Video

  • Syria: Government Attacking Bread Lines
    October 1, 2012
    Syrian government forces have dropped bombs and fired artillery at or near at least 10 bakeries in Aleppo province over the past three weeks, killing and maiming scores of civilians who were waiting for bread.
  • Ethiopia: Indigenous People Forced From Land
    June 18, 2012
    The Ethiopian government is forcibly displacing indigenous pastoral communities in Ethiopia’s Lower Omo valley without adequate consultation or compensation to make way for state-run sugar plantations and the construction of Africa's highest dam, the Gibe III hydropower project. The Lower Omo valley, one of the most remote and culturally diverse areas on the planet, is home to around 200,000 people from eight unique agro-pastoral communities who have lived there for as long as anyone can remember. Their way of life and their identity is linked to the land and access to the Omo River.
  • Peru: Disability Rights in the Voting Booth
    May 16, 2012
    Peru should remove significant barriers preventing people with disabilities from exercising their right to vote and other civil rights. The failure to dismantle the obstacles is undermining Peru’s leadership as one of the first countries to ratify, in 2008, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
  • Libya: Unacknowledged Deaths
    May 13, 2012
    The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has failed to acknowledge dozens of civilian casualties from air strikes during its 2011 Libya campaign, and has not investigated possible unlawful attacks.
  • SYRIA: War Crimes in Idlib During Peace Negotiations
    May 3, 2012
    While diplomats argued over details of Annan's peace plan, Syrian tanks and helicopters attacked one town in Idlib after another. Everywhere we went, we saw burnt and destroyed houses, shops, and cars, and heard from people whose relatives were killed. It was as if the Syrian government forces used every minute before the ceasefire to cause harm.
  • Azerbaijan: Media Freedoms in Grave Danger
    May 2, 2012
    Journalists and free-speech advocates voice their alarm at the Azerbaijan government's crackdown in free expression and the European Broadcasting Union's reluctance to speak out publicly against it ahead of the Eurovision Song Contest in Baku.
  • Bosco Ntaganda - Wanted for War Crimes
    April 13, 2012
    Bosco Ntaganda is wanted by the International Criminal Court for recruiting and using child soldiers in northeastern Congo. But since his arrest warrant was unsealed in 2008, Ntaganda was made a general in the Congolese army. He has also continued to recruit children to fight and has played a role in ethnic massacres, killings, rape and torture.
  • Syria: Army Planting Banned Landmines
    March 13, 2012
    A 28-year-old former Syrian army deminer from Jisr al-Shughour in Syria’s northern Idlib Governorate told Human Rights Watch that in January, local residents saw the Syrian army plant landmines at Hasanieih (حسانية), Derwand (دروند) and Jiftlek (جفتلك), along routes used by refugees to reach Turkey. In early February, he visited Hasanieih and found landmines planted “between the fruit trees” 3 meters from the border in two parallel lines, each approximately 500 meters long. Local villagers told him that the army had informed farmers in the area that they need army permission to enter the orchards, but had not told them that the area was mined. At the beginning of March, the deminer, together with his cousin and three volunteers, removed approximately 300 PMN-2 antipersonnel mines from Hasanieih.
  • Azerbaijan: Illegal Evictions Ahead of Eurovision
    February 28, 2012
    Azerbaijani authorities have begun the forcible eviction of residents to demolish the last standing building in the neighborhood of the capital, Baku, where the 2012 Eurovision song contest is to be held. The government should order an investigation into the legality of the municipal authorities’ actions and compensate the evicted residents adequately, in line with national and international human rights law.
  • A Heavy Price: Lead Poisoning and Gold Mining in Zamfara State
    February 6, 2012
    Thousands of children in northern Nigeria need immediate medical treatment and dozens of villages remain contaminated two years into the worst lead poisoning epidemic in modern history, Human Rights Watch said today while releasing a video on the issue. Four hundred children have died, according to official estimates, yet environmental cleanup efforts have not even begun in numerous affected villages.