On August 24, Attorney General Eric Holder appointed a federal prosecutor to review cases of post-9/11 detainee abuse and determine whether or not a criminal investigation is warranted. Human Rights Watch has long called for a criminal investigation into such abusive practices as waterboarding and other ill-treatment of people in US custody.

According to official statistics from the Ministry of Education in El Salvador, child labor in the sugarcane industry dropped by 70 percent between 2003 and 2008. Five years ago, Human Rights Watch investigated the use of child labor on El Salvador’s sugarcane plantations and found that thousands of children were working in extremely hazardous conditions.

In July 2009, Ohio passed a ban on corporal punishment in its public schools, becoming the thirtieth state in the United States to do so. The trend toward abolition of corporal punishment in the United States and abroad is accelerating: 97 of the 100 largest school districts have now abolished corporal punishment in public schools, along with 107 countries worldwide.

12-year-old Mia came to the rape treatment center in Santa Barbara because her school counselor suspected sexual abuse. Like most victims, Mia (a pseudonym) was told that this evidence, known as a “rape kit,” would be used to try to identify her assailant through a DNA match.

But the rape kit collected from Mia’s body was one of tens of thousands of such kits across the United States that sit in storage, untested, for years.

On May 18, 2009, the public pressure that Human Rights Watch generated led to a landmark vote by the Los Angeles City Council. Recognizing the immensity of the problem, the council pledged new funding to expedite the testing of all the rape kits under the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles Police Department.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines ordered the police to investigate vigilante killings one month after Human Rights Watch exposed the involvement of local government officials in them.

Guinea’s president, Moussa Dadis Camara, publicly acknowledged and condemned human rights abuses committed by Guinean security forces, sending a strong message to soldiers that such violence should stop. In a televised ceremony, Camara led hundreds of soldiers in a vow to stop abuses.

On April 30, Ban Ki-moon announced the appointment of the first Special Representative of the Secretary-General on violence against children, a step that Human Rights Watch had been promoting for nearly nine years.

"After they whipped and then beat me with an iron bar, I knew I could not continue and had to leave to survive," a woman called Grace told Gerry Simpson, a researcher investigating the plight of Zimbabweans in South Africa.