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  • Make it Safe

    Canada’s Obligation to End the First Nations Water Crisis

    This report documents the impacts of serious and prolonged drinking water and sanitation problems for thousands of indigenous people – known as “First Nations” – living on reserves. It assesses why there are problems with safe water and sanitation on reserves, including a lack of binding water quality regulations, erratic and insufficient funding, faulty or sub-standard infrastructure, and degraded source waters. The federal government’s own audits over two decades show a pattern of overpromising and underperforming on water and sanitation for reserves.

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  • Those Who Take Us Away

    Abusive Policing and Failures in Protection of Indigenous Women and Girls in Northern British Columbia, Canada

    The 89-page report documents both ongoing police failures to protect indigenous women and girls in the north from violence and violent behavior by police officers against women and girls. Police failures and abuses add to longstanding tensions between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and indigenous communities in the region, Human Rights Watch said.

  • Hear No Evil

    Forced Labor and Corporate Responsibility in Eritrea’s Mining Sector

    The 29-page report describes how mining companies working in Eritrea risk involvement with the government’s widespread exploitation of forced labor. It also documents how Nevsun – the first company to develop an operational mine in Eritrea – initially failed to take those risks seriously, and then struggled to address allegations of abuse connected to its operations.

  • The Omar Khadr Case

    A Teenager Imprisoned at Guantanamo

    In this backgrounder, Human Rights Watch said that although Khadr was just 15 when he was arrested, the United States has completely ignored his juvenile status throughout his detention. The US government incarcerated him with adults, reportedly subjected him to abusive interrogations, failed to provide him any educational opportunities, and denied him any direct contact with his family.

  • Ensure Access to Condoms in US Prisons and Jails

    The management of infectious disease in prisons is a human rights imperative as well as a matter of public health. Given the high level of HIV infections among those who enter prison, making condoms readily accessible to inmates is an effective and inexpensive measure that corrections officials should take to limit the spread of infection.

  • Cases Involving Diplomatic Assurances against Torture

    This document sets out developments in the use of diplomatic assurances in select individual cases since the publication of our April 2005 report “Still at Risk: Diplomatic Assurances No Safeguard Against Torture.

  • Funding the "Final War"

    LTTE Intimidation and Extortion in the Tamil Diaspora

    This 45-page report details how representatives of the LTTE and pro-LTTE groups use unlawful pressure among Tamil communities in the West to secure financial pledges. People were told that if they did not pay the requested sum, they would not be able to return to Sri Lanka to visit family members.

  • US/Canada: Transfer of Maher Arar to Torture

    Human Rights Watch Report to the Commission of Inquiry on Maher Arar

    On June 7, Julia Hall, Senior Researcher for Human Rights Watch, testfied before a Canadian Commission of Inquiry that is investigating the transfer of Maher Arar to Syria, where he alleges he was brutally tortured. Arar, a Canadian citizen, was transferred by U.S. authorities to Jordan with the understanding he would be turned over to Syria.

  • Still at Risk

    Diplomatic Assurances No Safeguard Against Torture

    This 91-page report documents the growing practice among Western governments—including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands—of seeking assurances of humane treatment in order to transfer terrorism suspects to states with well-established records of torture.

  • Empty Promises

    Diplomatic Assurances No Safeguard Against Torture

    Individuals suspected of terrorism should never be returned to a country where they risk torture and ill-treatment.

  • Abusing the User:

    Police Misconduct, Harm Reduction and HIV/AIDS in Vancouver, Canada

    An anti-drug crackdown by the Vancouver Police Department has driven injection drug users away from life-saving HIV prevention services, raising fears of a new wave of HIV transmission in the city that is already home to the worst AIDS crisis in the developed world, said Human Rights Watch.

  • Canada/Mexico/United States -- Trading Away Rights: The Unfulfilled Promise

    On the eve of the Quebec summit of Western hemisphere leaders, Human Rights Watch called for the creation of an independent oversight agency to spur remedial action for workers' rights violations."Trading Away Rights: The Unfulfilled Promise of NAFTA's Labor Side Agreement," analyzes the twenty-three complaints filed under the accord since it came into force in 1994.