Reports

Underwater

Human Rights Impacts of a China Belt and Road Project in Cambodia

The 137-page report, “Underwater: Human Rights Impacts of a China Belt and Road Project in Cambodia,” documents economic, social, and cultural rights violations resulting from the Lower Sesan 2 dam’s displacement of nearly 5,000 people whose families had lived in the area for generations, as well as impacts on the livelihoods of tens of thousands of others upstream and downstream. Cambodian authorities and company officials improperly consulted with affected communities before the project’s start and largely ignored their concerns. Many were coerced into accepting inadequate compensation for lost property and income, provided with poor housing and services at resettlement sites, and given no training or assistance to secure new livelihoods. Other affected communities upstream and downstream of the dam received no compensation or assistance.

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  • “What is a House without Food?”

    Mozambique’s Coal Mining Boom and Resettlements

    This 122-page report examines how serious shortcomings in government policy and mining companies’ implementation uprooted largely self-sufficient farming communities and resettled them to arid land far from rivers and markets.

  • Hear No Evil

    Forced Labor and Corporate Responsibility in Eritrea’s Mining Sector

    The 29-page report describes how mining companies working in Eritrea risk involvement with the government’s widespread exploitation of forced labor.

  • Striking Oil, Striking Workers

    Violations of Labor Rights in Kazakhstan’s Oil Sector

    This report analyzes the tactics employed by Kazakh authorities and three companies operating in the oil and gas sector in western Kazakhstan to restrict workers’ rights to freedom of assembly, association, and expression leading up to and during peaceful labor strikes that began in May 2011.

  • Out of Control

    Mining, Regulatory Failure, and Human Rights in India

    This 70-page report finds that deep-rooted shortcomings in the design and implementation of key policies have effectively left mine operators to supervise themselves. This has fueled pervasive lawlessness in India’s scandal-ridden mining industry and threatens serious harm to mining-affected communities.

  • A Poisonous Mix

    Child Labor, Mercury, and Artisanal Gold Mining in Mali

    This 108-page report reveals that children as young as six dig mining shafts, work underground, pull up heavy weights of ore, and carry, crush, and pan ore. Many children also work with mercury, a toxic substance, to separate the gold from the ore.

  • “You’ll Be Fired if You Refuse”

    Labor Abuses in Zambia's Chinese State-owned Copper Mines

    This 122-page report details the persistent abuses in Chinese-run mines, including poor health and safety conditions, regular 12-hour and even 18-hour shifts involving arduous labor, and anti-union activities, all in violation of Zambia’s national laws or international labor standards.

  • Gold’s Costly Dividend

    Human Rights Impacts of Papua New Guinea’s Porgera Gold Mine

    This report identifies systemic failures on the part of Toronto-based Barrick Gold that kept the company from recognizing the risk of abuses, and responding to allegations that abuses had occurred.

  • An Uncertain Future

    Oil Contracts and Stalled Reform in São Tomé e Príncipe

    This 23-page report documents how São Tomé’s government remains ill-equipped to manage the revenues from any hydrocarbon endowment, despite domestic and international efforts to improve financial transparency and accountability in anticipation of major oil discoveries.

  • Deliberate Chaos

    Ongoing Human Rights Abuses in the Marange Diamond Fields of Zimbabwe

    Human Rights Watch has received new reports that soldiers in Marange are engaging in forced labor, torture, beatings, and harassment. Human Rights Watch documented rampant killings and other abuses in Marange last year.

  • "Transparency and Accountability in Angola"

    This 31-page report documents how the government took only limited steps to improve transparency after Human Rights Watch disclosed in a 2004 report that billions of dollars in oil revenue illegally bypassed the central bank and disappeared without explanation.

  • “Wild Money”

    The Human Rights Consequences of Illegal Logging and Corruption in Indonesia’s Forestry Sector

    This 75-page report found that more than half of all Indonesian timber from 2003 through 2006 was logged illegally, with no taxes paid.

  • Well Oiled

    Oil and Human Rights in Equatorial Guinea

    This 107-page report details how the dictatorship under President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has used an oil boom to entrench and enrich itself further at the expense of the country's people.

  • Diamonds in the Rough

    Human Rights Abuses in the Marange Diamond Fields of Zimbabwe

    This 62-page report documents how, following the discovery of diamonds in Marange in June 2006, the police and army have used brutal force to control access to the diamond fields and to take over unlicensed diamond mining and trading.

  • "Chop Fine"

    The Human Rights Impact of Local Government Corruption and Mismanagement in Rivers State, Nigeria

    This 107-page report details the misuse of public funds by local officials in the geographic heart of Nigeria’s booming oil industry, and the harmful effects on primary education and basic health care.

  • Rivers and Blood

    Guns, Oil and Power in Nigeria’s Rivers State

    On September 27, 2004, the leader of a powerful armed group threatened to launch an “all-out war” in the Niger Delta - sending shock waves through the oil industry – unless the federal government ceded greater control of the region’s vast oil resources to the Ijaw people, the majority tribe in the Niger Delta.