• The Failure to Protect

    While the obligation of the government to protect the rights of those deprived of their liberty is clear, governmental failures to protect individuals who are not in custodial settings also raise human rights concerns. The United States has an international legal obligation to protect individuals from violence perpetrated by the state and by private actors. And when public officials such as border agents or police officers have the authority to use force, human rights standards require that it be used proportionally, and only when necessary. Unfortunately, either because abuse happens at the hands of public officials, or because public officials turn a blind eye to victims of private abuse, the United States sometimes fails those who seek and deserve government protection. In so doing, it violates basic human rights and erodes public safety by making it less likely that victims will seek justice when they believe they will be met with abusive treatment, inaction, or indifference.

  • A group of farmworkers makes their way across a field, hoeing weeds out of the rows, in the early morning on July 11, 2011.
    © 2011 AP Photo
    US: Sexual Violence, Harassment of Immigrant Farmworkers
    Hundreds of thousands of immigrant farmworker women and girls in the United States face a high risk of sexual violence and sexual harassment in their workplaces because US authorities and employers fail to protect them adequately, Human Rights Watch said in its 95-page report, “Cultivating Fear: The Vulnerability of Immigrant Farmworkers in the US to Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment.”
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  • Failing its Families
    Lack of Paid Leave and Work-Family Supports in the US
  • Rights on the Line
    Human Rights Watch Work on Abuses against Migrants in 2010
  • A Strange Case
    Violations of Workers’ Freedom of Association in the United States by European Multinational Corporations

The Failure to Protect

  • US: New Prison Rape Standards Offer Landmark Protection
    May 17, 2012
    The long awaited national prison rape elimination standards issued on May 17, 2012 by the Justice Department, if fully implemented, may end widespread prison rape in the United States. The standards provide detailed guidance to federal, state, and local officials on how to prevent, detect, and respond to sexual abuse in their confinement facilities.
  • US: Sexual Violence, Harassment of Immigrant Farmworkers
    May 15, 2012
    Hundreds of thousands of immigrant farmworker women and girls in the United States face a high risk of sexual violence and sexual harassment in their workplaces because US authorities and employers fail to protect them adequately, Human Rights Watch said in its 95-page report, “Cultivating Fear: The Vulnerability of Immigrant Farmworkers in the US to Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment.”
  • The Breastfeeding Brouhaha
    May 15, 2012
    Love it or hate it, people are entitled to their opinions about the photo. They're also entitled to make their own choices about whether they can and want to breastfeed, and for how long. But what's truly disturbing are the US government policy failings ─ especially the lack of paid family leave ─ that drive many women who would like to continue breastfeeding to stop earlier than they wish, often after just a few weeks or months. The issue we should worry about is not women who breastfeed their 3-years-olds, it's that many women find it impossible to breastfeed their 3-month-olds.
  • Labor Department abandons child farmworkers
    May 7, 2012
    In a few weeks, children as young as 12 will start leaving schools in south Texas to work in the summer harvest, taking on the difficult and sometimes even dangerous work of picking fruits and vegetables. Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of kids this year will cut the roots off onions, hoe cotton, climb tall ladders to pick oranges and apples, and drive tractors. If the past is a guide, some will be injured, some will be maimed, and some will die.
  • Colorado: Assembly Acts to Protect Youth Accused of Crimes
    Mar 6, 2012
    Colorado’s General Assembly passed a bill on March 5, 2012 that will help keep children accused of crimes out of adult jails when they are awaiting trial.
  • Getting children off the battlefield
    Feb 13, 2012
    The experience of the last decade, shows that the governments and groups still using child soldiers are increasingly considered pariahs, and that strategic pressure and the new consensus of international law can protect children from war. The challenge now is to build on the momentum that exists, and to make better use of the existing tools — including sanctions, prosecutions, and UN negotiations — to persuade the remaining outliers that children have no place in war.
  • US: Proposed Rules Would Save Child Farmworker Lives
    Feb 2, 2012
    The rules are intended to make paid farm work safer for the hundreds of thousands of children in the United States who labor in agriculture. They would not apply to children working on their parents’ farms.
  • US: End Life Without Parole for Juvenile Offenders
    Jan 26, 2012
    Human Rights Watch joined 25 other institutions in filing an amicus brief before the US Supreme Court in the upcoming cases of Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Arkansas. It argues that international practice, opinion, and treaty obligations support holding all life without parole sentences for juveniles unconstitutional.
  • US: Harsh Conditions for Young Lifers
    Jan 3, 2012
    The approximately 2,570 youth offenders serving life without parole sentences in adult US prisons experience conditions that violate fundamental human rights. The United States is the only country in the world with youth offenders (below the age of 18 at the time of offense) serving life without parole sentences. The US Supreme Court will consider arguments about the constitutionality of the practice in March 2012.
  • US: All Immigration Detainees Deserve Protection from Rape
    Dec 7, 2011
    The exclusion of immigration facilities from standards on preventing, detecting, and responding to sexual assault in custody is unjustifiable. It ignores the history of sexual assault in immigration detention and is inconsistent with the intent of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). Human Rights Watch and 38 other organizations urge President Obama to instruct the Department of Justice to cover immigration detention facilities in the final PREA regulations and to instruct the Department of Homeland Security to acknowledge that PREA applies to its facilities.
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