Category: Human Rights

Hate speech is having a demonstrable effect on society: one of the many similarities between the January attacks on Brazil’s government buildings, and the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, is that each occurred after certain groups repeatedly directed dangerous rhetoric and false claims against others. Concerns over the growing phenomenon have […]

On January 28, 2022, Bryan Arthur Stone, a 56-year-old father, died by suicide at the Laval Quebec immigration holding center while in the custody of the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). A year later, CBSA has refused to release details about the case, citing privacy. But information has now come to light after media obtained […]

The United States is bracing for further details in yet another horrific police killing of a Black man, this time Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee. The fatal beating reminds us of the fundamental changes to policing that are still needed and what is required to foster safety in the US, particularly in Black communities, whose […]

Five years ago, I interviewed a young Afghan woman who miraculously survived the devastating Taliban suicide bombing in Kabul on January 27, 2018. It was a horrendous attack: the Taliban rigged an ambulance with explosives and detonated it in downtown Kabul, killing more than 100 people. She escaped serious injury only because she had stepped […]

On Thursday, a panel of judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague authorized the Office of the Prosecutor to resume its investigation into alleged crimes against humanity in the Philippines. The judges concluded that the Philippine government failed to substantiate its assertions that it was doing enough to investigate and prosecute killings […]

In his speech, delivered at UN Headquarters in New York, Mr. Guterres recalled that, within months, the Nazis had dismantled fundamental constitutional rights and paved the way for totalitarian rule: members of parliament were arrested, freedom of the press was abolished, and the first concentration camp was built, in Dachau. The antisemitism of the Nazis […]

“We have serious concerns about impunity and the failure to address racial disparities in the criminal justice system, deaths in police custody, ‘joint enterprise’ convictions, and the dehumanising nature”, of the so-called ‘stop and search’ policing strategy, the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent said in a statement at the end of an official […]

The hospital bed in the middle of the room is surrounded by beeping machines and blinking monitors. Two paramedics lift the patient onto a stretcher and swiftly push it out the door. Outside, ‘Sophia’ is waiting. ‘Sophia’ – wisdom in Greek – is one of 5 fully equipped ambulance buses that will go to different […]

(Johannesburg) – Zimbabwe should reregister hundreds of civil society groups whose registration it has withdrawn, and amend its Private Voluntary Organization Act to bring it in line with its obligations to protect freedom of association, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should also cancel an amendment that would bar groups from “political” activity under […]

(New York) – A database obtained by Human Rights Watch supports findings of mass due process violations, severe prison overcrowding, and deaths in custody in El Salvador, Human Rights Watch and Cristosal said today. The database appears to belong to the Ministry of Public Safety and lists names of people prosecuted between March and late-August […]