• Macedonia: Group Wins HIV and Rights Award
    Jul 20, 2010
    Healthy Options Project Skopje (HOPS) is the recipient of the 2010 international Award for Action on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights. The award, which recognizes outstanding individuals and organizations that protect the rights and dignity of people living with or affected by HIV/AIDS, was presented in Vienna on July 20, 2010, at the XVIII International AIDS Conference.
  • Vienna: Make Rights Real for People Living With HIV
    Jul 17, 2010
    Governments should take concrete steps to expand human rights protection for those most vulnerable to HIV infection to address the global AIDS pandemic effectively.
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Reports

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HIV/AIDS

  • Planning a better future for women
    Jul 19, 2012
    Akello, a young Kenyan woman, was 17 when she went into labor. After two days, when she had still not delivered her baby, her grandmother borrowed enough money to take her to the nearest clinic. The nurse refused to examine her, told her to wait, and when Akello, in pain and frightened, finally complained, the nurse told her, “Next time you will think when you are enjoying sex.”
  • Maternal mortality under scrutiny
    May 4, 2012
    Since the 1990s South Africa has not reduced the number of women who die needlessly each year from preventable and treatable causes linked to pregnancy and childbirth.
  • A sick system abuses its refugees
    Mar 18, 2012

    South Africa's tourism website describes the country as the "land of good times and friendly people". Sadly, Araya Y, a pregnant Somali refugee living in Port Elizabeth, did not experience this side of the country. Instead, when she went to a government district hospital in July 2010 to give birth, she was abused by medical staff and denied care. 

  • Hope for Haiti's Women
    Jan 17, 2012
    Women's rights is one example of huge problems and work ahead, and yet it also shows why no one should give up on Haiti. Groundbreaking work is being done to promote the rights of women and girls -- who have suffered immeasurably in Haiti's disasters and instability -- through new legislation.
  • Healthcare is failing women
    Dec 20, 2011

    South Africa has one of the world's highest incidences of violence, including rape and domestic violence, against women. A study by Interpol estimates that, in South Africa, a woman is raped every 17 seconds and one in four South African women suffers domestic violence.

      

  • UN: Report Is Milestone for Reproductive Health
    Oct 25, 2011

    Human Rights Watch joined other human rights groups and health groups in issuing the following statement today following the release of a report about reproductive health by Anand Grover, the UN special rapporteur on the right to health. 

  • Keeping Health Systems Accountable: A Critical Component of the Every Woman, Every Child Campaign
    Oct 20, 2011

    Abeba M., an Ethiopian refugee living in Port Elizabeth, a small coastal town of South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province, developed severe high blood pressure during her pregnancy. She went to a district hospital for treatment of this dangerous condition, but left because “the nurses and doctors did not treat me well,” she told me. She had to return when her condition worsened, though, and was admitted. Instead of getting the help she needed, she experienced treatment delays, abuse, and negligence.

  • From Condoms to the Pill: Trust, Control and Violence
    Sep 1, 2011
    As media reports celebrate advances toward new male contraceptive methods, the fact that women currently take the larger responsibility for birth control is held up as somewhat inevitable and sad. In effect, contraceptive use is now so firmly established as a woman's responsibility that data on birth control often are collected from women only.
  • Philippines: Dictating choices, risking lives
    Jun 20, 2011
    Doe-eyed and frail, with a mellow voice and a cheery smile, nothing about Sara (not her real name) suggested she had been through ordeal after ordeal in her 22 years. Forcibly married at 15 to a much older man, she discovered after the marriage that her husband had HIV, and that he had infected her. When her in-laws found out, they subjected her to a barrage of abuse and accused her of infecting her husband. Before he died, her husband apologized to her: Deported as a migrant worker from Malaysia for testing HIV positive, he knew he was positive before he married her. He told her he had not known much, though, about HIV itself, how it is transmitted, or that condoms could have kept him and her from becoming infected.
  • Kenya: Submission to the Government on Health Budget
    Apr 13, 2011
    In a submission to the Kenyan Government, Human Rights Watch called on the Government to fulfill its earlier pledge of health funding, instead of reducing the resources allocated to health services.
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