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.

The prosecution of the former dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier represents a landmark opportunity for the Haitian justice system to address some of the worst crimes in Haiti’s past. Duvalier returned to Haiti on January 16, 2011, after nearly 25 years in exile, and was charged with financial and human rights crimes. The investigation is under way. Duvalier’s rule, from 1971 to 1986, was marked by systematic human rights violations. Hundreds of political prisoners held in a network of prisons known as the “triangle of death” died from mistreatment or were victims of extrajudicial killings. Duvalier’s government repeatedly closed independent newspapers and radio stations. Journalists were beaten, in some cases tortured, jailed, and forced to leave the country.

In 2007, Human Rights Watch honored Colombian journalist Hollman Morris as one of its "Human rights defenders of the year." Now, according to the Washington Post, the US government has denied Morris a visa to attend Harvard University on a Nieman fellowship.