Reports

Human Rights Watch calls on the Indonesian government to act immediately to prevent further communal violence.

This report documents how, from the moment the state assumes their care, orphans in Russia---of whom 95 percent still have a living parent---are exposed to shocking levels of cruelty and neglect.

In this report Human Rights Watch documents the Mexican government's failure to enforce its own labor laws in the export processing (maquiladora) sector. In violation of Mexican labor law, maquiladora operators oblige women to undergo pregnancy testing as a condition of work. Women thought to be pregnant are not hired.

At least 1,000 ethnic Albanians are currently believed to be in Serbian prisons and police stations, according to Human Rights Watch. In Detention and Abuse in Kosovo, released today, Human Rights Watch charges that many have been subjected to beatings and torture to extract confessions or to obtain information about the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), and are being tried on charges of "terrorism."

In this report, Human Rights Watch charges the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) with violating the rights of unaccompanied children in its custody.

In the aftermath of President Soeharto's resignation in May 1998, political tension in Irian Jaya, Indonesia's easternmost province, has increased. The province, called West Papua by supporters of independence, occupies the western half of the island of New Guinea.

Since the 1980s, the term “transition to democracy” has been used to describe those processes of political change that aim toleave behind a dictatorial past, a situation of internal armed conflict or another type of radical breakdown of the political orderor absence of the rule of law, and to advance toward the foundation or reconstruction of a democratic system.

On the night of October 16, 1998, London police arrested Gen. Augusto Pinochet. They were acting on a Spanish warrant charging the former dictator with human rights crimes committed in Chile during his seventeen-year rule. The British courts rejected Pinochet's claim that he was entitled to immunity and ruled that he could be extradited to Spain to stand trial.

On August 8, 1998, Taliban militia forces captured the city of Mazar-i Sharif in northwest Afghanistan, the only major city controlled by the United Front, the coalition of forces opposed to the Taliban. The fall of Mazar was part of a successful offensive that gave the Taliban control of almost every major city and important significant territory in northern and central Afghanistan.

Former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim was arrested on September 20 under the Internal Security Act, a law that Human Rights Watch believes to be a violation of basic human rights. Since his sacking on September 2, many of his supporters have also been arrested. The background to the case follows.

In light of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's (FRY) poor record of cooperation with the international community, Human Rights Watch is concerned that the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission, established to monitor compliance with Security Council Resolutions 1160 and 1199, may face serious incidents of non-compliance and obstruction of its work.

Violations of international humanitarian law -- the laws of war -- are not abstract concepts in Colombia, but the grim material of everyday life. War bursts into the daily activities of a farm, a village, a public bus, or a school with the speed of armed fighters arriving down a path or in four-wheel drive vehicles. Sometimes, armed men carefully choose their victims from lists.

At almost no time since Burmese asylum seekers started arriving on Thai soil in 1984 has the need for protection of this group been greater. Human rights violations inside Burma continue almost a decade after the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) seized power in Burma in September 1988

This report documents serious breaches of international humanitarian law, the rules of war, committed in Kosovo from February to early September 1998. The vast majority of these abuses were committed by Yugoslav government forces of the Serbian special police (MUP) and the Yugoslav Army (VJ).

The expansion of suffrage to all sectors of the population is one of the United States' most important political triumphs. Today, all mentally competent adults have the right to vote with only one exception: convicted criminal offenders .The racial impact of disenfranchisement laws is particularly egregious.