Uganda, Africa’s “poster child” for successful reform, has fallen on hard times. After being lauded internationally for success in turning around a country destroyed by violence, repression and HIV/AIDS, Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni, and the National Resistance Movement he controls, have let this progress unravel.

Children around the world face systematic barriers to schooling that are undermining global progress towards universal primary education.

Most travelers to Papua New Guinea have heard of the country's high crime rate. What they don't know is that many Papua New Guineans are as scared of the police as they are of common criminals.

The Papua New Guinea government must act to stop the police from engaging in brutal beatings, rape and torture of arrestees, many of who are children, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.

U.S.-funded “abstinence-only” programs are jeopardizing Uganda’s successful fight against HIV/AIDS, Human Rights Watch said in a new report today. Abstinence-only programs deny young people information about any method of HIV prevention other than sexual abstinence until marriage.

In the midst of South Africa’s explosive HIV/AIDS epidemic, sexual violence can be a death sentence. In April 2002 the South African government pledged to provide rape survivors with post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP), antiretroviral drugs that can reduce the chances of contracting the virus from an HIV-positive attacker. South Africa’s PEP programme is promising, one that could become a model for other countries. But South Africa’s own inaction is undermining its promising initiative.

Violence and discrimination against women and girls is fueling Africa’s AIDS crisis. African governments must make gender equality a central part of national AIDS programs if they are to succeed in fighting the epidemic.

West African governments are failing to address a rampant traffic in child labor that could worsen with the region’s growing AIDS crisis.