Fees as a Discriminatory Barrier to Pre-Primary Education in Uganda
The 68-page report, “Lay a Strong Foundation for All Children”: Fees as a Discriminatory Barrier to Pre-Primary Education in Uganda,” documents how lack of access to free pre-primary education leads to poorer performance in primary school, higher repetition and drop-out rates, and widening income inequality. Fewer than 1 in 10 Ugandan children ages 3-5 are enrolled in a registered and licensed pre-primary school – known locally as “nursery” school – and 60 percent attend no school at all until they reach primary school. Pre-primary education refers to early childhood education before a child’s entry into primary school, which in Uganda is at age 6.
This 58-page briefing paper makes 34 recommendations to the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), known as the Tamil Tigers, to better protect civilians. Human Rights Watch urges the government and the LTTE to accept a United Nations human rights monitoring mission in Sri Lanka and adopt specific measures to protect the civilian population.
The General Intelligence Department and Jordan’s Rule of Law Problem
This 66-page report documents the arbitrary arrest and abusive treatment of detainees held at the General Intelligence Department’s (GID) central detention facility in Amman. The report finds that there is no clear basis in Jordanian law for the GID’s law enforcement role, and that detainees cannot seek an independent judicial review of the grounds for arrest and continued detention.
New Approaches to Addressing Human Rights Situations
The new Human Rights Council (“HRC” or “Council”) was created in order to strengthen protection for the victims of human rights violations worldwide. The Council’s ability to succeed in that mission will depend on the development of a more effective approach to consideration of human rights situations in particular countries.
This 101-page report documents the conditions in which the majority of the country’s 13,000 prisoners are being held. In many facilities, prisoners live in severely overcrowded, filthy and poorly-ventilated cells. In the last two years, the prison population has nearly doubled due to the routine use of pretrial detention, even for nonviolent offences.
Abuses Against Migrants, Asylum Seekers and Refugees
This 135-page report documents how Libyan authorities have arbitrarily arrested undocumented foreigners, mistreated them in detention, and forcibly returned them to countries where they could face persecution or torture, such as Eritrea and S
This 156-page report documents recent abuses by the Indian army and paramilitaries, as well as by militants, many of whom are backed by Pakistan. Indian security forces have committed torture, “disappearances” and arbitrary detentions, and they continue to execute Kashmiris in faked “encounter killings,” claiming that these killings take place during armed clashes with militants.
This 42-page report documents the drastic deterioration in the security of the estimated 34,000 Palestinian refugees in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad in April 2003.
This 75-page report documents how Burundian hospitals in 2005 detained hundreds of indigent patients, sometimes in inhumane conditions. Many of those detained were women giving birth who unexpectedly needed caesarian deliveries.
This 115-page report describes the Jakarta regoinal government’s excessive use of force to clear out urban slums. It draws on numerous evictees’ accounts of government security forces beating or mistreating them before destroying their homes and possessions.
Continuing Obstacles to the Reintegration of Serb Returnees
This 41-page report analyzes the key human rights problems affecting Serbs returning to Croatia, including violence and intimidation, the loss of housing rights and limited access to state employment. Successive government programs to assist returning Serbs have failed to deliver real benefits, with the qualified exception of a program to rebuild war-damaged homes.
Indefinite Detention Under Malaysia’s Emergency Ordinance
This 35-page report documents how the Malaysian government has detained criminal suspects indefinitely without charge or trial, subjected them to beatings and ill treatment while in detention, and rearrested them upon court-ordered release. The Emergency Ordinance was enacted in 1969 as a “temporary measure” to respond to ethnic riots.
Torture, Inadequate Detention Conditions, and Excessive Use of Force by Guinean Security Forces
This 30-page report documents how police brutally torture men and boys held in police custody. The victims are individuals suspected of common crimes as well as those perceived to be government opponents. Once transferred from police custody to prison, many are left to languish for years awaiting trial in cramped, dimly lit cells where they face hunger, disease and sometimes death.
In May 2006, Human Rights Watch released its initial paper on the functions of the new Human Rights Council (HRC), focusing on universal periodic review (UPR), country situations, and the review of special procedures. In the ensuing months, numerous member states, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and leading scholars have offered proposals for how the UPR should be conducted.
Human Rights Watch´s comprehensive report “Genocide in Iraq - The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds,” originally published in July 1993, details the systematic and deliberate murder of at least 50,000 and possibly as many as 100,000 Kurds. The killings occurred between February and September 1988.
The 2006 U.N. High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS and Its Failure to Address the Human Rights Abuses Fueling the Pandemic
In this report, Human Rights Watch examines how the declaration from the United Nations High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS addresses such critical issues as women’s and children’s rights, abuses faced by socially marginalized populations, and access to treatment.
