• US: New Prison Rape Standards Offer Landmark Protection
    Press release
    May 17, 2012
    The long awaited national prison rape elimination standards issued on May 17, 2012 by the Justice Department, if fully implemented, may end widespread prison rape in the United States. The standards provide detailed guidance to federal, state, and local officials on how to prevent, detect, and respond to sexual abuse in their confinement facilities.
  • US: Sexual Violence, Harassment of Immigrant Farmworkers
    Press release
    May 15, 2012
    Hundreds of thousands of immigrant farmworker women and girls in the United States face a high risk of sexual violence and sexual harassment in their workplaces because US authorities and employers fail to protect them adequately, Human Rights Watch said in its 95-page report, “Cultivating Fear: The Vulnerability of Immigrant Farmworkers in the US to Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment.”
  • The Breastfeeding Brouhaha
    Commentary
    May 15, 2012
    Love it or hate it, people are entitled to their opinions about the photo. They're also entitled to make their own choices about whether they can and want to breastfeed, and for how long. But what's truly disturbing are the US government policy failings ─ especially the lack of paid family leave ─ that drive many women who would like to continue breastfeeding to stop earlier than they wish, often after just a few weeks or months. The issue we should worry about is not women who breastfeed their 3-years-olds, it's that many women find it impossible to breastfeed their 3-month-olds.
  • Labor Department abandons child farmworkers
    Commentary
    May 7, 2012
    In a few weeks, children as young as 12 will start leaving schools in south Texas to work in the summer harvest, taking on the difficult and sometimes even dangerous work of picking fruits and vegetables. Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of kids this year will cut the roots off onions, hoe cotton, climb tall ladders to pick oranges and apples, and drive tractors. If the past is a guide, some will be injured, some will be maimed, and some will die.
  • Colorado: Assembly Acts to Protect Youth Accused of Crimes
    Press release
    Mar 6, 2012
    Colorado’s General Assembly passed a bill on March 5, 2012 that will help keep children accused of crimes out of adult jails when they are awaiting trial.
  • Getting children off the battlefield
    Commentary
    Feb 13, 2012
    The experience of the last decade, shows that the governments and groups still using child soldiers are increasingly considered pariahs, and that strategic pressure and the new consensus of international law can protect children from war. The challenge now is to build on the momentum that exists, and to make better use of the existing tools — including sanctions, prosecutions, and UN negotiations — to persuade the remaining outliers that children have no place in war.
  • US: Proposed Rules Would Save Child Farmworker Lives
    Press release
    Feb 2, 2012
    The rules are intended to make paid farm work safer for the hundreds of thousands of children in the United States who labor in agriculture. They would not apply to children working on their parents’ farms.
  • US: End Life Without Parole for Juvenile Offenders
    Amicus briefing
    Jan 26, 2012
    Human Rights Watch joined 25 other institutions in filing an amicus brief before the US Supreme Court in the upcoming cases of Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Arkansas. It argues that international practice, opinion, and treaty obligations support holding all life without parole sentences for juveniles unconstitutional.
  • US: Harsh Conditions for Young Lifers
    Press release
    Jan 3, 2012
    The approximately 2,570 youth offenders serving life without parole sentences in adult US prisons experience conditions that violate fundamental human rights. The United States is the only country in the world with youth offenders (below the age of 18 at the time of offense) serving life without parole sentences. The US Supreme Court will consider arguments about the constitutionality of the practice in March 2012.
  • US: All Immigration Detainees Deserve Protection from Rape
    Letter
    Dec 7, 2011
    The exclusion of immigration facilities from standards on preventing, detecting, and responding to sexual assault in custody is unjustifiable. It ignores the history of sexual assault in immigration detention and is inconsistent with the intent of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). Human Rights Watch and 38 other organizations urge President Obama to instruct the Department of Justice to cover immigration detention facilities in the final PREA regulations and to instruct the Department of Homeland Security to acknowledge that PREA applies to its facilities.