Reports

This report shows that prosecutors in three prominent cases failed to produce sufficient evidence to support serious charges or justify the years-long continuation of a criminal investigation. On March 28, 2018, a trial court in Morona Santiago will rule on the case of a Shuar indigenous leader, Agustín Wachapá, for allegedly inciting violence through a Facebook post. On March 16, a court ordered the arrest of Pepe Acacho, another Shuar indigenous leader, to serve a prison sentence over a charge he never had an opportunity to defend himself at trial.

This report finds that although Lebanese law bars schools from discriminating against children with disabilities, public and private schools exclude many children with disabilities. For those allowed to enroll, schools often lack reasonable accommodations, such as modifications to the classroom environment and curricula or teaching methods to address children’s needs. Schools also require the families of children with disabilities to pay extra fees and expenses that in effect are discriminatory.

This report covers seven countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. All seven countries have versions of buggery and gross indecency laws, relics of British colonialism, that prohibit same-sex conduct between consenting persons. The laws have broad latitude, are vaguely worded, and serve to legitimize discrimination and hostility toward LGBT people.

This report documents the Saudi criminal justice system and Saudi courts’ rampant due process violations in criminal cases involving Pakistanis. The violations include long periods of detention without charge or trial, lack of access to legal assistance, pressure on detainees to sign confessions and accept predetermined prison sentences to avoid prolonged arbitrary detention, and ineffective translation services. Some defendants reported ill-treatment and poor prison conditions. 

This report is based on interviews with 110 women and children. Human Rights Watch found that US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents routinely separate adult men and teenage boys from other family members. The practice runs counter to agency policy that families should be kept together whenever possible while in holding cells. After the initial period of detention in the freezing holding cells, sometimes for days, men usually remain separated from the rest of their family upon transfer to longer-term detention facilities.

This report details due process violations and other abuses since 2015 against boys in government custody for suspected Al-Shabab-related offenses. Somalia’s federal government has promised to promptly hand over captured children to the United Nations child protection agency (UNICEF) for rehabilitation. But the response of Somalia’s national and regional authorities has been inconsistent and at times violated international human rights law. The government’s capture of 36 children from Al-Shabab on January 18, 2018 required a week of negotiations involving the UN and child protection advocates to work out procedures for dealing with them.

This report documents private probation company practices in Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee. These states allow private companies to supervise probation for minor crimes, including misdemeanors and criminal traffic offenses. Individuals pay their probation fees directly to the company. But many courts fail to recognize that when an individual is living in poverty, the fees force them to sacrifice basic needs, such as food, housing, and transportation, to pay the probation company. When an individual cannot afford payments, they can face arrest, extended probation, or even prison.

This report documents how recent laws carve out space to discriminate against LGBT people in adoption and foster care, health care, and access to some goods and services. These laws fail to balance moral and religious objections to LGBT relationships and identities with the rights of LGBT people themselves, Human Rights Watch found. The findings illustrate that these exemptions encourage discriminatory refusals, discourage LGBT people from seeking out services, and harm people’s dignity.

This examines the legal framework that allows the government to easily refuse legal recognition to associations it dislikes, on such grounds as engaging in “anti-national propaganda” or “exercis[ing] an unwelcome influence on the minds of the people.” Without legal recognition, associations are hard-pressed to rent a hall for a meeting or public event, obtain permission to peacefully protest, or obtain funding from foreign donors. 

This report scrutinizes the sourcing of gold and diamonds by 13 major jewelry and watch brands that collectively generate over US$30 billion in annual revenue – about 10 percent of global jewelry sales.

This report examines how prisoners with disabilities, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners, are at serious risk of bullying, harassment, violence, and abuse from fellow prisoners and staff. Prisoners with psychosocial disabilities – mental health conditions – or cognitive disabilities in particular can spend days, weeks, months, and sometimes even years locked up alone in detention or safety units.

This report estimates that every week in US nursing facilities, more than 179,000 people, mostly older and living with dementia, are given antipsychotic drugs without an appropriate diagnosis. Facilities administer these drugs in many cases without obtaining informed consent from residents or their families. 

This report documents previous and ongoing abuses committed under the PTA, including torture and sexual abuse, forced confessions, and systematic denials of due process. Drawing on interviews with former detainees, family members, and lawyers working on PTA cases, Human Rights Watch found that the PTA is a significant contributing factor toward the persistence of torture in Sri Lanka. The 17 accounts documented in the report represent only a tiny fraction of PTA cases overall, but they underscore the law’s draconian nature and abusive implementation.

This report describes how migrant fishers from neighboring countries in Southeast Asia are often trafficked into fishing work, prevented from changing employers, not paid on time, and paid below the minimum wage. Migrant workers do not receive Thai labor law protections and do not have the right to form a labor union.

This report documents violent abuses in the country’s central provinces between November 2015 and December 2016. These include enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, and the destruction of private property by government forces, and political killings, attacks on public transport, and looting of health clinics by the Renamo political party’s armed group.