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Hong Kong will hold elections for its Legislative Council on December 7, without a single pro-democracy candidate. The Chinese government’s attempts to present the legislature, known as the LegCo, as legitimate hardly fool anyone. Many Hongkongers quietly boycotted the previous election in 2021, resulting in record-low turnout.

Human Rights Watch submission to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights for its 79th session, List of Issues for Egypt.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz is set to visit Israel on 6th of December and meet, among others, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip. Merz is putting Germany’s credibility on justice at risk.

Armed groups in Colombia’s southern state of Putumayo, have tightened their control over citizens’ daily lives and committed grave abuses against civilians, particularly in Indigenous communities.

The Trump administration’s latest actions on immigration policy appear to be based on punitive hostility toward people of particular nationalities and to carry an unmistakable current of racism as well.

The Regional Economic Integration Framework to be signed today by Democratic Republic of Congo President Félix Tshisekedi and Rwanda President Paul Kagame at the White House in Washington, DC, is being heralded as a breakthrough for regional cooperation over confrontation.

On October 22, my colleagues and I took part in a demonstration in Stockholm to read the names of the children killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023. Initiated by the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society, the gathering was held by 23 organisations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty Sweden, and Oxfam.

We, the undersigned civil society organisations across Europe, express deepest concern regarding the direction that discussions on the proposal for a Return Regulation are currently taking in the Council of the European Union. The compromise text prepared by the Danish Presidency, reflecting amendments and positions advanced by several Member States, represents a severe and unprecedented deterioration of safeguards, legal protections, and fundamental rights standards within EU return policy and the broader legislative framework.

(Berlin, December 4, 2025) – Georgian authorities have adopted a series of laws that unjustifiably interfere with the right to peaceful assembly and are being used to suppress dissent, Human Rights Watch said today. Combined with abusive policing and steep fines, these measures violate Georgians’ right to peaceful protest, making dissent increasingly risky and leaving critics vulnerable to punitive measures.