The 38-page report, “‘A Disaster for the Foreseeable Future’: Afghanistan’s Healthcare Crisis,” describes how the collapse of Afghanistan’s economy after the Taliban takeover in August 2021 inflicted severe harm on the country’s healthcare infrastructure. Donors’ decisions to reduce humanitarian aid have further weakened health care access, destabilized the economy, and worsened food insecurity. The Taliban’s abusive policies and practices have greatly exacerbated the crisis. Bans on education for women and girls have blocked most training for future female healthcare workers, ensuring shortages for the foreseeable future.
Government Neglect and the Right to Education for Children Affected by AIDS
This 55-page report is based on firsthand testimony from dozens of children in three countries hard-hit by HIV/AIDS: South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda. It documents how governments fail children affected by AIDS when they leave school or attempt to return.
This report is the most detailed study to date of abuses by insurgent groups. It systematically presents and debunks the arguments that some insurgent groups and their supporters use to justify unlawful attacks on civilians.
Stigma and Discrimination against HIV-Positive Mothers and their Children in Russia
As Russia’s HIV/AIDS epidemic spreads, thousands of HIV-positive mothers and their children face pervasive discrimination and abuse. This 41-page report focuses on the discrimination that these women face, as do their children, many of whom are abandoned to the care of the state.
Women’s Access to Contraceptives and Abortion in Argentina
Decisions about contraception and abortion are difficult, deeply personal, and sometimes wrenching. In Argentina, women are routinely prevented from making such decisions.
This 57-page report based on on-the-ground interviews with Chinese AIDS activists, gay rights activists, activists working with drug users, and website managers shows that while senior officials have said they want to encourage China's emerging civil society, many AIDS activists face state harassment and bureaucratic restrictions.
This 80-page report documents the recent removal of critical HIV/AIDS information from primary school curricula, including information about condoms, safer sex and the risks of HIV in marriage.
Governments around the world have done far too little to combat the entrenched, chronic abuses of women’s and girls’ human rights that put them at risk of HIV. Misguided HIV/AIDS programs and policies, such as those emphasizing abstinence until marriage, ignore the brutal realities many women and girls face.
This 39-page report documents how most families have returned to locations that still lack minimal social services, such as health care and education, let alone employment. Elderly and disabled persons, widows and female-headed households experience the worst shortfalls in government assistance, particularly in rural areas.
The Prosecution of Sexual Violence in the Congo War
This 52-page report documents how the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has taken insufficient steps to prosecute those responsible for wartime rape. Human Rights Watch calls on the Congolese government and international donors, including the European Union, to take urgent steps to reform Congo’s justice system.
Workers in the U.S. meat and poultry industry endure unnecessarily hazardous work conditions, and the companies employing them often use illegal tactics to crush union organizing efforts. In meat and poultry plants across the United States, Human Rights Watch found that many workers face a real danger of losing a limb, or even their lives, in unsafe work conditions.
The 70-page report documents that youths in Rio de Janeiro’s detention centers are often beaten and verbally abused by guards. Most complaints of ill-treatment are never investigated by the state’s Department of Socio-Economic Action (Departamento Geral de Ações Sócio-Educativas, or DEGASE), the authority responsible for juvenile detention facilities.
HIV/AIDS is a preventable disease, yet approximately 5 million people were newly infected with HIV in 2003, the majority of them through sex. Many of these cases could have been avoided, but for state-imposed restrictions on proven and effective HIV prevention strategies, such as latex condoms.
Homophobia, Violence, and Jamaica’s HIV/AIDS Epidemic
Jamaica’s growing HIV/AIDS epidemic is unfolding in the context of widespread violence and discrimination against people living with and at high risk of HIV/AIDS, especially men who have sex with men. Myths about HIV/AIDS persist.
