Reports

This 162-page report examines domestic laws and military policies in 56 countries around the world. Governments have been slow to update and align their domestic legislation with the explicit prohibitions on attacks on schools under international criminal law, Human Rights Watch said.

This 96-page report details strong evidence of military involvement in seven killings and three enforced disappearances of leftist activists since President Benigno Aquino III took office on June 30, 2010.

This report documents serious government abuses, starting in mid-February 2011. These include attacks on health care providers; denial of medical access to protesters injured by security forces; the siege of hospitals and health centers; and the detention, ill-treatment, torture, and prosecution of medics and patients with protest-related injuries.

This 71-page report documents the arbitrary interference by Abkhazia's de facto authorities with returnees' rights to freedom of movement, education, and other political and economic rights.

This 80-page report documents routine physical abuse and the failure of the criminal justice system to protect the rights of prisoners. Prisoners at rural prisons, including the elderly, individuals with disabilities, and pregnant women, are frequently caned, or are even stoned, handcuffed to a tree, or burned, when they refuse to perform hard labor.

This 70-page report details abuses against convict porters including summary executions, torture, and the use of the convicts as “human shields.” The military should stop forcibly recruiting prisoners as porters and mistreating them, and those responsible for ordering or participating in such treatment should be prosecuted, Human Rights Watch and the Karen Human Rights Group said.

This 107-page report presents substantial information warranting criminal investigations of Bush and senior administration officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and CIA Director George Tenet, for ordering practices such as “waterboarding,” the use of secret CIA prisons, and the transfer of detainees to countries where they were tortured.

This 75-page report draws on research in heavily lead-contaminated villages in Henan, Yunnan, Shaanxi, and Hunan provinces. The report documents how, despite increasing regulation and sporadic enforcement targeting polluting factories, local authorities are ignoring the urgent and long-term health consequences of a generation of children continuously exposed to life-threatening levels of lead.

This 35-page report states that transfers separate detained immigrants, including legal permanent residents, refugees, and undocumented people, from the attorneys, witnesses, and evidence they need to defend against deportation. That can violate their right to fair treatment in court, slow down asylum or deportation proceedings, and extend their time in detention.

This 63-page report describes how Kuwait, one of the world’s richest countries, forces the Bidun to live under the radar of normal society, vulnerable and without protection. Many live in poverty.

This report concludes that criminal investigations into the 2010 violence have been marred by widespread use of arbitrary arrests and ill-treatment, including torture.

This report documents the intensification of the eight-year conflict over the past six months. Since December 2010, a surge in government-led attacks on populated areas and a campaign of aerial bombing have killed and injured scores of civilians, destroyed property, and displaced more than 70,000 people, largely from ethnic Zaghawa and Fur communities linked to rebel groups.

This 128-page report details the failure of many governments to take even basic steps to ensure that people with severe pain due to cancer, HIV, and other serious illnesses have access to palliative care, a health service that seeks to improve quality of life. As a result, millions of patients live and die in great agony that could easily be prevented, Human Rights Watch said.

This 54-page report is based on more than 50 interviews with victims and witnesses to abuses. The report focuses on violations in Daraa governorate, where some of the worst violence took place after protests seeking greater freedoms began in various parts of the country. The specifics went largely unreported due to the information blockade imposed by the Syrian authorities.

This report assesses the courts’ achievements and outlines a number of serious shortcomings in their work, including corruption and procedural irregularities.