• Press release
    Mar 21, 2013
    Cameroon prosecutes people for consensual same-sex conduct more aggressively than almost any country in the world, four human rights organizations said in a report released today. At least 28 people have been prosecuted for same-sex conduct in Cameroon since 2010. Most cases are marked by grave human rights violations, including torture, forced confessions, denial of access to legal counsel, and discriminatory treatment by law enforcement and judicial officials.
  • Oral statement
    Mar 14, 2013
  • Commentary
    Feb 28, 2013
    "This will be bloody." So reads a text message received by a Cameroonian lawyer in October 2012. "Tell your accomplice that nowhere in this country will [his children] have peace." Over the last four months, two Cameroonian lawyers have received a series of death threats by email and SMS. The messages have become increasingly vitriolic, with threats to kill the lawyers, their children, and their clients.
  • Press release
    Feb 21, 2013
    The European Union should urge the Ukrainian government at the upcoming EU-Ukraine summit to end abuses against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Ukraine.
  • Letter
    Feb 21, 2013
  • Letter
    Feb 13, 2013
    We are writing to call your attention to a series of death threats received in the last four months by Alice Nkom and Michel Togué, two Cameroonian human rights lawyers who defend clients charged with homosexuality under Cameroon’s article 347 bis. We are deeply concerned by the apparent lack of state action in response to these serious threats.
  • Press release
    Feb 13, 2013
    The government of Cameroon should immediately take action against a series of death threats made over the last four months to two lawyers who represent clients accused of homosexual conduct, Human Rights Watch said today in an open letter to President Paul Biya. Alice Nkom and Michel Togué, Cameroonian human rights lawyers, began receiving death threats in October 2012, in the form of emails and text messages, assailing the lawyers for their work defending clients charged with homosexuality. Consensual same-sex conduct is criminalized under the Cameroonian penal code’s article 347 bis, and at least 28 people have been prosecuted under the law since 2010. Nkom and Togué are among the only lawyers courageous enough to take up these cases in a country where homophobia is pervasive.
  • Press release
    Jan 31, 2013

    The enormous prison population in the United States partly reflects harsh sentencing practices contrary to international law, Human Rights Watch said in the US chapter of its World Report 2013.

  • Press release
    Jan 27, 2013
    Vicious attacks on gay rights protesters in Russia in recent days underscores the need for the Russian Duma to reject a draft law on “propaganda for homosexuality.”
  • Letter
    Jan 21, 2013
    On the eve of your parliamentary debates regarding whether to support marriage equality in France, I invite you to look to another European country that went through the same discussions and soul-searching about 15 years ago. In 1994, as a member of the Dutch parliament, I proposed to introduce marriage equality legislation. Years of debate ensued, in part because nowhere else in the world had such legislation been introduced.