Reports

This report finds that Lebanese authorities’ lack of effective action to address widespread open burning of waste and a lack of adequate monitoring or information about the health effects violate Lebanon’s obligations under international law. Open burning of waste is dangerous and avoidable, a consequence of the government’s decades-long failure to manage solid waste in a way that respects environmental and health laws designed to protect people. Scientific studies have documented the dangers smoke from the open burning of household waste pose to human health. Children and older people are at particular risk. Lebanon should end the open burning of waste and carry out a sustainable national waste management strategy that complies with environmental and public health best practices and international law.

This report documents the Burmese military’s gang rape of Rohingya women and girls and further acts of violence, cruelty, and humiliation. Many women described witnessing the murders of their young children, spouses, and parents. Rape survivors reported days of agony walking with swollen and torn genitals while fleeing to Bangladesh.

This report documents how the Tanzanian, Omani, and UAE governments fail to protect Tanzanian migrant domestic workers. Oman and the UAE’s kafala – visa-sponsorship – rules tie workers to their employers, and the lack of labor law protections leaves workers exposed to a wide range of abuse. Gaps in Tanzania’s laws and policies on recruitment and migration leave Tanzanian women exposed at the outset to abuse and fail to provide adequate assistance for exploited workers.

This  report, finds that women and girls who survive rape and other sexual violence often suffer humiliation at police stations and hospitals. Police are frequently unwilling to register their complaints, victims and witnesses receive little protection, and medical professionals still compel degrading “two-finger” tests. These obstacles to justice and dignity are compounded by inadequate health care, counseling, and legal support for victims during criminal trials of the accused.

This report examines the impact of commercial farms on residents’ rights to health, housing, livelihood, food and water security, and education. It examines how women have been disproportionately affected and often excluded from negotiations with commercial farmers. Based on more than 130 interviews with rural residents affected by commercial farming, the report examines the human rights record of six commercial farms that exemplify much larger failures of rights protection and governance. It also draws on interviews with government officials, commercial farmers, advocates, and lawyers.

This report describes how, as security in the country worsens and international donors disengage from Afghanistan, progress made toward getting girls into school has stalled. It is based on 249 interviews in Kabul, Kandahar, Balkh, and Nangarhar provinces, mostly with girls ages 11 to 18 who were not able to complete their education.

This report details credible evidence of 11 cases of serious abuse in detention, involving scores of individuals, all but one within the past seven months. The findings are based on interviews with lawyers and relatives, and a review of court transcripts, including allegations that police severely beat and threatened detainees, stripped them naked, and in some cases threatened them with sexual assault or sexually assaulted them. Human Rights Watch documented five cases of abductions in Ankara and Izmir between March and June 2017 that could amount to enforced disappearances – cases in which the authorities take a person into custody but deny it or refuse to provide information about the person’s whereabouts.