Reports

How Michigan’s Forced Parental Consent for Abortion Law Hurts Young People

The 36-page report, “In Harm’s Way: How Michigan’s Forced Parental Consent for Abortion Law Hurts Young People” examines the impact of a Michigan law that requires people under age 18 seeking an abortion to have a parent or legal guardian’s written consent or get approval from a judge in a process known as “judicial bypass.”

A girl stands in front of a judge in a courtroom

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  • March 1, 1997

    Disproportionate Sentences for New York Drug Offenders

    In the past decade, the U.S. Congress and many state legislatures have established harsh criminal penalties for a wide range of drug offenses, often using the vehicle of mandatory minimum prison sentences. As a consequence, drug offenders in the United States face sentences that are uniquely severe among constitutional democracies.

  • March 1, 1997

    A two-person Human Rights Watch delegation traveled to Guatemala in January 1997. The visit focused on reports of the discriminatory treatment of trade unionists at the assembly plants there of the U.S.-based corporation Phillips-Van Heusen (PVH), and allegations of obstacles posed by the company and the Guatemalan labor ministry to the union’s recognition for purposes of collective bargaining.
  • March 1, 1997

    Freedom of Association in a Maquila in Guatemala

    A two-person Human Rights Watch delegation traveled to Guatemala in January 1997. The visit focused on reports of the discriminatory treatment of trade unionists at the assembly plants there of the U.S.-based corporation Phillips-Van Heusen (PVH), and allegations of obstacles posed by the company and the Guatemalan labor ministry to the union's recognition for purposes of collective bargaining.
  • March 1, 1997

    Chemical Weapons in the Former Yugoslavia

    Human Rights Watch has uncovered evidence that the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) had an extensive and sophisticated chemical weapons program prior to the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991; that the army of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) inherited much of this program; and that the army of the Republic of Bosnia and Hercegovina produced crude chemical munitions during the Bos
  • March 1, 1997

    Prison Conditions in Venezuela

    Overcrowded, understaffed, physically deteriorated, and rife with weapons, drugs, and gangs, Venezuela’s prisons have a deservedly poor reputation.
  • March 1, 1997

    China is increasingly exercising its authority over the territory of Hong Kong on a number of issues and has directed, for instance, that all the Vietnamese be cleared from Hong Kong before July 1. Such pressure has spurred the Hong Kong government to redouble its efforts to resolve the Vietnamese situation, which has embroiled the territory in controversy for over twenty years.
  • February 1, 1997

    and Other Human Rights Obligations on the First Anniversary of its Accession to the Council of Europe

    On February 28, 1996, the Russian Federation became a full member of the Council of Europe, an intergovernmental organization based in Strasbourg, France, which, among other goals, aims to protect human rights. Accession to the Council of Europe heightened expectations that the Russian Federation would take concrete steps to improve its poor human rights record in the year that has followed.
  • January 12, 1997

    Between December 1996 and the beginning of March 1997, one of the worst outbreaks of communal violence in Indonesia in decades broke out in the province of West Kalimantan between indigenous Dayak people and immigrants from the island of Madura, off the coast of East Java.
  • January 1, 1997

    This report examines the context within which children and their parents must struggle to exercise their rights and looks in detail at the legal provisions which deny them even the most basic rights and freedoms. It also reports on the current situation of children in Burma and the daily practices used by the military and other government agents which violate international law.
  • January 1, 1997

    On Sunday, January 27, the people of Chechnya held presidential and parliamentary elections, the first since the brutal war ended there last fall. These elections may mark the beginning of a new era for Chechnya after twenty months of war and destruction.
  • January 1, 1997

    The Haitian National Police (Police Nationale d'Haïti, HNP) constitutes the first civilian, professional police force in Haiti’s 193-year history. In past decades, Haiti’s military controlled a subservient police, and both institutions engaged in widespread, systematic human rights abuses.
  • January 1, 1997

    Reaping the Rewards of “Ethnic Cleansing” in Prijedor

    The same warlords who took control of the town of Prijedor, in northwestern Bosnia and Hercegovina, through systematic policies of ethnic cleansing—including pre-meditated slaughter, concentration camps, mass rape, and the takeover of businesses, government offices, and all communal property—have retained total control over key economic, infrastructure, and humanitarian sectors of the communit
  • December 1, 1996

    The human rights abuses that constitute “ethnic cleansing” are still being used to intimidate and harass ethnic minorities in Bosnia-Hercegovina in the post-Dayton period. This has been observed by and is well known to the NATO-led Implementation Force (IFOR), international monitoring organizations and the governments that have sponsored the Dayton Peace Agreement.
  • December 1, 1996

    On November 18, 1996, Zambians voted in parliamentary and presidential elections—the second multiparty elections since the end in 1991 of twenty-seven years of authoritarian and mostly single-party rule, under former president Kenneth Kaunda.
  • December 1, 1996

    Human Rights Violations in Kosovo

    The international community has appropriately reacted with horror to the present crackdown on anti-government demonstrators and the independent media in Belgrade. At the same time, however, it is poised to squander human rights leverage with the government of Slobodon Milosevic and abandon the Albanians of Kosovo.