Reports

Many refugees who come uninvited to Australia are compelled to do so because they cannot find effective protection anywhere else, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released to mark International Human Rights Day.

The briefing paper outlines a number of areas in which the Afghan government and international actors have missed opportunities to improve security and protect human rights. Human Rights Watch makes several recommendations to international and Afghan actors to help realize key provisions in the agreement.

The violence plaguing Central Sulawesi today is a direct result of the Indonesian government's failure to punish the perpetrators of major attacks and protect communities in the province since 1998, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.

The visit of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to Colombia on December 3 and 4 marks an important opportunity to advance human rights and the rule of law in that country.

Against a backdrop of start-and-stop negotiations to end the civil war in Burundi, both rebels and the government army have stepped up military activities, killing civilians and raising the risk of widespread slaughter on an ethnic basis. The rebel forces are largely Hutu, as is the majority of the population.

Côte d'Ivoire is facing a political crisis that poses a serious risk that the country could plunge into the sort of brutal war well known to neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone. The crisis is rooted in well-established divisions within Ivorian society and in particular within the military, divisions that have been deliberately exacerbated by government policy over the last few years.

Traffickers who have forced thousands of women and girls into prostitution in Bosnia and Herzegovina are not being apprehended for their crimes. Local corruption and the complicity of international officials in Bosnia have allowed a trafficking network to flourish, in which women are tricked, threatened, physically assaulted and sold as chattel, the report said.

The United Nations Security Council should extend the arms embargo on Liberia to all rebel groups, and closely monitor the compliance of the Guinean government with that embargo, Human Rights Watch said today. The Guinean government’s close relationship with Liberian rebel groups is posing a serious threat to refugees’ security and protection in Guinea.

"There were four men standing there and one of them held a knife up to my throat. I tried to fight him off with my hands. He was 'hanging' [choking] me. He pushed me down and pulled up my dress. They were all going to rape me - but I refused to open my legs. So, then he took his knife and sliced my thigh. [...] They started raping me. I passed out eventually."

Each year, hundreds of young men in Moscow and St. Petersburg are detained and forcibly conscripted into the Russian armed forces, Human Rights Watch said in a new report today.

"Hidden in Plain View," is based on 150 in-depth interviews with refugees from Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan and elsewhere. Refugees described being subjected to beatings, sexual violence, harassment, extortion, arbitrary arrests and detention.

China must end the forcible return of North Korean asylum-seekers and the arrest and harassment of aid workers who assist them, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.

Public officials tried vigorously to contain a wave of hate crimes in the United States after September 11, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Nevertheless, anti-Muslim hate crimes in the United States rose 1700 percent during 2001. The report documents anti-Arab and anti-Muslim violence and the local, state and federal response to it.

Colombia’s Attorney General has seriously undermined the investigation and prosecution of major human rights cases. The 14-page report “A Wrong Turn: The Record of the Colombian Attorney General’s Office,” documents how the attorney general's office has failed to make progress on critical human rights investigations.

The U.S.-led coalition forces are actively backing a warlord in western Afghanistan with a disastrous human rights record, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.