Reports

Doula Care for Justice in Maternal Health in Florida

The 62-page report, “Witness, Ally, Advocate, Climate Worker: Doula Care for Justice in Maternal Health in Florida,” found that the state provides inadequate financial and programmatic support for doula care, including under state-based Medicaid plans on which almost half of all women who are pregnant or give birth in the state rely. Doulas are non-clinical health workers who provide expert support during birth and provide individualized information about health care options, rights, and resources. Academic and US government research suggests that doula services can help improve the availability, accessibility, and quality of health care services for pregnant people. One multi-country analysis of evidence found continuous labor support by doulas may reduce rates of cesarean delivery and improve Apgar scores (indications of good health in newborns) and women’s ratings of the experience.

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  • February 1, 1993

    Cubans are all too familiar with their government’s perennial campaigns to “perfect” all aspects of Cuban society. Yet after more than three decades in power, Fidel Castro’s government has succeeded in perfecting nothing so much as its pervasive system of control.
  • February 1, 1993

    Britain has historically been a society with great respect for the tradition of freedom of the press. In recent years, however, there has been a significant increase in restrictions on liberty. Not only have press freedoms been threatened with greater restrictions, but broadcasting has faced similar challenges, and the right to protest has been limited.
  • February 1, 1993

    In 1992, 16 people died in the custody of police or gendarmes. An extraordinarily high percentage of these suspects were said by police to have committed suicide and three of the alleged suicides were children between the ages of 13 and 16.
  • January 12, 1993

    Past and Future

    During the period of Ethiopian rule in Eritrea (1962-91), a systematic policy of denying educational freedoms to Eritreans was followed. This ranged beyond stifling freedom of thought to a sustained attempt to dismantle the educational system and block the emergence of a university serving Eritreans.
  • January 1, 1993

    Torture and Obstruction of Health Care

    The vicious conflict in Kashmir, now in its fourth year, is characterized by the Indian army’s and other security forces’ blatant disregard for international norms of medical neutrality.
  • January 1, 1993

    Landmines have rendered large areas of arable land and pasture, many roads, bridges, river banks, villages, and some important economic installations unfit for the people of Angola.
  • January 1, 1993

    Bowing to intense pressure from the international community, President Milosevic released opposition leader Vuk Draskovic and his wife Danica from prison on July 9, 1993. Serbian authorities had held the couple for over a month for allegedly leading demonstrators to commit violent acts in the demonstration against the Parliament on June 1.
  • January 1, 1993

    The first such report by a human rights organization including on-site inspections and extensive interviews with current inmates, Prison Conditions in Egypt documents appalling conditions and practices.
  • December 1, 1992

    Throughout Peru’s twelve-year internal war, women have been the targets of sustained, frequently brutal violence committed by both parties to the armed conflict often for the purpose of punishing or dominating those believed to be sympathetic to the opposing side.
  • December 1, 1992

    The Destruction of Koreme

    Just as the Iran-Iraq War was coming to an end in 1988, the Iraqi government and army embarked on a vengeful campaign against Kurdish villagers living in Iraqi Kurdistan. Taken from a Koranic verse, Anfal refers to "the plunder of the infidel," and evidently was intended to give the campaign the veneer of religious justification, though the Kurds are Muslim, and Iraq is a secular state. Using a similarly destructive pattern throughout northern Kurdistan, the Iraqi army first attacked a chosen village — often with chemical weapons — captured the villagers as they tried to flee, then pulverized their dwellings. Many villagers were later killed. The Kurdish village of Koreme serves as a case study of this campaign, showing how the policies of Saddam Hussein’s government were implemented. Some of Koreme’s captured men and boys were executed on the spot, the remainder were taken to a local army fort or Ba’ath Party office where they disappeared while in the hands of security agents. Surviving Koreme villagers — starving women, children and the elderly — were transferred by truck to bleak camps. Middle East Watch and Physicians for Human Rights conclude that the Iraqi government’s Anfal campaign, constituting murder, forcible disappearance, involuntary relocation, the refusal to provide minimal conditions of life to detainees, chemical weapons attacks against civilians, and the physical destruction of Kurdish villages, are at a minimum, crimes against humanity. Ultimately, they may form the basis for a case of genocide.
  • December 1, 1992

    Torture and Killings Continue in Turkey

    A year has passed since Prime Minister Demirel’s coalition government, committed to human rights reforms, took office in Turkey — a period long enough to produce significant change. But the promised reforms have not come about; on the contrary, killings, torture and other human rights abuses in Turkey have become significantly worse.
  • November 1, 1992

    Political detainees in Syria have the distinction of being some of the most isolated in the world. Most have no contact whatsoever with their families; security services for their part, seldom acknowledge having them in their custody.
  • October 23, 1992

    The lessons for South Africa from Latin America

    The question of accountability has become increasingly important around the world in recent years, as different states attempting to make a transition to democracy have struggled to achieve a balance between retribution and forgetfulness in the interests of national reconciliation.
  • October 1, 1992

    With the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, world attention has focussed on the brutal warfare that erupted first in Croatia and, more recently, in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Most of the human rights violations being committed in both conflicts stem from the use of force and terror by Serbian authorities to assert control over territory and to expel or marginalize the non-Serbian population.