Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes Against Humanity in El Geneina, West Darfur, Sudan
The 218-page report, “‘The Massalit Will Not Come Home’: Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes Against Humanity in El Geneina, West Darfur, Sudan,” documents that the Rapid Support Forces, an independent military force in armed conflict with the Sudan military, and their allied mainly Arab militias, including the Third-Front Tamazuj, an armed group, targeted the predominantly Massalit neighborhoods of El Geneina in relentless waves of attacks from April to June. Abuses escalated again in early November. The attackers committed other serious abuses such as torture, rape, and looting. More than half a million refugees from West Darfur have fled to Chad since April 2023. As of late October 2023, 75 percent were from El Geneina.
The Haitian National Police (Police Nationale d'Haïti, HNP) constitutes the first civilian, professional police force in Haiti’s 193-year history. In past decades, Haiti’s military controlled a subservient police, and both institutions engaged in widespread, systematic human rights abuses.
Reaping the Rewards of “Ethnic Cleansing” in Prijedor
The same warlords who took control of the town of Prijedor, in northwestern Bosnia and Hercegovina, through systematic policies of ethnic cleansing—including pre-meditated slaughter, concentration camps, mass rape, and the takeover of businesses, government offices, and all communal property—have retained total control over key economic, infrastructure, and humanitarian sectors of the communit
The human rights abuses that constitute “ethnic cleansing” are still being used to intimidate and harass ethnic minorities in Bosnia-Hercegovina in the post-Dayton period. This has been observed by and is well known to the NATO-led Implementation Force (IFOR), international monitoring organizations and the governments that have sponsored the Dayton Peace Agreement.
On November 18, 1996, Zambians voted in parliamentary and presidential elections—the second multiparty elections since the end in 1991 of twenty-seven years of authoritarian and mostly single-party rule, under former president Kenneth Kaunda.
The international community has appropriately reacted with horror to the present crackdown on anti-government demonstrators and the independent media in Belgrade. At the same time, however, it is poised to squander human rights leverage with the government of Slobodon Milosevic and abandon the Albanians of Kosovo.
Even as international attention focuses on the split in the Khmer Rouge organization and the hopes for peace that it has engendered, the human rights situation in Cambodia remains precarious and has in many respects steadily worsened over the course of 1996.
Being a woman prisoner in U.S. state prisons can be a terrifying experience. If you are sexually abused, you cannot escape from your abuser. Grievance or investigatory procedures, where they exist, often do not work, and correctional employees continue to engage in abuse because they believe they can get away with it. The sexual misconduct documented in “All Too Familiar” takes many forms.
At least eighteen million children live or work on the streets of India, laboring as porters in railway stations or bus terminals, as rag pickers, and as vendors of food, tea, or handmade articles.
With its decision to bring Chinese dissident Wang Dan to trial on October 30 on the charge of “conspiracy to subvert the government,” the most serious charge in the Chinese criminal code, the Chinese government has signaled its determination to deny freedom of speech and association to any citizen daring publicly to raise fundamental criticisms of government policy.
The August 31, 1996 Khasavyurt agreements, which brought a fragile peace to Russia’s breakaway republic of Chechnya, have put at least a temporary end to the most hideous violations of human rights and humanitarian law committed in Russia since the break-up of the Soviet Union.
The Military-Paramilitary Partnership and the United States
The junior and mid-level officers who tolerated, planned, directed, and even took part in paramilitary violence in Colombia in the 1980s now occupy senior positions in the Colombian military. To be sure, a few, linked to well-publicized cases, have been forced into retirement or dismissed, but many more have been awarded medals for distinguished service and lead Colombia’s troops.
Kurds are the largest non-Arab ethnic minority in Syria, comprising about 8.5 to 10 percent of the population of 13.8 million. This report documents the situation of stateless Syrian-born Kurds — 142,465 by the government's count, and well over 200,000 according to Kurdish sources — who have been arbitrarily denied the right to Syrian nationality in violation of international law.
Sexual Violence during the Rwandan Genocide and its Aftermath
During the 1994 genocide, Rwandan women were subjected to sexual violence on a massive scale, perpetrated by members ofthe infamous Hutu militia groups known as the Interahamwe, by other civilians, and by soldiers of the Rwandan Armed Forces(Forces Armées Rwandaises, FAR), including the Presidential Guard.
Despite its stated commitment to return Nigeria to elected civilian rule by October 1, 1998, the military government continues to violate the rights of Nigerians to free political activity, including freedom of expression, assembly and association, freedom of movement, and freedom from arbitrary detention and trial.
