New policies on counterterrorism and women’s rights adopted in the first week of the Obama administration reverse some of the most harmful US policies that Human Rights Watch helped bring to worldwide attention. On his second day in office, Obama issued executive orders that set a new course for US counterterrorism policy. The orders set a single, government-wide standard of humane interrogation and put an end to secret CIA detention facilities. Obama also committed to closing the Guantanamo Bay detention center by January 2010, suspended the Guantanamo Bay military commissions, and set in motion a process for reviewing all of the remaining detainees’ files. Human Rights Watch took the lead in documenting numerous abuses stemming from the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policies and recommended to President Obama many of the steps that he has now taken.
By the end of his first week as president, Obama also rescinded the “global gag rule,” which had outlawed US funding to international groups that provide legal abortion services, advocate for less restrictive abortion laws, or provide information about abortion. This damaging policy restricted women’s choices and promoted censorship in health clinics around the world—factors known to contribute to unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions, and maternal mortality. Human Rights Watch has long pressed members of Congress and public health officials to act on the abuses resulting from the “global gag rule” and urged them to protect reproductive autonomy for all women and girls.
Read more: https://www.hrw.org/en/united-states
