Inadequate Protection and Assistance for Migrants and Asylum Seekers Crossing the Darién Gap
The 110-page report, “Neglected in the Jungle: Inadequate Protection and Assistance for Migrants and Asylum Seekers Crossing the Darién Gap,” is the second in a series of Human Rights Watch reports on migration via the Darién Gap. Human Rights Watch identified specific shortcomings in Colombia’s and Panama’s efforts to protect and assist people – including those at higher risk, such as unaccompanied children – as well as to investigate abuses against them.
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.
This briefing paper documents how the Sudanese security forces, including police deployed to protect displaced persons, and allied Janjaweed militias continue to commit rape and sexual violence on daily basis.
Since February 2003, Darfur has been the scene of massive crimes against civilians of particular ethnicities in the context of an internal conflict between the Sudanese government and a rebel insurgency. Almost two million people have been forcibly displaced and stripped of all their property and tens of thousands of people have been killed, raped or assaulted.
Human Rights Watch’s key concerns on Turkey for 2005
At its December 16-17 summit in Brussels, the European Council is expected to decide whether or not to open negotiations for Turkey’s full membership of the European Union. The decision follows the October 2004 evaluation by the European Commission that “Turkey sufficiently fulfils the political criteria” and its recommendation that accession negotiations be opened.
Turkish state forces violently and illegally displaced upwards of 380,000 Kurdish villagers in the 1990s during a conflict with the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) in southeast Turkey. Turkey should stop fending off the legitimate involvement of international agencies and make a formal declaration to integrate them in its return plans.
This 35-page report documents how the Sudanese armed forces and the government-backed Janjaweed militias continue to target civilians and their livestock in villages in rural areas and in the towns and camps under government control. The report also analyzes Sudanese government pledges to rein in the militias, end impunity and restore security in Darfur.
Human Rights Watch's engagement with IOM arises from our concern that IOM has no formal mandate to monitor human rights abuses or to protect the rights of migrants and other persons, even though literally millions of people worldwide participate in IOM-sponsored programs and projects. We began to monitor and document IOM operations in the field in the early 1990s.
June 20, 2003 will mark international refugee day - a day when governments should reaffirm their obligations to protect some of the world's most vulnerable people. Instead, European governments will meet on June 20 to debate the United Kingdom's (U.K.) proposal that promises to undermine those obligations.
Human Rights Watch urged Bhutan and Nepal to implement a screening and repatriation process that protects the human rights of more than one hundred thousand refugees of Nepalese ethnicity who were arbitrarily stripped of their citizenship and forced to flee Bhutan in the early 1990s.
Australia is the only country to grant temporary status to refugees who have been through a full asylum determination system and who have been recognized as genuinely in need of protection for 1951 Refugee Convention reasons.
Briefing to the 59th Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights
The Commission on Human Rights has not focused specifically on the human rights of asylum seekers and refugees, except as a part of its work on the human rights of non-nationals more generally.
This briefing paper describes the current humanitarian and security conditions faced by hundreds of thousands of Iraqi residents, refugees, and displaced persons, and examines priority concerns and potential humanitarian consequences in the event of war.
Many refugees who come uninvited to Australia are compelled to do so because they cannot find effective protection anywhere else, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released to mark International Human Rights Day.
Refoulement, Militarization of Camps, and Other Protection Concerns
The United Nations Security Council should extend the arms embargo on Liberia to all rebel groups, and closely monitor the compliance of the Guinean government with that embargo, Human Rights Watch said today. The Guinean government’s close relationship with Liberian rebel groups is posing a serious threat to refugees’ security and protection in Guinea.
China must end the forcible return of North Korean asylum-seekers and the arrest and harassment of aid workers who assist them, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.
