The Persecution of Environmentalists and Indigenous Leaders in Indonesia
The 70-page report, “Grabbed Land, Silenced Justice: The Persecution of Environmentalists and Indigenous Leaders in Indonesia,” documents how Indonesian police have responded to complaints filed by company officials or politicians by silencing Indigenous villagers who demand their customary land rights and the activists who defend them. The authorities have targeted environmental and Indigenous community defenders using the criminal code and other laws to bring charges ranging from defamation to “spreading communism” to silence protest over environmental harm.
The Record of the Colombian Attorney General's Office
Colombia’s Attorney General has seriously undermined the investigation and prosecution of major human rights cases. The 14-page report “A Wrong Turn: The Record of the Colombian Attorney General’s Office,” documents how the attorney general's office has failed to make progress on critical human rights investigations.
The U.S.-led coalition forces are actively backing a warlord in western Afghanistan with a disastrous human rights record, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.
In recent weeks civilians have once again paid the price of local and international struggles to control the resource-rich eastern and northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Hundreds have been killed and injured and tens of thousands have fled their homes to join about two million others previously displaced.
Free trade alone cannot ensure greater respect for workers' rights nor prevent millions of people from being excluded from the benefits of globalization. Human Rights Watch believes that measures to protect workers' rights should be built into trade agreements to ensure that globalization does not come at the expense of human rights.
The Turkish government, security forces and paramilitaries are obstructing the return of hundreds of thousands of displaced villagers to their homes in the formerly war-torn southeast.
In recent months, the conflict between the northern Ugandan rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and the Ugandan government has significantly escalated, with resulting serious human rights abuses against civilians not only in northern Uganda but also in southern Sudan.
Less than a year after the signing of the 2001 Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health in Doha, Qatar, parties to the proposed thirty-four-country Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) are revisiting the relationship between intellectual property rights and access to essential medicines.
Turkey's parliamentary elections scheduled for November 3 will present an important test for the country, just one month before the European Union's Copenhagen summit, at which the E.U. is expected to give Turkey a signal about its prospects for membership in the Union.
When a civilian government was reinstated in Nigeria in 1999, many of those living in the Niger Delta region, the source of Nigeria's oil wealth, hoped that a "democratic dividend" would end decades of neglect they had suffered under successive military regimes.
Burma is believed to have more child soldiers than any other country in the world. The overwhelming majority of Burma's child soldiers are found in Burma's national army, the Tatmadaw Kyi, which forcibly recruits children as young as eleven. These children are subject to beatings and systematic humiliation during training.
The people responsible for planning and carrying out suicide bombings that deliberately target civilians are guilty of crimes against humanity and should be brought to justice, Human Rights Watch said in a new report today.
In 2002, steps were taken by the administration to ensure that the military could control the current electoral process and its outcome, principally by restricting the activities of opposition political parties while providing increasingly transparent support for pro-Musharraf parties.
The countries of Central and Eastern Europe, including several that are candidates for European Union (E.U.) membership, have long been a major source of weapons flows to human rights abusers, conflict regions, and clients suspected of diverting weapons to unauthorized destinations. There has been some recent progress to tighten controls, but serious problems remain.
Backgrounder on the European Union Regular Report on Turkey
The European Union's (E.U.) Regular Report on Turkey, scheduled for release October 9, will provide the E.U.'s assessment of recent reforms in Turkey and an early indication of whether the E.U. intends to move forward on Turkey's membership application at its December summit.
The Bush Administration is attempting to negotiate bilateral impunity agreements with numerous countries around the globe. The goal of these agreements is to exempt U.S. military and civilian personnel from the jurisdiction of the ICC. The U.S. argues that such agreements are contemplated under Article 98(2) of the Rome Statute.
