• Protect rights of women, girls with disabilities
    Apr 16, 2013
  • Ghana: People With Mental Disabilities Face Serious Abuse
    Mar 31, 2013
    This week’s high-level ministerial meeting about gender equality in international development assistance should promote the rights and needs of women with disabilities, Human Rights Watch said today. Specifically, governments should address the marginalization of women with disabilities in the declaration to be adopted on July 1, 2010.
  • Involuntary Treatment: The Invisible Health Care Crisis
    Mar 5, 2013
    In his new report, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez, the UN’s leading expert on torture, has drawn attention to severe abuses, such as neglect, mental and physical abuse and sexual violence, against people with mental or intellectual disabilities in health-care settings.
  • Discrimination, Inequality, and Poverty—A Human Rights Perspective
    Jan 11, 2013
    Despite recognition in the Millennium Declaration of the importance of human rights, equality, and non-discrimination for development, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) largely bypassed these key principles. The fundamental human rights guarantees of equality and non-discrimination are legally binding obligations and do not need instrumental justifications. Discrimination can both cause poverty and be a hurdle in alleviating poverty. Even in countries where there have been significant gains toward achieving the MDGs, inequalities have grown. The MDGs have supported aggregate progress—often without acknowledging the importance of investing in the most marginalized and excluded, or giving due credit to governments and institutions which do ensure that development benefits these populations. Recognition of this shortcoming in the MDGs has brought an increasing awareness of the importance of working to reverse growing economic inequalities through the post-2015 framework, and a key element of this must be actively working to dismantle discrimination.