Reports

US Civil Rights Enforcement Under the Trump Administration

The 112-page report, “Remedies Abandoned: US Civil Rights Enforcement Under the Trump Administration,” documents the administration’s efforts to unravel the work of four key agencies between January 2025 and the spring of 2026: the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which lost about 75 percent of its attorneys; the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, which moved to lay off nearly half its staff in one day and closed 7 of its 12 regional offices; the Housing and Urban Development Department’s Fair Housing Office, which shrank dramatically; and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which reached its lowest staffing levels in over 40 years.

A man in a wheelchair holds a protest sign at a demonstration
A man holds a flower and the message "Humanity for All" in front of a line of soldiers

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  • June 1, 1993

    The Human Rights Watch Global Report on Prisons summarizes six years of work by the Prison Project and divisions of Human Rights Watch in investigating prison conditions in some twenty countries worldwide.
  • June 1, 1993

    Human Rights and UN Field Operations

    In this report, we examine five of the largest UN field operations in recent years, in Cambodia, El Salvador, Iraq, Somalia and the former Yugoslavia. These operations span a broad range of regions and circumstances. Yet with the exception of El Salvador, they have in common the low priority given to human rights.
  • June 1, 1993

    Continuing Human Rights Abuses in Rwanda

    More than 300 Tutsi and members of political parties opposed to Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana were massacred in northwestern Rwanda in late January 1993 by private militia at the direction of local and central government authorities.
  • June 1, 1993

    Prior to the June 12 presidential elections, the Nigerian military government stepped up attacks on civil institutions, raising fears about its intentions to leave office as promised and, if it does leave, about the future stability of the country.
  • May 1, 1993

    The violations of human rights taking place in today's Uzbekistan are uncannily familiar. Perhaps most striking is the gulf between the government's stated and legal commitment to human rights protection, and its actual record.
  • May 1, 1993

    Human Rights Abuses Along the U.S. Border with Mexico Persist Amid Climate of Impunity

    A follow-up on human rights violations along the U.S. border with Mexico, this report concludes that serious abuses by U.S. immigration law enforcement agents continue and that current mechanisms intended to curtail abuses and discipline officers are woefully inadequate.

  • May 1, 1993

    Torture and Police Killings In Sao Paulo and Rio De Janeiro after Five Years

    An update of a 1987 Americas Watch report, Urban Police Violence in Brazil describes incidents of torture and extra-judicial killings by police and updates specific cases previously reported.
  • May 1, 1993

    Describing serious human rights abuses leading up to the elections in May 1993, this report criticizes the international community and the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia for tolerating the bombing of opposition party offices and for encouraging members of the Khmer Rouge to participate in the elections despite their having slaughtered ethnic Vietnamese.
  • May 1, 1993

    Continuing human rights abuses in Northern Ireland include killings by paramilitary groups and security forces, street harassment by security forces, ill-treatment in detention, problems in obtaining a fair trial, the abandonment of normal policing in some troubled areas and harassment by paramilitary organizations.
  • May 1, 1993

    A Crime of War

    Since January 1990, the north Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir has been the site of a brutal conflict between Indian security forces and armed Muslim insurgents demanding independence or accession to Pakistan.
  • May 1, 1993

    The Official Response to the Rising Tide of Violence

    The greatest obstacle to the transition to a peaceful democracy in South Africa is the political violence that continues to rage in the black townships. The violence, which began in 1984 and gained greater momentum after reform initiatives were undertaken in 1990, has resulted in more than 14,000 deaths.
  • April 1, 1993

    Death Penalty, Prison Conditions and Police Violence

    This report concerns the application of the death penalty, the conditions in prisons and lockups, and police violence, including acts of coercion to obtain evidence that amount to torture and the excessive use of deadly force.
  • April 1, 1993

    Dismissals from the workplace as a means of punishing and discouraging critical speech, particularly levelled at members of the political opposition, are occurring all too frequently in Uzbekistan. The administration's attitude toward the opposition has been articulated thus: “It is necessary to straighten out the brains of 100 people in order to preserve the lives of thousands.”