JBS and the EU’s Exposure to Human Rights Violations and Illegal Deforestation in Pará, Brazil
The 86-page report “Tainted: JBS and the EU’s Exposure to Human Rights Violations and Illegal Deforestation in Pará, Brazil,” details how cattle ranchers illegally seized land and devastated the livelihoods of lawful residents in the Terra Nossa smallholder settlement and the Cachoeira Seca Indigenous territory, affecting their rights to housing, land, and culture. Human Rights Watch analysis of official sources shows that illegal farms in these areas sold cattle to several JBS direct suppliers.
Indonesia’s military has a longstanding practice of raising independent income outside the approved budget process. It earns funds from businesses it owns, services it provides for hire, and the protection rackets it operates.
The Human Rights Impact of Local Government Corruption and Mismanagement in Rivers State, Nigeria
This 107-page report details the misuse of public funds by local officials in the geographic heart of Nigeria’s booming oil industry, and the harmful effects on primary education and basic health care. The report is based on scores of interviews in Rivers state with government and donor agency officials, civil servants, health care workers, teachers, civil society groups and local residents.
While some governments have already started making meaningful reforms to help domestic workers work in greater safety and dignity, others are pursuing superficial changes that fail to address the root causes of exploitation and abuse. Governments around the world have choices to make about the route they will take; this essay identifies some of the positive options available.
The Human Rights Cost of the Indonesian Military’s Economic Activities
This 136-page report is the most comprehensive account to date of the harmful effect on civilians of the armed forces' involvement in business. Human Rights Watch calls on the Indonesian government to ban all military businesses, reform the budget process, and hold military personnel accountable for crimes.
In September 2003 and September 2004, Human Rights Watch argued for partial or total suspension of tariff benefits when we submitted Andean Trade Preferences Act (ATPA) petitions to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). In those petitions, we detailed Ecuador’s failure to meet the ATPA and ATPDEA workers’ rights criteria.
Written Testimony Submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means
Human Rights Watch welcomes the opportunity to testify regarding workers’ human rights under the proposed United States-Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (D.R.-CAFTA). Human Rights Watch takes no position on free trade per se, but we take an active interest in workers’ human rights.
The potential future dangers of widespread production and continued proliferation of cluster munitions demand urgent action to bring the humanitarian threat under control. At least seventy countries stockpile cluster munitions and the aggregate number of submunitions in these stockpiles is staggering.
Human Rights Watch welcomes this opportunity to present views regarding whether Ecuador meets the eligibility criteria of the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA). These criteria include those in the original Andean Trade Preferences Act (ATPA), as well as those added in the ATPDEA, which extended and expanded the ATPA in 2002.
On September 27, 2004, the leader of a powerful armed group threatened to launch an “all-out war” in the Niger Delta - sending shock waves through the oil industry – unless the federal government ceded greater control of the region’s vast oil resources to the Ijaw people, the majority tribe in the Niger Delta.
Child domestic workers are nearly invisible among child laborers. They work alone in individual households, hidden from public scrutiny, their lives controlled by their employers. Child domestics, nearly all girls, work long hours for little or no pay. Many have no opportunity to go to school, or are forced to drop out because of the demands of their job.
Hazardous Child Labor in El Salvador’s Sugarcane Cultivation
Businesses purchasing sugar from El Salvador, including The Coca-Cola Company, are using the product of child labor that is both hazardous and widespread. Harvesting cane requires children to use machetes and other sharp knives to cut sugarcane and strip the leaves off the stalks, work they perform for up to nine hours each day in the hot sun.
On February 20, 2004, President George W. Bush notified Congress of his intent to sign the U.S.-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA)-an accord that the United States recently negotiated with Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. According to U.S.
The Use of Oil Revenue in Angola and Its Impact on Human Rights
More than four billion dollars in state oil revenue disappeared from Angolan government coffers from 1997-2002, roughly equal to the entire sum the government spent on all social programs in the same period. Meanwhile, although the 27-year civil war ended in 2002, an estimated 900,000 Angolans are still internally displaced. Millions more have virtually no access to hospitals or schools.
This 29-page report documents how violence in Nigeria’s southern Delta State this year, especially during the state and federal elections in April and May, resulted in hundreds of deaths, the displacement of thousands of people, and the destruction of hundreds of homes. Among the dead were probably dozens killed by the government security forces.
