Latest News Children's Rights Publications International Legal Standards Links to Related Organizations

Human Rights Watch established the Children's Rights Division in 1994 to monitor human rights abuses against children around the world and to campaign to end them. We take on abuses carried out or tolerated by governments and, when appropriate, by armed opposition groups.

We investigate all kinds of human rights abuses against children: the use of children as soldiers; the worst forms of child labor; torture of children by police; police violence against street children; conditions in correctional institutions and orphanages; corporal punishment in schools; mistreatment of refugee and migrant children; trafficking of children for labor and prostitution; discrimination in education because of race, gender, sexual orientation, or HIV/AIDS; and sexual violence against girls and boys.

Children's physical and intellectual immaturity makes them particularly vulnerable to human rights violations. Their ill-treatment calls for special attention because, for the most part, children cannot speak for themselves: their opinions are seldom taken into account and they can only rarely form their own organizations to work for change. Humanitarian groups that work for children largely concentrate on survival and development; if they openly criticize governments for abusing children they run the risk of having their programs closed. Our work to protect children and raise awareness around the world about the violence and discrimination experienced by children is essential.

The Children's Rights Division examines children's rights abuses in every part of the world; we send fact-finding missions to countries where abuses are occurring-interviewing child victims, parents, human rights activists, lawyers, child care workers, government officials, and others, working closely with local human rights groups to identify specific abuses and strategies for change. We then write objective, factual reports and present them to governments, international organizations (such as the United Nations, the European Union, the Organization of American States, and the African Union), non-governmental organizations, policy makers, and the media. We devise campaigns and work in coalition with local and international groups to expose abuses of children's rights and to put a stop to them.

We have looked at such questions as child soldiers in Burma, Colombia, Liberia, and Uganda; child farmworkers in Egypt, Ecuador, El Salvador, and the United States; ill-treatment in orphanages in China, Romania, and Russia; violence against school children in Kenya and South Africa, brutality in correctional institutions in Jamaica, Pakistan, and the United States; discrimination against kids affected by HIV/AIDS in Kenya and India; and police violence against street children in seven countries on four continents.