Category: Human Rights

Ford’s F-150 Lightning, the electric version of America’s best-selling vehicle, is produced with aluminum linked to deforestation and environmental harms in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, according to reporting from Bloomberg released last week. The Bloomberg story describes the effects on communities’ land and water of mining and refining bauxite, the ore needed to produced aluminum, a […]

(Beirut) – Members of parliament from around the world attending this year’s Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in Bahrain should use the assembly to raise concerns about the serious repression of human rights in Bahrain, 22 organizations including Human Rights Watch said today in a joint letter. The 146th IPU Assembly is scheduled to take place in […]

A coroner’s inquest into the 2015 death of Abdurahman Hassan, a refugee from Somalia, has brought to light shocking details about Canada’s immigration detention system and abusive conditions in provincial jails. In response, 40 organizations have renewed their call on the federal government to stop incarcerating people in provincial jails for administrative immigration purposes.  The […]

(Geneva) – The United Nations Human Rights Council should renew the mandate of the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua and the reporting mandate on Nicaragua of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) for two years, Human Rights Watch said today. The Group of Experts was established by the UN […]

(New York, March 5, 2023) — Human Rights Watch mourns the passing of the pioneering disability rights activist Judy Heumann, a dear friend and board member. Heumann’s lifelong activism supporting the rights of people with disabilities in the United States and around the world was extraordinary, Human Rights Watch said.  She died on March 4, […]

Eduardo Mendúa, an A’i Cofán Indigenous leader, was shot dead on February 26 outside his home in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Mendúa was an outspoken opponent of oil drilling in A’i Dureno, an Indigenous A’i Cofán community located on the banks of Aguarico river in the Sucumbíos province, where Ecuador’s government authorized exploration of 30 oil […]

Last month, members of the Stop Killer Robots campaign met in Costa Rica with 68 campaigners from 29 countries for their first in-person global conference since the Covid-19 pandemic. A central theme of the conference was around digital dehumanization, “a process in which human beings are reduced to data points that are then used to […]

(Washington, DC) – Nigeria ratified the international Convention on Cluster Munitions on February 28, 2023, becoming the 111th country to do so, Human Rights Watch said today. “Nigeria’s decision to join the cluster munitions ban shows that countries can play an important role in stigmatizing these heinous weapons, which endanger lives long after the fighting […]

(Johannesburg) – The Angolan authorities should immediately suspend forced evictions and demolitions in southern Luanda, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should also ensure that the owners of houses already demolished receive prompt reparations in the form of compensation, adequate relocation, and alternative accommodations. Angolan security forces raided the capital’s Zango 3 area on […]

(Bangkok) – The Phnom Penh municipal court on March 3, 2023, found the Cambodian political opposition leader Kem Sokha guilty of treason and sentenced him to a 27 year prison sentence, and indefinitely suspended his political rights to vote and to stand for election. Cambodian authorities should quash this politically motivated conviction and immediately and unconditionally […]