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United States: Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador; Eswatini, Rwanda, Ghana, South Sudan Since the start of his second term, United States president Donald Trump has cracked down on irregular migration, unlawfully blocked access to asylum in the US for those entering through the southern border, and pursued externalization measures including soliciting the cooperation of other countries to accept third-country nationals expelled from the US.

The International Automobile Federation (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, or FIA), the international body governing motor sports, including Formula1, held its annual General Assemblies last week in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

For over two decades, Costa Rica has banned oil and gas exploration and production. That ban runs until 2050, but it rests on a fragile legal foundation - a presidential moratorium. Any President can revoke it at the stroke of a pen, without the need for Parliament to agree.

A new executive order seeking to designate “illicit fentanyl” a “weapon of mass destruction” could open the door to a dangerous expansion of militarized law enforcement and abusive military action.

Kazakhstan’s Senate adopted two rights-violating laws on December 18, both of them threatening freedom of expression.

These were among the most-read stories on our site in 2025.

What did you learn from Human Rights Watch’s videos this year? Whether you watched HRW advocates address the European Parliament or saw one of our reels on International Women’s Day, we hope you learned about how rights around the world are being violated – and defended. HRW’s video work was viewed several million times in 2025. Here are the 10 most viewed videos of the year.

Discussions are advancing at the United Nations on a new global treaty to guarantee every child’s right to a free education.

United States federal immigration enforcement agents now commonly operate masked and without visible identification, compounding the abusive and unaccountable nature of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, Human Rights Watch said today. The indefinite and widespread nature of these practices is fundamentally inconsistent with the United States’ obligations to ensure that law enforcement abuses are investigated and met with accountability.