Reports

Discrimination, Lack of Economic Autonomy and Violence Against Women in Cameroon

The 75-page report, “‘I Live in Constant Peril:’ Discrimination, Lack of Economic Autonomy and Violence Against Women in Cameroon,” documents widespread violence against women, including physical, psychological, and economic abuse, in most cases by husbands and intimate partners. Researchers found that physical and economic abuse was used to restrict access to financial resources, social security, employment, property, and economic independence. These abuses are not isolated incidents but are rooted in entrenched gender inequality, discriminatory laws, and weak institutions, exacerbated by the government’s chronic underinvestment in prevention and survivor support.

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A man holds a flower and the message "Humanity for All" in front of a line of soldiers

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  • November 26, 2002

    Trafficking of Women and Girls To Post-Conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina for Forced Prostitution

    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.
  • November 19, 2002

    North Koreans in the People's Republic of China

    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.

  • July 1, 2002

    Human Rights Watch Backgrounder, July 1, 2002

    Women's rights activists throughout the world - of every political stripe, faith, sexual orientation, nationality, and ethnicity - mobilized at each step of the International Criminal Court (ICC) process. They have worked to create an independent court to afford women greater protection from violations of human rights and humanitarian law.
  • June 20, 2002

    Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls in Eastern Congo

    Forces on all sides in the Congo conflict have committed war crimes against women and girls, Human Rights Watch said in a new 114-page report.
  • June 6, 2002

    As Afghan and United Nations officials prepare for the forthcoming loya jirga (grand national assembly), as called for in the 2001 Bonn Agreement to choose Afghanistan's next government, ordinary Afghans are increasingly terrorized by the rule of local and regional military commanders - warlords - who are reasserting their control over large areas of Afghanistan.
  • May 9, 2002

    Women in Post-Taliban Afghanistan

    Afghan women continue to face serious threats to their physical safety, which denies them the opportunity to exercise their basic human rights and to participate fully in the rebuilding of their country.
  • April 30, 2002

    State Participation and Complicity in Communal Violence in Gujarat

    State officials of Gujarat, India were directly involved in the killings of hundreds of Muslims since February 27 and are now engineering a massive cover-up of the state's role in the violence, Human Rights Watch charged in a new report released today.
  • April 9, 2002

    Abuses Against Ethnic Pashtuns in Northern Afghanistan

    Since the collapse of the Taliban regime in northern Afghanistan in November 2001, ethnic Pashtuns throughout northern Afghanistan have faced widespread abuses including killings, sexual violence, beatings, extortion, and looting.
  • March 8, 2002

    Human Rights Watch has reviewed the most recent draft of the Greek trafficking bill and offers these comments to the bill's drafters and to parliamentarians who will debate the law at some time in the near future.
  • February 27, 2002

    Afghan Refugees in Pakistan and Iran

    The Human Rights Watch report, "Closed Door Policy: Afghan Refugees in Pakistan and Iran," cautions against a hasty repatriation of Afghan refugees while conditions in Afghanistan remain unstable. Human Rights Watch interviewed many refugees, including members of various ethnic groups, and women and girls, who fear continuing human rights abuses inside Afghanistan.
  • February 12, 2002

    Sex Discrimination in the Guatemalan Labor Force

    Women in Guatemala's largest female-dominated labor sectors face persistent sex discrimination and abuse, Human Rights Watch charges in this report. The 147-page report examines two sectors, export processing and private households, which employ tens of thousands of women sewing clothes for sale in the United States and working as live-in domestic workers.
  • December 19, 2001

    Concern for human rights in Saudi Arabia has ranked extremely low on the agenda of the U.S., although Washington has long been well aware that the country remains a veritable wasteland when it comes to respect for the fundamental human rights of its 22 million residents, including some six to seven million foreign workers and their families.
  • December 14, 2001

    The report on Turkey, its fourth (including the Progress Reports that pre-dated Turkey's formal candidacy), has become an important annual measure of progress on the political elements of the Copenhagen Criteria for membership, which require "stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and respect for and protection of minorities."
  • October 29, 2001

    Systematic Violations of Women's Rights in Afghanistan

    Women in Afghanistan have suffered a catastrophic assault on their human rights during more than twenty years of war and under the repressive rule of the Taliban.
  • August 31, 2001

    Backgrounder for the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance

    Throughout the world, refugees, asylum seekers, migrants and internally displaced persons are the victims of racial discrimination, racist attacks, xenophobia and ethnic intolerance. Racism is both a cause and a product of forced displacement, and an obstacle to its solution.