Reports

This report examines how people with mental health conditions often end up chained or locked up in overcrowded and unsanitary institutions – without their consent – due to stigma and the absence of adequate community-based support services or mental health care. In institutions, they face physical and sexual violence; involuntary treatment, including electroshock therapy; seclusion; restraint; and forced contraception.

This 81-page report finds that men with perceived or actual psychosocial disabilities face abusive restraints, beatings, involuntary treatment, and overcrowding in private and public health centers. Most are held against their will and have no possibility of challenging their detention. In private centers in particular, those with psychosocial disabilities face punitive and prolonged chaining, confinement, seclusion, and severe restrictions on their movement. The findings highlight the importance of mental health services in post-conflict regions. According to the World Health Organization, Somaliland has high rates of psychosocial disability. 

The 45-page report found many barriers that can prevent children with disabilities from studying in mainstream schools. These include a lack of ramps or lifts to help children enter and move within buildings and the absence of accommodations such as large-print textbooks for children with low vision, assistive technology, or teachers’ aides. Infrastructure barriers and limited accessible transportation prevent some children from leaving their homes and reaching school.

This 94-page report found that South Africa has failed to guarantee the right to education for many of the country’s children and young adults due to widespread discrimination against children with disabilities in enrollment decisions. Human Rights Watch research in five out of South Africa’s nine provinces showed that children with disabilities face discriminatory physical and attitudinal barriers, often beginning early in children’s lives when government officials classify them according to their disabilities. 

This 127-page report details incidents in which correctional staff have deluged prisoners with painful chemical sprays, shocked them with powerful electric stun weapons, and strapped them for days in restraining chairs or beds. Staff have broken prisoners’ jaws, noses, ribs; left them with lacerations requiring stitches, second-degree burns, deep bruises, and damaged internal organs.

This report documents involuntary admission and arbitrary detention in mental hospitals and residential care institutions across India, where women and girls with psychosocial or intellectual disabilities experience overcrowding and lack of hygiene, inadequate access to general healthcare, forced treatment – including electroconvulsive therapy – as well as physical, verbal, and sexual violence.

This 93-page report found that many children and young people with disabilities who have lived in state orphanages suffered serious abuse and neglect on the part of institution staff that impedes their development.

The 80-page report documents the obstacles faced by people with disabilities in both the community and healthcare settings. These include pervasive stigma and discrimination, lack of access to inclusive HIV prevention education, obstacles to accessing voluntary testing and HIV treatment, and lack of appropriate support for adherence to antiretroviral treatment.

The 81-page report examines serious shortcomings in the government’s resettlement of 1,500 families since 2009. The Rogun Dam and Hydropower Plant stands to displace over 42,000 people before it is operational. The major problem, people said, was that they were not given enough compensation to replace their homes.

This 119-page report is Human Rights Watch’s first major report on Japan since the launch of its Tokyo office in April 2009. The report examines the alternative care system’s organization and processes, problems found in the institutionalization of children and infants, and abuses that take place.

The 55-page report documents the experiences of people recently confined in the centers, who described being thrashed with rubber water hoses and hit with sticks or branches. Some described being punished with exercises intended to cause intense physical pain and humiliation, such as crawling along stony ground or standing in septic water pits.

The 60-page report describes how residents have little access to potable water and sanitation services, and often resort to drinking water from shallow, unprotected wells that are contaminated with sewage, and to defecating outdoors. The conditions violate their right to water, sanitation, and health.

This 118-page report is based on 123 interviews with people with disabilities and their families in 6 cities across Russia. It documents the everyday hurdles people with disabilities meet when going to government offices, shops, healthcare centers, and places of employment, and accessing public transportation.

This 75-page report documents the struggles of children and young people with disabilities to be educated in mainstream schools in their communities.

This report describes how thousands of people with mental disabilities are forced to live in psychiatric institutions and spiritual healing centers, often against their will and with little possibility of challenging their confinement. In psychiatric hospitals, people with mental disabilities face overcrowding and unsanitary conditions.</p>