Reports

US Civil Rights Enforcement Under the Trump Administration

The 112-page report, “Remedies Abandoned: US Civil Rights Enforcement Under the Trump Administration,” documents the administration’s efforts to unravel the work of four key agencies between January 2025 and the spring of 2026: the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which lost about 75 percent of its attorneys; the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, which moved to lay off nearly half its staff in one day and closed 7 of its 12 regional offices; the Housing and Urban Development Department’s Fair Housing Office, which shrank dramatically; and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which reached its lowest staffing levels in over 40 years.

A man in a wheelchair holds a protest sign at a demonstration
A man holds a flower and the message "Humanity for All" in front of a line of soldiers

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  • March 12, 2012

    Lessons of International Support for Trials before the State Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina

    This 47-page report highlights key lessons from the involvement of international judges and prosecutors to boost national staff capacity to try sensitive and complex cases stemming from the 1992-1995 war. In the seven years since the State Court began operations, its chamber and the Special Department for War Crimes (SDWC) in the Prosecutor’s Office have completed more than 200 cases.
  • March 1, 2012

    Youth Sentenced to Life in Prison without Parole in California, An Update

    This 28-page report draws on six years of research, interviews, and correspondence with correctional officials and youth offenders serving life without parole.

  • February 29, 2012

    Forced Evictions, Unlawful Expropriations, and House Demolitions in Azerbaijan’s Capital

    This report documents the Azerbaijani authorities’ illegal expropriation of properties and forcible evictions of dozens of families in four Baku neighborhoods, at times without warning or in the middle of the night. The authorities subsequently demolished homes, sometimes with residents’ possessions inside.

  • February 28, 2012

    Unfair Trials in Military and Civilian Courts

    This report documents serious due process violations in high-profile trials before Bahrain’s special military courts in 2011 – including one trial of 21 prominent political activists and another of 20 doctors and other medical personnel – and in politically motivated trials before ordinary criminal courts since 2010.

  • February 20, 2012

    Child Recruitment, Forced Marriage, and Attacks on Schools in Somalia

    This 104-page report details unlawful recruitment and other laws-of-war violations against children by all parties to the conflict in Somalia since 2010. The report is based on over 164 interviews with Somali children, including 21 who had escaped from al-Shabaab forces, as well as parents and teachers who had fled to Kenya.

  • February 15, 2012

    Denial of Women’s and Girls’ Rights to Sport in Saudi Arabia

    <p>This report documents discrimination by Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Education in denying girls physical education in state schools, as well as discriminatory practices by the General Presidency for Youth Welfare, a youth and sports ministry, in licensing women’s gyms and supporting only all-male sports clubs.</p>

  • February 6, 2012

    Yemen’s Crackdown on Protests in Taizz

    When Yemenis took to the streets in January 2011 to demand an end to Saleh’s 33-year rule, Taizz, 250 kilometers south of the capital, Sanaa, became a center of both peaceful and armed resistance – and the scene of numerous human rights abuses and violations of the laws of war.

  • February 5, 2012

    Israel’s Control of Palestinian Residency in the West Bank and Gaza

    This report describes the arbitrary exclusion by the Israeli military of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians since 1967 and documents the impact that exclusion continues to have on individuals and families.

  • January 27, 2012

    The Aging Prison Population in the United States

    <p>This report includes new data Human Rights Watch developed from a variety of federal and state sources that document dramatic increases in the number of older US prisoners.</p>

  • January 26, 2012

    Abusive Identity Checks in France

    This 55-page report says that minority youth, including children as young as 13, are subjected to frequent stops involving lengthy questioning, invasive body pat-downs, and the search of personal belongings. These arbitrary stops can take place even in the absence of any indication of wrongdoing, Human Rights Watch found.

  • January 22, 2012

    Events of 2011

    This 22nd annual World Report summarizes human rights conditions in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide in 2011.
  • January 16, 2012

    Forced Displacement and “Villagization” in Ethiopia’s Gambella Region

    This report in Ethiopia’s Gambella Region examines the first year of Gambella’s villagization program. It details the involuntary nature of the transfers, the loss of livelihoods, the deteriorating food situation, and ongoing abuses by the armed forces against the affected people.

  • January 16, 2012

    A Human Rights Agenda for Egypt’s New Parliament

    This 45-page report sets out nine areas of Egyptian law that the newly elected parliament must urgently reform if the law is to become an instrument that protects Egyptians’ rights rather than represses them.

  • January 15, 2012

    Uganda’s International Crimes Division

    This 29-page briefing paper provides a snapshot of progress from Uganda’s complementarity-related initiative: the International Crimes Division (ICD). The ICD is a division of the High Court with a mandate to prosecute genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, in addition to crimes such as terrorism.

  • January 15, 2012

    Discrimination and Police Violence Against Transgender Women in Kuwait

    This 63-page report documents the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse and persecution that transgender women – individuals who are born male, but identify as female – have faced at the hands of police.