Reports

Afghanistan’s Healthcare Crisis

The 38-page report, “‘A Disaster for the Foreseeable Future’: Afghanistan’s Healthcare Crisis,” describes how the collapse of Afghanistan’s economy after the Taliban takeover in August 2021 inflicted severe harm on the country’s healthcare infrastructure. Donors’ decisions to reduce humanitarian aid have further weakened health care access, destabilized the economy, and worsened food insecurity. The Taliban’s abusive policies and practices have greatly exacerbated the crisis. Bans on education for women and girls have blocked most training for future female healthcare workers, ensuring shortages for the foreseeable future.

An unidentifiable woman holds her baby son on a hospital bed

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  • December 7, 2009

    Violence, Discrimination and Barriers to Health for Migrants in South Africa

    This 89-page report describes how harassment, lack of documentation, and the credible fear of deportation prevent many newcomers from seeking medical treatment even though South African law and policy state that asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants have a right to care.
  • October 28, 2009

    India’s Obligation to Ensure Palliative Care

    This 102-page report found that many major cancer hospitals in India do not provide patients with morphine, despite the fact that more than 70 percent of their patients are incurable and likely to require pain treatment and palliative care. Health centers offering services to people living with HIV similarly do not have morphine or doctors trained to prescribe it.

  • June 23, 2009

    A Health and Human Rights Crisis in Mitrovica’s Roma Camps

    This 68-page report tells the story of a decade of failure by the UN and others to provide adequate housing and medical treatment for the Roma, and the devastating consequences for the health of those in the camps.
  • June 18, 2009

    Human Rights Abuses Affecting Migrants Living with HIV

    This 22-page report describes how discrimination and human rights abuses faced by migrant populations result in increased vulnerability to HIV infection and barriers to care and treatment.

  • June 16, 2009

    The Prison Litigation Reform Act in the United States

    This 46-page report addresses a law passed by Congress in 1996 that singles out lawsuits brought by prisoners for a host of burdens and restrictions that apply to no one else.
  • March 24, 2009

    Punishment of Drug Users in New York State Prisons

    In this 53-page report, Human Rights Watch found that New York prison officials sentenced inmates to a collective total of 2,516 years in disciplinary segregation from 2005 to 2007 for drug-related charges. At the same time, inmates seeking drug treatment face major delays because treatment programs are filled to capacity.

  • March 17, 2009

    Women’s Struggles to Obtain Health Care in United States Immigration Detention

    This 78-page Human Rights Watch report documents dozens of cases in which the immigration agency's medical staff either failed to respond at all to health problems of women in detention or responded only after considerable delays.
  • March 3, 2009

    Access to Pain Treatment as a Human Right

    In this 47-page report Human Rights Watch said that countries could significantly improve access to pain medications by addressing the causes of their poor availability.

  • January 22, 2009

    Human Rights and Humanitarian Consequences of Political Repression in Zimbabwe

    This 33-page report details the Zimbabwean government's responsibility for the country's humanitarian crisis. A cholera epidemic has left over 2,000 Zimbabweans dead and another 39,000 ill. Over 5 million Zimbabweans face severe food shortages and are dependent on international aid.
  • March 11, 2008

    Exploitation of Migrant Construction Workers in Beijing

    This 61-page report documents the Chinese government’s failure to fulfill long-repeated promises to protect the rights of migrant construction workers, as well as to end deprivations caused by the discriminatory nature of China’s household registration (hukou) system. An estimated 1 million migrant construction workers, hailing from other parts of China, make up nearly 90 percent of Beijing’s construction workforce.

  • December 5, 2007

    HIV/AIDS Services for Immigrants Detained by the United States

    This 71-page report documents the experiences of HIV-positive detainees in immigration custody whose HIV treatment was denied, delayed, or interrupted, resulting in serious risk and often damage to their health.
  • November 7, 2007

    Russia’s Human Rights Obligation to Provide Evidence-based Drug Dependence Treatment

    <table cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0"><tr><td><img src=" http://www.hrw.org/images/home/2007/100//russia17278.jpg&quot; align="left" border="0" /></td> <td valign="top"> In this 110-page study, Human Rights Watch found that the treatment offered at state drug treatment clinics in Russia was so poor as to constitute a violation of the right to health.</td></tr></table>

  • October 1, 2007

    Denial of Access to Emergency Obstetric Care and Therapeutic Abortion in Nicaragua

    This 18-page report documents how this ban on abortion has made women afraid to seek even legal health services. Fearing prosecution under the new law, doctors are unwilling to provide necessary care. The report is based on interviews with officials, doctors from the public and private health systems, women in need of health services, and family members of women who died as a result of the ban.

  • January 31, 2007

    The Human Rights Impact of Local Government Corruption and Mismanagement in Rivers State, Nigeria

    This 107-page report details the misuse of public funds by local officials in the geographic heart of Nigeria’s booming oil industry, and the harmful effects on primary education and basic health care. The report is based on scores of interviews in Rivers state with government and donor agency officials, civil servants, health care workers, teachers, civil society groups and local residents.
  • September 24, 2006

    Conditions of Confinement in New York’s Juvenile Prisons for Girls

    This 136-page report provides an in-depth look at the abuses and neglect suffered by girls confined in two remote New York State juvenile facilities known as Tryon and Lansing. The facilities are operated by the New York Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) and are the only two higher-security facilities in New York State holding girls.