Category: Human Rights

Prominent Lebanese lawyer Nizar Saghieh, who heads the local rights-based organization Legal Agenda, faces the threat of sanction – including possible disbarment – for speaking out against the Beirut Bar Association’s decision to arbitrarily and unlawfully limit what lawyers can say in public. Saghieh will appear before the Council of the Beirut Bar Association tomorrow. […]

(Berlin) – The European Union is adopting an important new law to require EU-based companies to ensure that their imports and exports are “deforestation-free” and uphold human rights, Human Rights Watch said today. The law establishes the legal requirements for European businesses regarding biodiversity loss and human rights abuses embedded in their international supply chains. […]

(Beirut) – The Egyptian government and a private British company, Academic Assessment Ltd., exposed vast amounts of personal information about tens of thousands of children online for months, Human Rights Watch said today. The exposure violates children’s privacy, exposes them to the risk of serious harm, and appears to violate the data protection laws in […]

(Beirut) – All parties to the conflict in Yemen should immediately release anyone arbitrarily detained and to reveal what happened to those who have been forcibly disappeared since the conflict began in late 2014, Human Rights Watch, Mwatana for Human Rights, Amnesty International, and International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) said today in a joint […]

Justice has once again been denied in India under the draconian, colonial-era Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). On December 4, 2021, soldiers from the 21 Para Special Forces army unit shot and killed six coal miners in Nagaland’s Mon district. The deaths led to violent clashes between local villagers and troops, and seven more civilians […]

The Afghanistan Socio-Economic Outlook 2023, released by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), provides an overview of the fallout resulting from the takeover of Afghanistan by its present-day de facto rulers, the Taliban, in August 2021. Immediately after the Taliban assumed power, the Afghan economy collapsed, accelerating Afghanistan’s decade-long slide into poverty; with a population estimated […]

Erwin Barreto Vazquez was 21 years old when a car crash left him paralysed from the waist down in 2005, in Maracaibo, Venezuela. More than a decade after the accident, the country plummeted into a deep socioeconomic crisis and Erwin found it increasingly difficult to provide for his family. With no other options, he fled […]

(Beirut) – Libya’s Government of National Unity (GNU) and other authorities are cracking down on nongovernmental domestic and foreign organizations, Human Rights Watch said today. The GNU should withdraw onerous registration and administration requirements and ensure that civic groups are free to operate. In a March 21, 2023 circular, the Office of the Prime Minister […]

(Kathmandu) – The Nepali government should expand the Child Grant program to all families in the forthcoming budget as a crucial step toward ensuring the right of all children to an adequate standard of living, 16 Nepali and international civil society and human rights organizations said today in an open letter to Finance Minister Prakash […]

(New York) – Many clothing brands, mostly from the US, have not joined the Accord on Health and Safety in Bangladesh and Pakistan a decade after the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh that killed over 1,100 garment workers and injured more than 2,000, Human Rights Watch said today. Joining the Accord is […]