Reports

Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes Against Humanity in El Geneina, West Darfur, Sudan

The 218-page report, “‘The Massalit Will Not Come Home’: Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes Against Humanity in El Geneina, West Darfur, Sudan,” documents that the Rapid Support Forces, an independent military force in armed conflict with the Sudan military, and their allied mainly Arab militias, including the Third-Front Tamazuj, an armed group, targeted the predominantly Massalit neighborhoods of El Geneina in relentless waves of attacks from April to June. Abuses escalated again in early November. The attackers committed other serious abuses such as torture, rape, and looting. More than half a million refugees from West Darfur have fled to Chad since April 2023. As of late October 2023, 75 percent were from El Geneina.

A man walks using crutches in a refugee camp

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  • September 19, 2017

    Security Force Response to the 2016 Irreecha Cultural Festival

    This report details the Ethiopian government’s use of force in response to restive crowds at 2016’s Irreecha. Thefestival, attended by massive crowds, is the most important cultural festival to Ethiopia’s 40 million ethnic Oromos, who gather to celebrate the end of the rains and welcome the harvest. Human Rights Watch found evidence that security force personnel not only triggered the stampede that caused many deaths but subsequently shot and killed some members of the crowd.

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    Cover of the Ethiopia report
  • September 14, 2017

    Lack of Transparency in Donor Funding for Syrian Refugee Education

    This report tracks pledges made at a conference in London in February 2016. Human Rights Watch followed the money trail from the largest donors to education in Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan, the three countries with the largest number of Syrian refugees, but found large discrepancies between the funds that the various parties said were given and the reported amounts that reached their intended targets in 2016. The lack of timely, transparent funding contributed to the fact that more than 530,000 Syrian schoolchildren in those three countries were still out of school at the end of the 2016-2017 school year.

    Cover of the Children's Rights report on Syrian Refugees in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan
  • September 7, 2017

    Evidence of Atrocities and Cover-Up of Abuses Committed during Peru’s Armed Conflict

    This report provides an overview of existing evidence, including testimony by several soldiers that they tortured, killed, and forcibly disappeared people during military operations against armed groups in the 1990s. They said they did so under the orders—and sometimes in the presence of—Humala, who was allegedly stationed at the Madre Mía military base in the Alto Huallaga region in 1992 under the pseudonym “Captain Carlos.” In testimony provided to judicial authorities and interviews with Human Rights Watch and the media, several victims also implicated Humala in violations and in attempted cover-ups.

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    Cover of the Peru report
  • September 5, 2017

    Torture and National Security in al-Sisi's Egypt

    This report documents how security forces, particularly officers of the Interior Ministry’s National Security Agency, use torture to force suspects to confess or divulge information, or to punish them. Allegations of torture have been widespread since then-Defense Minister al-Sisi ousted former President Mohamed Morsy in 2013, beginning a widespread crackdown on basic rights. Torture has long been endemic in Egypt’s law enforcement system, and rampant abuses by security forces helped spark the nationwide revolt in 2011 that unseated longtime leader Hosni Mubarak after nearly 30 years. 

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    Cover of the Egypt torture report
  • September 5, 2017

    China’s Interference in United Nations Human Rights Mechanisms

    This report details China’s efforts to harass independent activists, primarily those from China. Chinese officials have photographed and filmed activists on UN premises in violation of UN rules, and restricted travel by mainland activists to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. China has also used its membership on the Economic and Social Council’s Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to block NGOs critical of China from being granted UN accreditation, and it has sought – and succeeded in – blacklisting accredited activists from participating in UN events.

    Cover of the China UN Mechanisms report
  • August 29, 2017

    Victims’ Legal Representation at the ICC in the Ongwen Case and Beyond

    This report compares the way victims’ lawyers were selected in one ongoing trial to broader trends in court practice. At the ICC, victims have a right to participate in trials and are represented at trial through lawyers. The court’s system of victim participation, a key innovation in international criminal justice, creates a critical link between communities affected by atrocities and the courtroom. But Human Rights Watch found that ICC practice is falling short of ensuring that the victims’ views are adequately considered in decisions about whether and how to organize victims’ legal representation.

    Cover of the international justice report on victim's legal representation in the Ongwen case and beyond
  • August 1, 2017

    Escalating Violence and Abuses in South Sudan’s Equatorias

    This report documents the spreading violence and serious abuses against civilians in the Greater Equatoria region in the last year. The report focuses on two areas: Kajo Keji county, in the former Central Equatoria state, and Pajok, a town in the former Eastern Equatoria state.

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    Cover of the South Sudan Report
  • July 26, 2017

    Police Abuses Against Child and Adult Migrants in Calais

    This report finds that police forces in Calais, particularly the French riot police (Compagnies républicaines de sécurité, CRS), routinely use pepper spray on child and adult migrants while they are sleeping or in other circumstances in which they pose no threat. Police also regularly spray or confiscate sleeping bags, blankets, and clothing, and have sometimes used pepper spray on migrants’ food and water, apparently to press them to leave the area. Such acts violate the prohibition on inhuman and degrading treatment as well as international standards on police conduct, which call for police to use force only when it is unavoidable, and then only with restraint, in proportion to the circumstances, and for a legitimate law enforcement purpose.

    Cover of the France Calais Report
  • July 25, 2017

    Medically Unnecessary Surgeries on Intersex Children in the US

    This report examines the physical and psychological damage caused by medically unnecessary surgery on intersex people, who are born with chromosomes, gonads, sex organs, or genitalia that differ from those seen as socially typical for boys and girls. The report examines the controversy over the operations inside the medical community, and the pressure on parents to opt for surgery.

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    Cover of the Intersex Report
  • July 18, 2017

    Russia’s Assault on Freedom of Expression

    This report documents Russian authorities’ stepped-up measures aimed at bringing the internet under greater state control. Since 2012, Russian authorities have unjustifiably prosecuted dozens of people for criminal offenses on the basis of social media posts, online videos, media articles, and interviews, and shut down or blocked access to hundreds of websites and web pages. Russian authorities have also pushed through parliament a raft of repressive laws regulating internet content and infrastructure. These laws provide the Russian government with a broad range of tools to restrict access to information, carry out unchecked surveillance, and censor information the government designates as “extremist,” out of line with “traditional values,” or otherwise harmful to the public.

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    Cover of the Russia freedom of expression report
  • July 13, 2017

    Extrajudicial Executions in Western Rwanda

    This report details how military, police and auxiliary security units, sometimes with the assistance of local civilian authorities, apprehended suspected petty offenders and summarily executed them. Two men were killed by civilians after local authorities encouraged residents to kill thieves. In all the cases Human Rights Watch documented, the victims were killed without any effort at due process to establish their guilt or bring them to justice, and none posed any imminent threat to life that could have otherwise justified the use of lethal force against them.
     

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    Cover of the Rwanda Report
  • July 12, 2017

    The Impact of the Zika Outbreak on Women and Girls in Northeastern Brazil

    This report documents gaps in the Brazilian authorities’ response that have a harmful impact on women and girls and leave the general population vulnerable to continued outbreaks of serious mosquito-borne illnesses. The outbreak hit as the country faced its worst economic recession in decades, forcing authorities to make difficult decisions about allocating resources. But even in earlier times of economic growth, government investments in water and sanitation infrastructure were inadequate. Years of neglect contributed to the water and wastewater conditions that allowed the proliferation of the Aedes mosquito and the rapid spread of the virus, Human Rights Watch found.

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    Cover of the Women's Rights Brazil ZIKA report
  • July 11, 2017

    Government Program to Protect Talibé Children in Senegal Falls Short

    This report examines the successes and failings of the first year of the new government program to remove children forced to beg from the streets. The report documents the ongoing abuses faced by many talibé children in Dakar and four other regions during – and despite – the program, including pervasive forced begging, violence and physical abuse, chaining and imprisonment, and sexual abuse. Human Rights Watch and the PPDH also assessed the ongoing challenge of ensuring justice for these abuses.

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    Cover of the Senegal report
  • July 6, 2017

    Secret Detentions and Enforced Disappearances in Bangladesh

    This report found that at least 90 people were victims of enforced disappearance in 2016 alone. While most were produced in court after weeks or months of secret detention, Human Rights Watch documented 21 cases of detainees who were later killed, and nine others whose whereabouts remain unknown. 

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    Cover of the Bangladesh Report
  • July 5, 2017

    War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity and the Special Criminal Court in the Central African Republic

    This report presents a comprehensive account of war crimes committed in three central provinces since late 2014, including more than 560 civilian deaths and the destruction of more than 4,200 homes. The crimes fall under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Special Criminal Court (SCC), a new judicial body that, when operational, will investigate and prosecute grave human rights violations and war crimes in the country since 2003.

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    Cover of the Central African Republic