Reports

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.

In January 2003, U.S.-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) negotiations began among the United States, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. The final negotiating round is scheduled for early December 2003. CAFTA presents an important opportunity to raise labor standards throughout Central America.

Indonesian police and company security forces are responsible for persistent human rights abuses against indigenous communities involved in the massive pulp and paper industry in Sumatra, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. Abuses include land seizures without compensation and brutal attacks on local demonstrators.

Free trade alone cannot ensure greater respect for workers' rights nor prevent millions of people from being excluded from the benefits of globalization. Human Rights Watch believes that measures to protect workers' rights should be built into trade agreements to ensure that globalization does not come at the expense of human rights.

When a civilian government was reinstated in Nigeria in 1999, many of those living in the Niger Delta region, the source of Nigeria's oil wealth, hoped that a "democratic dividend" would end decades of neglect they had suffered under successive military regimes.

The Chinese government's refusal to allow independent trade unions is fueling worker protests, Human Rights Watch said in this new report.The 50-page report, "Paying the Price: Worker Unrest in Northeast China," analyzes in detail the demonstrations that took place from March through May 2002 in three cities in northeastern China, and the government response to them.

In investigations in Egypt, Ecuador, India, and the United States, Human Rights Watch has found that the children working in agriculture are endangered and exploited on a daily basis. Human Rights Watch found that despite the vast differences among these four countries, many of the risks and abuses faced by child agricultural workers were strikingly similar.

Banana workers in Ecuador are the victims of serious human rights abuses, Human Rights Watch charged in a new report released today. In its investigation, Human Rights Watch found that Ecuadorian children as young as eight work on banana plantations in hazardous conditions, while adult workers fear firing if they try to exercise their right to organize.

Women in Guatemala's largest female-dominated labor sectors face persistent sex discrimination and abuse, Human Rights Watch charges in this report. The 147-page report examines two sectors, export processing and private households, which employ tens of thousands of women sewing clothes for sale in the United States and working as live-in domestic workers.

In this briefing paper, Human Rights Watch builds on the U.N. experts’ report to examine the manner in which the Liberia arms embargo has been systematically breached to furnish weapons to gross human rights abusers. Much attention has been given in the past to the subject of individual arms traffickers and the transport networks they use to illegally deliver weapons to abusive end users.

The special visas granted to foreigners who work as household domestics in the U.S. leave them vulnerable to serious abuse, Human Rights Watch charged in a report released today. Thousands of these workers, typically women, enter the United States every year to work for diplomats, officials of international organizations, foreign businesspeople, and U.S. citizens temporarily back in the U.S.

On the eve of the Quebec summit of Western hemisphere leaders, Human Rights Watch called for the creation of an independent oversight agency to spur remedial action for workers' rights violations."Trading Away Rights: The Unfulfilled Promise of NAFTA's Labor Side Agreement," analyzes the twenty-three complaints filed under the accord since it came into force in 1994.

On April 3, 2000, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Angolan government announced the beginning of a Staff Monitored Program (SMP). This program is an ambitious agreement to implement a wide range of economic and institutional reforms in Angola that could lead to further lending and cooperation with the IMF and World Bank, but it is unclear whether the government will be able to comply with its requirements.

Workers' basic rights are routinely violated in the United States because U.S. labor law is so feebly enforced and so filled with loopholes, Human Rights Watch said in this report. Human Rights Watch examined workers' rights to organize, to bargain collectively, and to strike under international norms. It found widespread labor rights violations across regions, industries and employment status.