The 72-page report, “Start with the Youngest Children: China Uses Preschools to ‘Integrate’ Tibetans,” documents that a 2021 Ministry of Education directive—the Children’s Speech Harmonization plan—mandates the use of standard Mandarin Chinese for all preschool instruction in ethnic minority areas. While the kindergartens in theory can still offer supplementary sessions for minority children in their own language, minorities no longer have the legal authority to do so. By severely limiting Tibetan-language education in early childhood, a stage critical for language acquisition and identity formation, the Chinese government is speeding up its erasure of Tibetan language and culture.
The branch of international law that provides protection to the victims of armed conflict and governs its conduct is called international humanitarian law (or the "laws of war"). International humanitarian law is derived from the customary practices of states and from treaties.
The Rwandan government has violated the basic rights of tens of thousands of people by forcing them to abandon their homes in rural areas and move to makeshift dwellings in government-designated sites, Human Rights Watch charges in this report.
Violence and Discrimination Against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Students in U.S. Schools
In this report, Human Rights Watch documents attacks on the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth who are subjected to abuse on a daily basis by their peers and in some cases by teachers and school administrators.
The factional struggle behind the current presidential elections in Iran is having a devastating impact on human rights, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.
Children and Adults forcibly recruited for Military Serivce in North Kivu
This report, based upon a mission to the region in December 2000 and subsequent research, documents an intensive campaign of forcible recruitment of adults and children begun by RCD-Goma and its Rwandan allies in the last quarter of 2000.
Russian authorities have literally buried evidence of extra-judicial executions in Chechnya, said Human Rights Watch. In this 24-page report, the organization documents the Russian government's botched investigation of a mass grave site discovered in late February 2001. This week senior European Union and United Nations officials are preparing for meetings with President Putin in Moscow.
On December 19, 2000, thirty prisoners and two gendarmes were killed when some ten thousand armed soldiers went into twenty Turkish prisons to break up a nonviolent protest by inmates and transfer them to the newly constructed F-type prisons.
An impending appeals court ruling in Tunisia threatens to undermine the Arab world's oldest independent human rights organization, according to a report released today by Human Rights Watch and the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders. The Observatory is a joint program of the International Federation for Human Rights and the World Organization against Torture.
For the past six months, the West Bank city of Hebron has been the scene of serious and sustained human rights abuses, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.
This ground-breaking new report by Human Rights Watch charges that state authorities are responsible for widespread prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse in U.S. men's prisons. The 378-page report is based on more than three years of research and is the first national survey of prisoner-on-prisoner rape. There are some two million inmates in U.S. prisons and jails.
The Unfulfilled Promise of NAFTA’s Labor Side Agreement
On the eve of the Quebec summit of Western hemisphere leaders, Human Rights Watch called for the creation of an independent oversight agency to spur remedial action for workers' rights violations."Trading Away Rights: The Unfulfilled Promise of NAFTA's Labor Side Agreement," analyzes the twenty-three complaints filed under the accord since it came into force in 1994.
Human Rights Watch welcomes the opportunity to submit information to the Human Rights Committee regarding Venezuela's implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The Death Penalty and Offenders with Mental Retardation
Twenty-five U.S. states still permit the execution of offenders with mental retardation and should pass laws to ban the practice without delay. The United States appears to be the only democracy whose laws expressly permit the execution of persons with this severe mental disability.
This fifty-page report documents how Ugandan authorities meddled in rivalries among factions of the rebel Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD). Some of these quarrels degenerated into military skirmishes in which civilians have been killed and injured.
Sexual Violence Against Girls in South African Schools
In schools across South Africa, thousands of girls of every race and economic group are encountering sexual violence and harassment that impede their access to education, Human Rights Watch charged in a report released today.
