Indiscriminate Attacks May Amount to War Crimes

As Russian forces invading Ukraine confront stronger and more effective resistance than the Kremlin probably anticipated, the big question is: what comes next. The Russian military has a history of meeting such resistance with serious violations of the laws of war, including deliberately targeting civilians and subjecting

It’s a harrowing situation for everyone trying to get out of harm’s way, and everyone escaping the war, no matter where they come from, should be allowed to leave. A week into the invasion, marked by serious violations of the laws of war, one million people have fled across borders into neighboring Poland, Hungary, Slovakia

4 Civilians Killed, 10 Wounded

Listen to HRW's Jayshree Bajoria in conversation with Siddharth Varadarajan, Vidushi Marda, Vrinda Bhandari, and Apar Gupta as they discuss India, tech, and human rights.

(New York) – Older people are often at heightened risk of abuses during armed conflict, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. All parties to armed conflict should end abuses against older people and facilitate humanitarian assistance to older people in need. The United Nations Security Council should ensure that the UN addresses the need for enhanced protection of older civilians in armed conflict in its work. The 49-page report, “No One Is Spared: Abuses against Older People in Armed Conflict,” describes patterns of abuses documented by Human Rights Watch between 2013 and 2021 against older people affected by armed conflicts in Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Mali, Mozambique, Nagorno-Karabakh, Niger, South Sudan, Syria, and Ukraine. The report also draws on the serious protracted violence in two English-speaking regions of Cameroon, Myanmar security force atrocities against older ethnic Rohingya in Rakhine State, and the experiences of older refugees in Lebanon displaced by conflict in Syria.

End Arbitrary Restrictions on Dissidents

HRW's John Sifton and Fereshta Abbasi react to breaking news about the Biden administration’s decision on Afghanistan’s foreign currency reserves in the US.

Discriminatory laws that prevent marriage equality in Panama have a real-life impact for same-sex couples in the country, including the three couples featured in this video. Under international human rights law, arbitrarily treating same-sex couples differently from different-sex couples is illegal, including with respect to marriage. Panama should join other countries in the region that have extended the right to marry to same-sex couples.

Flawed Asylum Denials; Abuses in Detention and After Deportation