Reports

This 100-page report documents the dramatic deterioration of the government’s record on freedom of expression, assembly, and association in the past 18 months. The authorities have arrested dozens of political activists on bogus charges, imprisoned critical journalists, broken up peaceful public demonstrations, and adopted legislation imposing new restrictions on fundamental freedoms.

This 96-page report describes how thousands of children work in licensed and unlicensed small-scale gold mines in Tanzania, Africa’s fourth-largest gold producer. They dig and drill in deep, unstable pits, work underground for shifts of up to 24 hours, and transport and crush heavy bags of gold ore.

This 26-page report found that Ecuador’s criminal code limits women’s and girls’ reproductive rights by prohibiting abortion with few exceptions, even in the case of pregnancies that result from sexual violence. The criminal code imposes penalties including prison terms ranging from one to five years for women and girls who obtain abortions.

This 64-page report describes the multiple criminal activities by corrupt police officers, from charging crime victims for every stage of an investigation, to extorting goods from street vendors. These actions violate Liberians’ rights under international and national law and undermine public trust in the Liberia National Police.

The 48-page report is based on 95 interviews with victims and their family members, witnesses, human rights defenders, journalists, and lawyers. The report documents case after case in which police, the paramilitary Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), and the Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB) opened fire into crowds or beat protesters in a brutal and unlawful manner.

This 59-page report draws on Human Rights Watch research from around the globe to document the harm caused to some of the world’s most vulnerable people by bank-financed programs.

This 68-page report finds that illegal logging and forest-sector mismanagement resulted in losses to the Indonesian government of more than US$7 billion between 2007 and 2011.

This 75-page report documents the struggles of children and young people with disabilities to be educated in mainstream schools in their communities.

Since 2006, under plans to “Build a New Socialist Countryside” in Tibetan areas, over two million Tibetans have been “rehoused” – through government-ordered renovation or construction of new houses – in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), while hundreds of thousands of nomadic herders in the eastern part of the Tibetan plateau have been relocated or settled in “New Socialist Villages.”

This 66-page report focuses on torture and ill-treatment by the Internal Security Forces (ISF), particularly the Drug Repression Bureau and members of the ISF who enforce “morality-related” laws against drug users, sex workers, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people.

This 86-page report details Indonesia’s poor treatment of migrant and asylum-seeking children. They arrive in Indonesia after fleeing persecution, violence, and poverty in Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, and elsewhere. Indonesia detains hundreds of migrant and asylum-seeking children each year without giving them a way to challenge their detention.

This 100-page report examined five trials between 2009 and 2013 of a total of 77 people – including protesters seeking reform, Western Sahara activists, and persons accused of plotting terrorism.

This 87-page report examines restrictive laws and policies that stifle civic and political groups and trade unions. The report shows how authorities use unjust laws to restrict freedom of association by arbitrarily rejecting registration applications and intrusively supervising independent organizations.

This 98-page report documents abuses including torture, rape, assault, arbitrary arrest, and extortion. The organizations found that the fear of abuse is driving sex workers, people who use drugs, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people away from prevention and treatment services.

The 52-page report documents frequent stops of people who appear to be foreigners, unjustified searches of their belongings, insults, and, in some cases, physical abuse. Many are detained for hours in police stations pending verification of their legal status.