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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  • Russian Federation: Ethnic Discrimination in Southern Russia

    Ethnic discrimination in the Russian Federation has persisted and perhaps even worsened since the break-up of the Soviet Union. The government has failed to combat discrimination and is in many ways responsible for perpetuating discriminatory practices.

  • Too Little, Too Late

    State Response to Violence Against Women

    In March 1995, Human Rights Watch released Neither Jobs Nor Justice, a report documenting widespread employment discrimination on the basis of sex that was practiced, condoned, and tolerated by the Russian government.

  • Moscow: Open Season, Closed City

    Today Moscow is throwing its doors open to visitors to help celebrate the 850th anniversary of its founding.

  • A Legacy of Abuse

    On Sunday, January 27, the people of Chechnya held presidential and parliamentary elections, the first since the brutal war ended there last fall. These elections may mark the beginning of a new era for Chechnya after twenty months of war and destruction.

  • Report to the 1996 OSCE Review Conference

    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.

  • Russia: The Ingush-Ossetian Conflict in the Prigorodnyi Regions

    On October 31, 1992, fighting erupted between Ingush militias and North Ossetian security forces and paramilitaries supported by the Russian Interior Ministry and Army troops in the Prigorodnyi region of North Ossetia, a republic located in the North Caucasus of the Russian Federation.

  • Crime or Simply Punishment?

    Racists Attacks by Moscow Law Enforcement

    Russian society has been hit hard in recent years by destabilizing changes. An unprecedented wave of crime, population shifts, and crises related to economic transition raised the urgent need for a sense of control and for someone to blame.

  • Neither Jobs Nor Justice

    State Discrimination Against Women in Russia

    Economic and political changes in Russia have left many Russians staggering under the burdens of rising unemployment, high rates of inflation, disappearing social services and the encroaching threats of corruption and organized crime.

  • Russia: Three Months of War in Chechnya

    This report is the third in a series on the conflict in Chechnya. As the war in the breakaway republic enters its third month, Russian forces continue to commit gross abuses against the civilian population.

  • Russia's War in Chechnya: Victims Speak Out

    The first in a series of reports that document violations of humanitarian law by all sides in the war in Chechnya, it describes how Russian forces have shown utter contempt for civilian lives in the breakaway republic of Chechnya.

  • War or Peace?

    Human Rights and Russian Military Involvement in the “Near Abroad”

    The Russian Federation is engaged in military policies in several armed conflicts in the “near abroad” — the countries of the former Soviet Union — that simultaneously protect and violate human rights.

  • Threats to Press Freedom

    A Report Prepared for the Free Media Seminar Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe

    The Free Media Seminar of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe is taking place at a critical time. First, because developments throughout the region suggest that protection for media freedoms fall well short of international standards.