Category: Human Rights

Last week, authorities in Jonglei state detained a photojournalist with the state-run South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation for participating in protests about the cost of living and nonpayment of civil servant salaries. Media reported that police and National Security Service (NSS) agents took Aleu Anyieth from his home in Bor, the capital of Jonglei state, but his whereabouts, five days later, remain unknown, raising the possibility that he […]

On Tuesday, the Phnom Penh Capital Court handed down a guilty verdict in the criminal trial of 10 activists from Mother Nature, an award-winning, youth-led Cambodian environmental group, on charges that stem from the group’s peaceful environmental activism from 2012 to 2021. At least four of the activists were immediately arrested outside the courtroom, where they were […]

Representatives from Latin American and Caribbean states convened recently to address responses to “forced displacement due to disasters,” including the effects of the climate crisis, following up on their Cartagena Declaration of 1984. The United States has not adopted the declaration and did not join the group, but it should pay attention and reflect on […]

(Sydney) – Personal photos of Australian children are being used to create powerful artificial intelligence (AI) tools without the knowledge or consent of the children or their families, Human Rights Watch said today. These photos are scraped off the web into a large data set that companies then use to train their AI tools. In turn, […]

About 1.4 million people are estimated to have been left in dire straits, as heavy rains lashed Sylhet and Sunamganj districts, as well as areas upstream, in India. “Our priority is to ensure that the most vulnerable families, who were already facing hardships and are now having their lives and livelihoods upended again by the […]

“Patterns of gross human rights violations, including the widespread use of arbitrary and incommunicado detention and enforced disappearance persist unabated” in Eritrea, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Eritrea, Dr. Mohamed Abdelsalam Babiker, told the UN Human Rights Council. Despite consistent concerns being raised about the dire rights situation across the country, […]

An Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) working group should show it is genuinely interested in engaging with civil society if it wants to produce an effective environmental rights declaration, as it resumes drafting today in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The working group released its first – and so far only – version of the draft […]

(Geneva) – All victims of gross human rights violations in Palestine and Israel are owed reparation, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch on June 26 submitted recommendations to the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. The rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, had invited input to inform her […]

(Berlin, July 1, 2024) – Uzbekistan authorities have increasingly cracked down on calls for independence in the autonomous republic of Karakalpakstan since protests broke out there two years ago, Human Rights Watch said today. But Uzbekistan has also yet to hold any senior officials accountable for the excessive force used to quell the protests against […]

The US State Department has released its annual Trafficking in Persons (TIPs) Report ranking nearly 200 countries’ anti-trafficking efforts. The report finds perpetrators increasingly use “social media, online advertisements, websites, dating apps, and gaming platforms” to force, defraud, or coerce job seekers into labor and sexual exploitation, and encourages technology companies to use “data and algorithm tools […]