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Last year, the United States formally adopted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), undertaking a commitment to ensure the covenant's protections for "all individuals within its territory." the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch have prepared this report - the first of its kind -covering race and sex discrimination, prisoners' rights, police brutality

On November 8, 1992, Colombian President César Gaviria Trujillo adopted a series of emergency decrees restricting civil liberties, granting additional powers to the military, and punishing contact or dialogue with insurgent groups. The decrees marked a reversion to authoritarian patterns of rule supposedly left behind with the passage of the 1991 Constitution.

The Russian Federation is engaged in military policies in several armed conflicts in the “near abroad” — the countries of the former Soviet Union — that simultaneously protect and violate human rights.

During a six-month period in 1992, Tajikistan’s civil war claimed as many as 20,000 lives and displaced over 400,000 people.

Thousands of Burmese women and girls are trafficked into Thai brothels every year where they work under conditions tantamount to slavery. Subject to debt bondage, illegal confinement, various forms of sexual and physical abuse, and exposure to HIV in the brothels, they then face wrongful arrest as illegal immigrants if they try to escape or if the brothels are raided by Thai police.

Describing prison conditions under an acute crisis, this report covers not only decayed facilities, poor sanitation and overcrowding, but also prisons facing the economic and political disintegration of the state. Since 1990, a pattern of neglect and corruption has given way to complete abandonment.

President Daniel arap Moi of Kenya confidently predicted that the return of his country to a multiparty system would result in an outbreak of tribal violence that would destroy the nation. His prediction has been alarmingly fulfilled. One of the most disturbing developments in Kenya over the last two years has been the eruption of violent clashes between different ethnic groups.

The province of North Sumatra continues to be plagued by human rights abuses committed by security forces. Two cases are highlighted in this report: the ongoing military interference in a leadership dispute within a Protestant church group, and the treatment of villagers in a land dispute in Sei Lapan, an area about eighty miles north of Medan, the provincial capital.

What has been documented in our previous reports remains true today: in the inaccessible forests of the central and western states of Brazil, large estate owners use forced labor to cut and burn enormous tracts of land for the purpose of turning the forest into cattle pasture.