• Human Rights in Italy

    Tens of thousands of asylum seekers who arrived in 2011 remain in reception centers awaiting final decisions.  Conditions and quality of services in these centers vary significantly. Racist violence and intolerance remain significant problems, with the government generally failing   to prevent attacks or punish attackers.  Roma face evictions from informal camps and segregation in formal camps. Italy’s highest court rightly upheld the convictions of senior police officers for falsifying evidence in relation to police violence during the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001. The same court upheld controversial long prison sentences for some protestors convicted of property destruction, and ordered other sentences to be reviewed.

  • Faver Agyei (right), 32, comforts her friend Alima Mohamed, 22, at a camp in Tunisia near the Libyan border. Mohamed’s husband, also from Ghana, died along with 200 others after their ship capsized trying to cross the Mediterranean from Libya on June 1, 2011.

    © 2011 Samer Muscati/Human Rights Watch
    EU: Rights Abuse at Home Ignored
    The European Union and member governments proved unwilling to tackle human rights abuse at home during 2011, even as they proclaimed the issue’s importance in inspiring the Arab Spring, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2012.
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Italy

  • A Letter to the Italian Prime Minister about Palestine and the ICC
    Dec 21, 2012
    We write to express Human Rights Watch’s deep concern regarding your December 17 statement made during a meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, in which you call on the Palestinian Authority not to use Palestine's new non-member observer-state status at the United Nations to pursue the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
  • Italy/US: Ruling on CIA Case Highlights US Inaction
    Sep 20, 2012
    The ruling by Italy’s highest court to uphold convictions against 23 United States agents stands in stark contrast to the US failure to prosecute any official involved in the Central Intelligence Agency’s unlawful rendition program.
  • Europe failing to tackle boat tragedies in Mediterranean
    Sep 12, 2012
    The EU and its member states must do more to prevent migrant deaths at sea if they are to deliver on their humanitarian ethos – writes Judith Sunderland.
  • EU: Step Up Sea Rescues to Save Lives
    Sep 7, 2012
    The deaths of scores of migrants and asylum seekers in the Mediterranean over the past 48 hours should prompt concerted European Union action to limit further deaths in the Mediterranean.
  • EU: Needless Deaths in the Mediterranean
    Aug 16, 2012
    Rescue operations in the Mediterranean are hampered by poor coordination, disputes over responsibility, disincentives for commercial vessels to conduct rescues, and an emphasis on border enforcement, Human Rights Watch said in a briefing paper published today.
  • Hidden Emergency
    Aug 16, 2012
    The number of migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, a sea with many busy shipping lanes where international law and centuries of custom oblige ships to assist those in need, is shocking.
  • Italy: Leave “Nomad Emergency” in the Past
    May 11, 2012
    The Italian government should abandon any initiative aimed at perpetuating the effects of the past “Nomad Emergency."
  • Netherlands: Joint NGO Letter to Minister Leers
    Apr 1, 2012
    We, the undersigned 5 human rights organizations, are writing to urge you not to return Abu Kurke Kebato, a 23-year-old Ethiopian, and his 21-year-old wife Seena Tafse Mohammed, also an Ethiopian national, to Italy. We understand that both were detained on March 29, 2012 pending deportation to Italy on April 5, 2012.
  • Joint NGO Letter to Italian Minister of Defense Regarding Investigations into Boat Incident from March-April 2011
    Mar 26, 2012
    We are writing to inquire further about internal investigations into the fatal boat episode of March-April 2011, in which a disabled boat filled with migrants fleeing Libya drifted for two weeks in the Mediterranean before landing back in Libya on April 10, 2011. Sixty-three out of the 72 people on board died.
  • NATO: Clarify Response to Deaths at Sea
    Mar 26, 2012
    NATO and its member states should provide information to help clarify the chain of events that led to the death of 63 boat migrants in the Mediterranean a year ago.
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