participate in the public square. In the lead up to the elections, Cambodia’s National Election Committee disqualified […]

As we mark the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) this week in 1990 and the 10th anniversary of Human Rights Watch’s work on disability rights this year, I think about the trailblazer Judy Heumann, who influenced both milestones. Judy, who passed away in March, was a pioneer in the disability rights movement. […]

Southern Europe is enduring one of the most severe heatwaves of the past decades. A country hit particularly hard by the increasing temperatures is Greece, where fires have broken out across the country. Pictures of people desperately fleeing from the flames, air thick with smoke, mass evacuations, popular tourist islands like Rhodes and Corfu ravaged […]

(New York) – A United Nations Security Council-mandated independent assessment of the international approach to the crisis in Afghanistan should prioritize human rights, especially the rights of women and girls, Human Rights Watch said today in a submission to the special coordinator leading the assessment. The special coordinator should ensure that the assessment hears from […]

(Beirut) – Negotiations for an end to the conflict in Yemen should include plans for a post-conflict justice that is inclusive and victim-centered, and includes provisions for accountability, reparations, and redress, more than 40 organizations including Human Rights Watch said today. Yemeni civil society organizations and associations of Yemeni victims and survivors issued the Yemen […]

The “tragic killing” at the penal colony at Olenivka in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, under temporary Russian military control, occurred overnight on 28 July 2022.   Many of the POWs were Ukrainian soldiers who had surrendered at the stricken Azovstal steel plant in the city of Mariupol. Appeal for justice “The prisoners of war […]

Azimjon Askarov, a human rights defender and advocate for marginalized communities in southern Kyrgyzstan, should have turned 72 this year. He should be enjoying life with his wife, children, and grandchildren, happily painting landscapes and portraits. Instead, he died in prison three years ago today, held on spurious charges. For this, no one has been […]

(Berlin, July 25, 2023) – Azerbaijani authorities have arrested a prominent opposition leader and scholar, Gubad Ibadoghlu, on spurious criminal charges, Human Rights Watch said today. On July 24, 2023, Baku’s Narimanov District Court sent Ibadoghlu for four months of pretrial detention on charges of production, acquisition or sale of counterfeit money by an organized […]