This year, the Red Hand Campaign is pressing for universal ratification of the treaty banning the use of child soldiers. The treaty, known as the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, prohibits the use of children under age 18 in hostilities or their forced recruitment. Since it was adopted ten years ago, 131 governments-two-thirds of the world's countries- have ratified it.

If adopted, the June 2009 standards submitted by the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission would go far toward eliminating rape in adult prisons and jails, juvenile and immigration detention facilities, and community corrections.

The Kenyan government should ensure that strong human rights protections are included in plans for expanded home-based HIV counseling and testing. Earlier in 2009, Kenya started testing people for HIV in their own homes, and aims to test more than four million Kenyans - adults and children - in 2010, according to the new Kenya National HIV/AIDS Strategic Plan.

Migrants drowning at sea after being turned away from shore. Children detained with adults and at risk of physical and sexual abuse. Workers cheated out of wages and confined to their workplace. Authorities extorting bribes. Governments denying health care benefits to those who might most need it.

Many governments’ policies toward migrants worldwide expose them to human rights abuses including labor exploitation, inadequate access to health care, and prolonged detention in poor, overcrowded conditions.

Human Rights Watch writes to Minister of Public Health and Sanitation Beth Mugo urging for the inclusion of a strong human rights component into the government’s strategy on home-based testing and counselling.

The government claims that the Maoists cannot be defeated just with force and that their threat must also be countered with development. If that is so then the government should remember that access to quality education for India's most marginalised children is an indispensable ingredient for progress. And if the Naxalites seek to justify their bloodshed by saying they are fighting for India's poor, then their destruction of one of the few services that can empower these communities is abhorrently perverse.

Both the Naxalites and the government need to recognize that the continued targeting and occupation of schools will neither protect the marginalized nor secure the state. Instead, these tactics cut off tens of thousands of Indian children and huge areas of the country from their hope for a better future.