• Is Bahrain serious about reform?
    March 15, 2013
    Bahrain’s Sunni ruling family and their allies in Washington and London say they are pinning their hopes on a new “national dialogue” to break the bitter stalemate with the country’s political opposition among the majority Shia population. But a just settlement will remain elusive unless the government delivers on two outstanding reforms: accountability at the highest levels of the country’s security forces for their abusive response to the 2011 uprisings, and freedom for the country’s unjustly imprisoned opposition and human rights leaders.
  • EU Failing to Tackle Hungary’s Constitutional Missteps
    March 15, 2013
    “The Constitution is not a game!” crowds chanted during a March 9 demonstration in Budapest against constitutional changes adopted on March 11. Hopefully those chants were heard in Brussels. It’s high time the EU took resolute action to hold the Hungarian government accountable for their ongoing assault on human rights and the rule of law.
  • Ensuring witness safety central to rule of law
    March 13, 2013
    Across the country, victims of violent crimes, including sexual assault, as well as those who witness it, frequently do not file criminal complaints, cooperate with investigators, or testify truthfully in courts because they fear retaliation. In many rape cases, survivors are threatened or intimidated into settling with the perpetrator.
  • 'Clock ticking' for Indonesia to tackle religious intolerance
    March 12, 2013
    As long as its leaders fail to acknowledge or act against the increased violence suffered by religious minorities, Indonesia's reputation as a country that balances diversity and tolerance will be in question, says campaign group
  • What Rules Should Govern US Drone Attacks?
    March 11, 2013
  • Exchanging Daughters for Livestock: Child Marriage In South Sudan
    March 10, 2013
    Aguet, from South Sudan, was forced at age 15 to marry a 75-year-old man. Her family received 80 cows as dowry in exchange. “I resisted the marriage,” she told Human Rights Watch. But her uncles beat her and the marriage went ahead. Aguet dropped out of school and went to live with her husband, who now also beats her.
  • Thailand: Justice is key to success for South dialogue
    March 8, 2013
    Last week the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra agreed to talks with Ustaz Hassan Taib from the separatist Barisan Revolusi Nasional-Coordinate (BRN-C) to seek an end to the armed conflict in the southern border provinces, which has claimed more than 5,000 lives in the past nine years.
  • Young, Behind Bars and in Peril in Yemen
    March 7, 2013
    The Yemen donors meeting in London this week have plenty of issues to focus on, but they should speak up about one forgotten group in Yemen – youth offenders on death row.
  • Child and Forced Marriage in South Sudan
    March 7, 2013
    To be forced into marriage and pregnancy as a child--when your own life has barely begun--is a serious violation of human rights. Far from creating a nurturing and safe space, child marriage is a driver of poor maternal health, violence, poverty, and pain.
  • Jakarta Condones Religious Violence
    March 6, 2013
    The worst fears of the Shia Muslim community in Sampang in Indonesia's East Java came to pass on Aug. 20, 2012. That morning, hundreds of Sunni militants attacked the community, torching some 50 homes, killing one man and seriously injuring another.
  • Where children are sentenced to death
    March 6, 2013
    I met Hind in a prison in Yemen almost a year ago. Nineteen years-old, she wore an orange hooded sweatshirt, a long denim skirt, and the sullen expression of a teenager who trusts that no one is on her side. “Hind doesn’t want to talk to anyone,” a social worker told me.
  • Involuntary Treatment: The Invisible Health Care Crisis
    March 5, 2013
    In his new report, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez, the UN’s leading expert on torture, has drawn attention to severe abuses, such as neglect, mental and physical abuse and sexual violence, against people with mental or intellectual disabilities in health-care settings.
  • Why it’s too soon to ease pressure on Myanmar
    March 4, 2013
    Myanmar President Thein Sein has been touring Europe touting his country’s unlikely transformation in the past two years from the archetype of authoritarian repression to a supposedly shining example of peaceful transition towards democracy. But how much of this is real reform and how much is window dressing? How much have human rights genuinely improved on the ground in Myanmar?
  • Time for US to embrace ban on landmines
    March 4, 2013

    The US is already acting like it has given up antipersonnel landmines – so why doesn't Nobel peace laureate Barack Obama turn it into formally declared policy by ratifying the Mine Ban Treaty?

     

  • Cameroon: Three Years in Prison for Love... Impunity for Hate
    February 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.
  • Creating Sochi Olympic site comes at high cost for local residents
    February 28, 2013
    Bakinskaya Street is located on a sloping hillside in Veseloye village within the city limits of Sochi, the Russian city where, less than a year from now, the 2014 Winter Olympics will launch.
  • Child domestic workers: 'time to protect us'
    February 26, 2013
    Children make up nearly 30 per cent of the world's 50 to 100 million domestic workers, working long hours for little or no pay and at risk of exploitation – but now governments have a chance to do something about it.
  • Listening In
    February 21, 2013
    New revelations at Guantánamo show the walls have ears, and justice is being made a mockery.
  • Don’t Overlook Domestic Violence
    February 18, 2013
    According to December 2011 figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in four women in the U.S. has been a victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner in her lifetime. Nearly one in five has been raped.
  • Divided We Fall: Intolerance in Europe Puts Rights at Risk
    February 14, 2013
    An Afghan migrant is stabbed in the heart on the streets of Athens. Black-shirted paramilitaries linked to Hungary’s third-largest political party march through a Roma neighborhood shouting, “You will die here.” A neo-Nazi gang commits a string of murders of Turkish immigrants in Germany. An ideologue driven by hatred of “multiculturalism” kills 67 mostly young people on a Norwegian Island.
  • Should Companies Take Responsibility for Repression?
    February 13, 2013
    The Arab uprisings have been a poignant reminder of how the Internet can promote free expression and assembly, but also how governments can try abuse it. The medium used by demonstrators to organize protests and bring medical supplies to Tahrir Square, for example, was also used by the government to pinpoint human rights defenders for arrest, harassment, and even torture.
  • An end to violence against women starts with SA’s boys and men
    February 10, 2013
    It’s an occupational hazard when you work on women’s rights, to routinely face women who have been subjected to unspeakable violence, horrible beyond anything you could imagine. As a young lawyer in South Africa in the 1990s, one of first my clients was stabbed by her estranged husband. I held her hand as she bled to death on the pavement. When I worked as the director of the Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre to End Violence Against Women in Johannesburg, I, and the other lawyers who provided legal advice at the centre, saw women every day looking for help to protect themselves from rape, beatings and other violence. Many of our clients arrived at the office with the signs of violence clearly visible on their bodies and their faces.
  • Russia's anti-Olympic spirit
    February 8, 2013
    The countdown to the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi is officially under way. Exactly one year from today a colossal project few thought possible in 2007 – building a state-of-the-art winter sports venue in the Caucasus mountains and the on the subtropical Black Sea coast – will become reality.
  • How to Ease Syrian Suffering
    February 8, 2013
    The Syrian people are caught in a horrible downward spiral. The government’s slaughter seems only to intensify as President Bashar al-Assad pursues a ruthless strategy of draining the sea to get the fish — attacking civilians so they will flee and leave the armed opposition isolated.
  • No end in sight to state torture in Afghanistan
    February 7, 2013
    As pundits and critics discuss whether the recent Hollywood film offering Zero Dark Thirty wrongly implies justification for torture, a debate about torture that is all too real plays itself out in Afghanistan.
  • François Hollande’s ‘Change’ Is More of the Same on Côte d’Ivoire
    February 6, 2013
    Les mêmes causes produisent les mêmes effets (“The same causes produce the same effects”). It’s a phrase I’ve heard Ivorian lawyers, taxi drivers, and civil society leaders utter repeatedly in recent months to describe Côte d’Ivoire’s uneven prospects for reconciliation so long as President Alassane Ouattara’s government makes little progress toward impartial justice and addressing abuses by the security forces. But the phrase applies just as aptly to the failure of Côte d’Ivoire’s most important partner, France, to publicly make human rights issues a priority in its diplomatic relationship.
  • Extend family leave to all workers
    February 6, 2013
    Two years ago, the signs were clear. My mother, with Alzheimer's, heart failure, and kidney failure, was not going to live long. My brothers and I took time off work for medical appointments and hospice care. I worried about her comfort, about how my dad would cope and how the grandkids would feel.
  • Enhance This Interrogation
    February 6, 2013
    The Senate confirmation hearings need to get to the bottom of the truth about CIA chief nominee John Brennan.
  • How to Keep the Arab Spring Blossoming
    February 4, 2013
    As rioting resumes in Egypt, militias reign ominously in parts of Libya, and relentless slaughter proceeds in Syria, some are beginning to question whether the Arab Spring was such a good idea after all. But would we really want to condemn entire nations to the likes of Mubarak, Gadhafi and al-Assad? As we know from the fall of military dictatorships in Latin America and the demise of the Soviet Union, building a rights-respecting democracy on a legacy of authoritarian rule is not easy. However, there are steps that both the people of the region and the international community can take to make a positive outcome more likely.
  • The New Syria Will Need Human Rights, Not Reprisals
    February 4, 2013
    The top priority is bringing an end to the slaughter. But we must ensure that, after Assad, revenge does not lead to abuses.
  • Why Immigration Reform Will Strengthen American Communities
    February 4, 2013
    Perhaps one of the greatest defects in the U.S. immigration system, including Alabama's 2011 law, is the failure to recognize the profound ties millions of unauthorized immigrants have to U.S. citizens through family, work, and community.
  • Getting to the truth about UK-Gaddafi ties
    February 4, 2013
    Some say we should put Britain's complicity in torture and human rights abuse in Libya behind us. We cannot do so. Lessons have not been learned, victims still await justice, while the 'secret courts bill' would help ensure future abuses remain hidden.
  • A Dangerous Model
    February 1, 2013
    The US should reveal its legal rationale for drone attacks.
  • UK Should Show Leadership on Sexual Violence in Somalia
    January 31, 2013
    A Somali woman who said she was raped by state security forces, a journalist who interviewed her, her husband, and two others who tried to assist her, have been charged with multiple crimes, including insulting a government body. They face a court hearing on February 2. The journalist is sitting in a Mogadishu prison right now. All of them – including the woman herself – could face years of prison in the war-torn city if they are convicted.
  • UK Should Show Leadership on Sexual Violence in Somalia
    January 31, 2013
    The new Somali government, in power since September and much feted by international donors, seems to think they can silence the discussion of sexual violence by the security forces by clamping down on women reporting rape and journalists. The UK - a key donor to Somalia - needs to send an urgent message to the contrary before Saturday's hearing date.
  • China: Re-education Revisited
    January 30, 2013
    How much of a reformer is China’s new leader, Xi Jinping?
  • Fear Looms Large as Zimbabwe Elections Near
    January 29, 2013
  • Holding the Security Council to Account on Syria
    January 29, 2013

    Unusual currents have been swirling around the United Nations Security Council’s shameful paralysis on Syria, a product of repeated vetoes by Russia and China. On January 14, a group of 58 governments urged the council to ask the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute those responsible for the egregious crimes in Syria. In the face of the spiraling carnage on the ground, these governments, in an unprecedented act of “justice diplomacy,” insisted that the time for Security Council silence is long past.

  • What Next for Azerbaijan’s Political Prisoners?
    January 28, 2013
    Azerbaijan’s abysmal rights record came under a rare spotlight last week. One of Europe’s foremost human rights bodies, the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, devoted an entire afternoon to debating two much-awaited reports on the country.
  • Italy turns its back on children seeking refuge
    January 27, 2013
    Every year, hundreds of boys travel alone, at great risk, from Afghanistan to Italy. They‘re looking for refuge, for an education, for an opportunity to escape the war zone in their country. And yet Italy turns away many of them, barring their entrance and taking no steps for their protection or care.
  • Nothing to celebrate in Mexico
    January 25, 2013

    On first read, it might have been a hoax. On International Human Rights Day last month, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Anthony Wayne, “celebrated” Mexico’s human rights achievements. “The United States recognizes the Mexican government, including officials and institutions,” he wrote in the newspaper El Universal, “for its efforts to promote the defense of human rights in Mexico.”

  • Tweets can't hide Uzbekistan's woeful record
    January 25, 2013
    Recent Twitter conversations between the wannabe-jet-set daughter of Uzbekistan’s authoritarian ruler and critics of the country’s atrocious human rights record may have been unusual and amusing. They may have even brought a rare blip of international media attention to a reclusive regime the world normally seems happy to ignore.
  • Making sure the D.C. police take sex assault seriously
    January 25, 2013
    In spring 2011, a federal government employee in her 30s was sexually assaulted in the District by a man she met on an Internet dating site. At Washington Hospital Center, where she went for a forensic exam so medical personnel could collect evidence from her body, a female detective from the Sexual Assault Unit of the city’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) questioned the woman for three hours, interrupting her frequently in a manner — as the woman saw it — meant to discourage her from reporting the assault and to minimize the seriousness of what had happened to her.
  • ICC Suspects Can Hide — and That Is the Problem
    January 24, 2013

    The International Criminal Court (ICC) has been in business for a decade and faces plenty of hurdles in delivering justice for the world's worst atrocities. However, getting its suspects arrested has proven to be the court's Achilles' heel. The need to arrest ICC suspects often pits compliance with international criminal law against the prerogatives of sovereignty-minded countries. Lacking its own police force, the ICC depends on determined action by governments to arrest its suspects. Those governments, under the influence of competing diplomatic or economic objectives, can be fickle or outright obstructive.

  • Mercury Convention "Must Be Brought to Life"
    January 21, 2013
    This weekend, more than 140 governments agreed on the text for a new legally binding convention on mercury, a highly toxic metal. It has taken three years and many compromises to get here. What often seemed like a dry and bureaucratic process – delegates arguing over nuance during long night sessions – has very real implications for millions of people around the globe.
  • Another Greek Crisis That Needs the EU’s Attention
    January 19, 2013
    Last year was very tough for Greece, and there are few prospects that 2013 will be easier. Millions of people have been directly affected by the sweeping austerity measures arising from the economic crisis. The country is convulsed by political tensions, with the rise of the far-right Golden Dawn party the most worrying example. And there are severe social problems, linked in part to the huge influx in recent years of irregular migrants from outside the European Union.
  • Hungary’s Alarming Climate of Intolerance
    January 18, 2013
    A prominent columnist calls for a “final solution” for Hungary’s Roma population. A member of parliament calls for drawing up a list of Jewish people involved in Hungarian politics. Two-thirds of those asked in an opinion poll say they wouldn’t let their child be friends with a Romani child. Another poll suggests a similar number believe Jewish people have too much influence. One doesn’t have to be a student of history to be worried about the growing climate of intolerance in Hungary.
  • Uzbekistan: Effective EU Rule of Law Programmes Depend on a Principled Human Rights Policy
    January 17, 2013
  • US: South Carolina Is Unfair to Prisoners Who Have HIV
    January 17, 2013
    On the Friday before Christmas, a federal judge in Alabama ordered an end to 25 years of segregation of HIV-positive prisoners in state prisons. District Court Judge Myron Thompson ruled that segregating HIV-positive prisoners in separate housing with unequal program opportunities, inferior mental health care and fewer work options violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. This landmark decision leaves South Carolina the only state in the Union that segregates prisoners with HIV. It is high time South Carolina abandoned this unnecessary, harmful and discriminatory policy.
  • The gruesome toll of deadly cluster bombs in Syria
    January 16, 2013

    It was cloudy the afternoon of January 3 when residents say the cluster bombs fell on the Syrian town of Latamneh. Three rockets containing the cluster munitions fell in nearby fields, apparently doing no harm, but a fourth landed on the street between residential buildings. Its impact was devastating.