• Ghana: Serious Abuse for People With Mental Disabilities
    Sep 28, 2012
    People with mental disabilities suffer severe abuses in psychiatric institutions and spiritual healing centers in Ghana. Human Rights Watch describes how thousands of people with mental disabilities are forced to live in these institutions, often against their will and with little possibility of challenging their confinement. In psychiatric hospitals, people with mental disabilities face overcrowding and unsanitary conditions. In some of the spiritual healing centers, known as prayer camps, they are often chained outdoors and forced to fast for weeks, while being denied access to medication. Human Rights Watch also highlights the challenges of people with mental disabilities who live in the community, who face stigma and discrimination and often lack adequate shelter, food and healthcare.
  • Breaking Barriers: The Disability Rights Movement in Russia
    Aug 8, 2012
  • Peru: Disability Rights in the Voting Booth
    May 16, 2012
    Peru should remove significant barriers preventing people with disabilities from exercising their right to vote and other civil rights. The failure to dismantle the obstacles is undermining Peru’s leadership as one of the first countries to ratify, in 2008, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
  • Peru: Disability Rights in the Voting Booth
    May 14, 2012
    Peru should remove significant barriers preventing people with disabilities from exercising their right to vote and other civil rights. The failure to dismantle the obstacles is undermining Peru’s leadership as one of the first countries to ratify, in 2008, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Based on interviews with more than 100 people with disabilities and their families, Human Rights Watch found that people with sensory, intellectual, and psychosocial disabilities were arbitrarily denied their right to vote. Human Rights Watch also examined the barriers that people with these and other disabilities face when exercising their political rights, including the difficulty of getting identity documents essential for voting, and the absence of support mechanisms to help people with disabilities make voting decisions.
  • Nepal: Access to Education for Children with Disabilities
    Aug 16, 2011
    Children with disabilities in Nepal face diverse and imposing barriers to getting a basic education. Human Rights Watch has found that schools are physically inaccessible, teachers are inadequately trained, and some children with disabilities are unjustly denied admission to neighborhood schools. Many of these children also experience abuse and neglect at home and in their communities. These barriers result in low attendance and high dropout rates for children with disabilities compared with their non-disabled peers.
  • Sex, HIV and Disability
    Jun 3, 2011

    People with disabilities are often left out of discussions about HIV prevention and treatment. Myroslava Tataryn and Winstone Zulu are trying to change this. Amy Costello reports.

  • No One Knows Us: Women with Disabilities in Northern Uganda
    Aug 25, 2010
  • Women with Disabilties in Northern Uganda
    Aug 25, 2010

    In northern Uganda, women with disabilities are often excluded from the post- conflict reconstruction efforts. Jessie Graham reports.

  • Luis's Story
    Jul 23, 2010

    Luis has schizophrenia. When he was detained by US immigration officials, his greatest fear wasn't being deported. It was not having access to his medication. Hear Luis's story.