Recruitment and Use of Children by Colombian Armed Groups
The 102-page report, “‘I Thought I’d Never See My Mom Again’: Recruitment and Use of Children by Colombian Armed Groups,” examines the dynamics of child recruitment, the factors that place children at risk, and the strategies and tools used by armed groups, including through social media platforms, to recruit them. Researchers also analyzed the government’s response and its shortcomings in preventing child recruitment, protecting and rescuing children, assisting the reintegration of those who have been released, and prosecuting the individuals responsible.
The province of North Sumatra continues to be plagued by human rights abuses committed by security forces. Two cases are highlighted in this report: the ongoing military interference in a leadership dispute within a Protestant church group, and the treatment of villagers in a land dispute in Sei Lapan, an area about eighty miles north of Medan, the provincial capital.
A Report Prepared for the Free Media Seminar Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
The Free Media Seminar of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe is taking place at a critical time. First, because developments throughout the region suggest that protection for media freedoms fall well short of international standards.
On-Site Investigations Document that Practice Continues
What has been documented in our previous reports remains true today: in the inaccessible forests of the central and western states of Brazil, large estate owners use forced labor to cut and burn enormous tracts of land for the purpose of turning the forest into cattle pasture.
U.S. Policymakers Should Hold President Mubarak Accountable
President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt is scheduled to meet with members of Congress and the Administration, including President Bill Clinton, in Washington, D.C. This will be the Egyptian leader's second visit since April.
While the “zero-option” approach — the granting of citizenship equally to all who were permanent residents at the time the state in question gained independence — was rejected in Estonia, we uncovered no systematic, serious abuses of human rights in the area of citizenship.
Highlighting some of the human rights abuses of the previous five years, this report examines the structures of the judicial system and archaic statutes that permit the denial of due process; these include aspects of the military justice system as well as inefficiency in the civilian courts and a lack of transparency in internal police disciplinary procedures.
Beginning in late 1991, wide-scale atrocities committed by the Burmese military, including rape, forced labor, and religious persecution, triggered an exodus of ethnic Rohingya Muslims from the northwestern Burmese state of Arakan into Bangladesh. This report warned of the possible repatriation of nearly 240,000 refugees, housed in nineteen camps in and around the Bangladeshi town of Cox's Bazar.
In this investigation of the application of the 1991 Latvian law “On the Registration of Residents,” our findings indicate that the Department of Citizenship and Immigration has targeted certain non-citizen groups and denied them registration as legal residents of Latvia.
The Widespread Rape of Somali Women Refugees in North Eastern Kenya
While the tragedy in Somalia made daily news, the plight of thousands of refugees in neighboring Kenya remains unpublicized. Since 1992, approximately 300,000 Somalis have fled across the 800 mile Kenya-Somali border, most of them women and children. Many were the victims of violence, including rape, as they fled war-torn Somalia.
The eleven-year-old conflict in south Sudan continues to bring famine, pestilence and death to southerners (over one million people have died as a result of the war). This suffering is caused by gross abuses of human rights by the government and its Sudan Popular Armed Forces and the two factions of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army.
Freedom of expression on campus in Indonesia became a major issue in mid-1993 with national attention focused on three court cases and the banning of a student newspaper. All of the cases illustrate the tight limits that the Indonesian government places on written and spoken criticism.
Citing violations of core political rights in Mexico — freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, and the right to vote — this report calls for the Clinton administration to address these and other human rights issues as it engages the Mexican government in trade negotiations.
On September 13, 1993, as Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization met in Washington to sign an interim self-rule accord for Gaza and Jericho, protestors against this agreement were killed and injured in Beirut by Lebanese Army troops. The demonstration was held in defiance of an indefinite Lebanese government ban against all assemblies and processions.
