Reports

"Targeting Life in Idlib"

Syrian and Russian Strikes on Civilian Infrastructure

The 167-page report, “‘Targeting Life in Idlib’: Syrian and Russian Strikes on Civilian Infrastructure,” details abuses by Syrian and Russian armed forces during the 11-month military campaign to retake Idlib governorate and surrounding areas, among the last held by anti-government armed groups. The report examines the abusive military strategy in which the Syrian-Russian alliance repeatedly violated the laws of war against the 3 million civilians there, many displaced by fighting elsewhere in the country. It names 10 senior Syrian and Russian civilian and military officials who may be implicated in war crimes as a matter of command responsibility: they knew or should have known about the abuses and took no effective steps to stop them or punish those responsible.

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  • Widespread Torture in the Chechen Republic

    Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper for the 37th Session UN Committee against Torture

    This 16-page briefing paper is addressed to the Committee against Torture. It documents ill-treatment and torture by pro-Moscow Chechen forces under the effective command of Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov, as well as by federal police personnel.

  • Managing Civil Society: Are NGOs Next?

    On November 23, 2005, the State Duma, Russia’s parliament, is scheduled to consider a draft law that would dramatically restrict the work of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working in Russia.

  • Positively Abandoned

    Stigma and Discrimination against HIV-Positive Mothers and their Children in Russia

    As Russia’s HIV/AIDS epidemic spreads, thousands of HIV-positive mothers and their children face pervasive discrimination and abuse. This 41-page report focuses on the discrimination that these women face, as do their children, many of whom are abandoned to the care of the state.

  • Worse Than a War

    “Disappearances” in Chechnya—a Crime Against Humanity

    Enforced disappearances in Chechnya are so widespread and systematic that they constitute crimes against humanity. Human Rights Watch urges the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to take urgent measures commensurate with the extreme gravity of the phenomenon.

  • The Wrongs of Passage

    Inhuman and Degrading Treatment of New Recruits in the Russian Armed Forces

    This 86-page report documents the serious human rights abuses involved in dedovshchina, or “rule of the grandfathers,” which results in the deaths of dozens of conscripts every year, and serious—and often permanent—damage to the physical and mental health of thousands others.

  • Lessons Not Learned

    Human Rights Abuses and HIV/AIDS in the Russian Federation

    This 62-page report documents how harsh drug policies and routine police harassment of injection drug users—the population hit hardest by AIDS in Russia—impedes their access or makes them afraid to seek basic HIV-prevention services such as syringe exchange, which is available in other countries around the world.

  • 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.

  • To Serve Without Health

    Inadequate Nutrition and Health Care in the Russian Armed Forces

    This 40-page report details how conscripts are deprived of adequate food. The diet of conscripts often lacks meat and green vegetables, and falls short of the Russian military’s own nutritional standard for soldiers. The food they do receive is often of poor quality, rotten, or bug-infested.

  • Russia’s “Spy Mania”

    A Study of the Case of Igor Sutiagin

    On October 27, 2003, arms researcher Igor Sutiagin faces a troubling anniversary: four years will have passed since security service officers detained him at his home. Ever since, Sutiagin has been waiting in a jail cell for a court to decide his fate.

  • Spreading Despair

    Russian Abuses in Ingushetia

    Russia’s forces are committing abuses against displaced Chechens in Ingushetia as the conflict in Chechnya spills over into this neighboring republic. This 28-page report documents arbitrary arrest and detention, ill-treatment, and looting by Russia’s forces in Ingushetia this summer.

  • Human Rights Situation in Chechnya

    Last year, as Russian troops in Chechnya were committing hundreds of forced disappearances, extrajudicial executions, and widespread acts of torture and ill-treatment, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights rejected a resolution that would have expressed concern about the Chechnya conflict.

  • In the Name of Counter-Terrorism: Human Rights Abuses Worldwide

    A Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper for the 59th Session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights

    This paper first surveys initiatives taken by U.N., regional, and other intergovernmental bodies in the context of the international campaign against terrorism.

  • On the Situation of Ethnic Chechens in Moscow

    The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which reviews compliance with the United Nations’ anti-discrimination convention, recently adopted its concluding observations and recommendations for Russia.

  • Into Harm’s Way:

    Forced Return of Displaced People to Chechnya

    Russia’s ongoing record of serious human rights abuse in Chechnya impugns its claim that the war there contributes to the international campaign against terrorism, Human Rights Watch said in a new report published today The