Many of the 1,429 households resettled to make way for Vale and Rio Tinto’s international coal mining operations in Tete province, Mozambique have faced serious disruptions in their access to food, water, and work. The Mozambican government’s speed in approving mining licenses and inviting billions of dollars in investment has outstripped the creation of adequate safeguards to protect directly affected populations.

On February 26, Human Rights Watch visited several of the political and human rights activists, medics, and teachers serving sentences ranging from two years to life in Jaw Prison, Bahrain. Human Rights Watch was able to photograph and videotape their meetings with the detainees, during a five-day visit, the first allowed to Human Rights Watch by the government in almost a year, with with political prisoners and high-ranking officials. Human Rights Watch concluded, based on the discussions with officials, that authorities have made no progress in investigating and prosecuting higher-level officials responsible for the worst abuses during the 2011 protests. The abuses resulted in the death of scores of protesters and bystanders, serious injuries to hundreds of people, arrests of thousands more, and more than 300 formal allegations of torture and ill-treatment.

Sri Lankan security forces have been using rape and other forms of sexual violence to torture suspected members or supporters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). While widespread rape in custody occurred during the armed conflict that ended in May 2009, Human Rights Watch found that politically motivated sexual violence by the military and police continues to the present. In the cases documented by Human Rights Watch, men and women reported being raped on multiple days, often by several people, with the army, police, and pro-government paramilitary groups frequently participating. Rape and other sexual violence of detained men and women by the security forces during and ever since the armed conflict suggests that sexual abuse has been a key element of the broader use of torture and ill-treatment against suspected LTTE members and supporters. This torture is intended to obtain “confessions” of involvement in LTTE activities, information on others including spouses and relatives, and, it appears, to instill terror in the broader Tamil population to discourage involvement with the LTTE.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in northern British Columbia has failed to protect indigenous women and girls from violence, adding to longstanding tensions between the RCMP and indigenous communities in the region. Women and girls Human Rights Watch interviewed also described abusive treatment by police officers, including ‪use of force against girls, strip searches of women by male officers, and physical and sexual abuse. Women who call the police for help have been blamed for the abuse, shamed over alcohol or substance use, and have found themselves at risk of arrest for actions taken in self-defense. Human Rights Watch conducted research along Highway 97 and along Highway 16 that has become infamous for the dozens of women and girls who have been reported missing or were found dead in its vicinity since the late 1960s.‬ The Canadian government should establish a national commission of inquiry into the murders and disappearances, including the impact of police mistreatment on their vulnerability to violence in communities along Highway 16, which has come to be called northern British Columbia’s “Highway of Tears.”