• Healthcare Access
    Lack of access to health care—whether to basic services or specific medicines—is commonplace worldwide. While governments have an obligation to progressively realize the right to access health care, they must ensure that existing services are provided without discrimination, and that health care services respect a range of other rights, including the right to physical integrity, autonomy, confidentiality and informed consent.

  • Zambia: Safety Gaps Threaten Copper Miners
    Feb 20, 2013
    Workers in the copper mining sector in Zambia remain vulnerable to abuse. New Human Rights Watch research found that the government of President Michael Sata, who promised to prioritize labor rights when he took office in September 2011, has made some improvements in supporting the oversight of the mines, but there remains inadequate enforcement of national labor laws designed to protect workers’ rights.
  • Colombia: Obstacles to Care for Abused, Displaced Women
    Nov 14, 2012
    Colombia’s laws on violence against women are not adequately protecting victims displaced by the armed conflict. Approximately two million internally displaced women and girls face high rates of rape and domestic violence. Daunting obstacles impede displaced victims’ access to healthcare, justice, and protection services.
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Health care access

  • Zambia: Safety Gaps Threaten Copper Miners
    Feb 20, 2013
    Workers in the copper mining sector in Zambia remain vulnerable to abuse. New Human Rights Watch research found that the government of President Michael Sata, who promised to prioritize labor rights when he took office in September 2011, has made some improvements in supporting the oversight of the mines, but there remains inadequate enforcement of national labor laws designed to protect workers’ rights.
  • Ukraine: Breakthrough for Cancer Pain
    Feb 13, 2013
    Ukraine’s recent registration of oral morphine, a strong pain medication used most frequently to treat severe cancer pain, is a major step toward improving end-of-life care, Human Rights Watch said today.
  • The disabled often are denied information about sex and HIV
    Dec 1, 2012
    Over a billion people — 15 percent of the world’s population — live with a disability. These numbers should confer power and authority in decision making about all aspects of their lives, including to HIV and AIDS. Yet people with disabilities have been largely ignored in the global response to HIV.
  • Colombia: Obstacles to Care for Abused, Displaced Women
    Nov 14, 2012
    Colombia’s laws on violence against women are not adequately protecting victims displaced by the armed conflict. Approximately two million internally displaced women and girls face high rates of rape and domestic violence. Daunting obstacles impede displaced victims’ access to healthcare, justice, and protection services.
  • Zimbabwe: Police Raid Threatens Broader Crackdown
    Nov 9, 2012
    The Zimbabwe government’s raid on a civil society group raises fears of a broader crackdown on perceived opposition activists ahead of elections due in 2013.
  • More than lies about rape
    Aug 31, 2012
    Voices from across the political spectrum condemned the Missouri Senate candidate for Senate, Todd Akin, for his recent offensive and scientifically inaccurate reasoning to deny rape survivors’ access to abortion. 
  • South Sudan: Arbitrary Detentions, Dire Prison Conditions
    Jun 21, 2012
    Flawed processes, unlawful detentions, and dire conditions in South Sudan’s prisons reflect the urgent need to improve the new nation’s fledgling justice system.
  • Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch Joint Statement on the Rio + 20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development
    Jun 12, 2012

    Realizing human rights and achieving sustainable development are inter-dependent and mutually-reinforcing goals. States must ensure that the Outcome Document of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development recognizes the centrality of human rights to sustainable development and reaffirms the international human rights framework.

  • Rio + 20: Anchor Sustainable Development in Human Rights
    Jun 12, 2012
    World leaders have a once in a generation chance to create a meaningful link between sustainable development and human rights, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said in a joint statement targeting Environment and Foreign Affairs ministers gathering in Rio.
  • Turkey: Don’t Bar Access to Abortion
    May 31, 2012

    Turkey should not attempt to ban or greatly restrict abortion, as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s statements have recently suggested. Erdoğan announced that he views abortion as murder and that his government is preparing legislation to severely limit women’s access to abortion. Human Rights Watch is concerned that restrictive legislation may violate Turkey’s human rights obligations.

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