Reports

The 76-page report, “Flawed Justice: Accountability for ISIS Crimes in Iraq,” examines the screening, detention, investigation, and prosecution of some of the thousands of Islamic State (also known as ISIS) suspects in Iraq. Human Rights Watch found serious legal shortcomings that undermine the efforts to bring ISIS suspects to justice. Most significantly, there is no national strategy to ensure the credible prosecution of those responsible for the most serious crimes. The broad prosecution under terrorism law of all those affiliated with ISIS in any way, no matter how minimal, could impede future community reconciliation and reintegration, and clog up Iraqi courts and prisons for decades.

The 69-page report, “‘Special Mission’: Recruitment of M23 Rebels to Suppress Protests in the Democratic Republic of Congo ,” documents that Congolese security forces along with recruited M23 fighters from Uganda and Rwanda killed at least 62 people and arrested hundreds more during country-wide protests between December 19 and 22, when Kabila refused to step down at the end of his constitutionally mandated two-term limit. M23 fighters patrolled the streets of Congo’s main cities, firing on or arresting protesters or anyone else deemed to be a threat to the president.

This report finds that Lebanese authorities’ lack of effective action to address widespread open burning of waste and a lack of adequate monitoring or information about the health effects violate Lebanon’s obligations under international law. Open burning of waste is dangerous and avoidable, a consequence of the government’s decades-long failure to manage solid waste in a way that respects environmental and health laws designed to protect people. Scientific studies have documented the dangers smoke from the open burning of household waste pose to human health. Children and older people are at particular risk. Lebanon should end the open burning of waste and carry out a sustainable national waste management strategy that complies with environmental and public health best practices and international law.

This report documents 88 cases involving at least 314 people, many of whom described  being subjected to serious human rights violations in Caracas and 13 states during a crackdown from April through September, 2017. Security force personnel beat detainees severely and tortured them with electric shocks, asphyxiation, sexual assault, and other brutal techniques. Security forces also used excessive use of force against people in the streets, and arbitrarily arrested  and prosecuted government opponent.

This report documents the Burmese military’s gang rape of Rohingya women and girls and further acts of violence, cruelty, and humiliation. Many women described witnessing the murders of their young children, spouses, and parents. Rape survivors reported days of agony walking with swollen and torn genitals while fleeing to Bangladesh.

This report is based on interviews with 17 people who endured conversion therapy, describes how parents threatened, coerced, and sometimes physically forced their adult and adolescent children to submit to conversion therapy. In these facilities – including both public hospitals, which are government-run and monitored, and private clinics, which are licensed and supervised by the National Health and Family Planning Commission – medical professionals subjected them to “therapy” that in some cases entailed involuntary confinement, forcible medication, and electroshocks, which can constitute a form of torture.

This report documents how the Tanzanian, Omani, and UAE governments fail to protect Tanzanian migrant domestic workers. Oman and the UAE’s kafala – visa-sponsorship – rules tie workers to their employers, and the lack of labor law protections leaves workers exposed to a wide range of abuse. Gaps in Tanzania’s laws and policies on recruitment and migration leave Tanzanian women exposed at the outset to abuse and fail to provide adequate assistance for exploited workers.

This  report documents a pattern of repeated and unjustifiable delays in criminal cases brought by the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) and the Guatemalan Attorney General’s Office. 

This  report, finds that women and girls who survive rape and other sexual violence often suffer humiliation at police stations and hospitals. Police are frequently unwilling to register their complaints, victims and witnesses receive little protection, and medical professionals still compel degrading “two-finger” tests. These obstacles to justice and dignity are compounded by inadequate health care, counseling, and legal support for victims during criminal trials of the accused.

This report examines the controversy over the operations inside the medical community and the pressure on parents to opt for surgery. Once called “hermaphrodites”—a term now considered pejorative and outdated, intersex people are not rare, but their needs are widely misunderstood. Based on a medical theory popularized in the 1960s, doctors perform surgery on intersex children—often in infancy—with the stated aim of making it easier for them to grow up “normal.” The results are often catastrophic, the supposed benefits are largely unproven, and there are rarely urgent health considerations requiring immediate, irreversible intervention.

This report examines the impact of commercial farms on residents’ rights to health, housing, livelihood, food and water security, and education. It examines how women have been disproportionately affected and often excluded from negotiations with commercial farmers. Based on more than 130 interviews with rural residents affected by commercial farming, the report examines the human rights record of six commercial farms that exemplify much larger failures of rights protection and governance. It also draws on interviews with government officials, commercial farmers, advocates, and lawyers.

This report analyzes the negative impact on human rights, judicial independence and the rule of law resulting from legal changes introduced by the Law and Justice Party since it came into power in October 2015. The government has largely ignored criticism from the European Union and the Council of Europe and instead moved ahead with efforts to eliminate checks on its authority, weaken human rights protection, and shrink the space for dissenting voices.

This report describes how, as security in the country worsens and international donors disengage from Afghanistan, progress made toward getting girls into school has stalled. It is based on 249 interviews in Kabul, Kandahar, Balkh, and Nangarhar provinces, mostly with girls ages 11 to 18 who were not able to complete their education.

This report documents excessive use of force by police, and in some cases other security agents, against protesters and residents in some of Nairobi’s opposition strongholds after the elections. 

This report details credible evidence of 11 cases of serious abuse in detention, involving scores of individuals, all but one within the past seven months. The findings are based on interviews with lawyers and relatives, and a review of court transcripts, including allegations that police severely beat and threatened detainees, stripped them naked, and in some cases threatened them with sexual assault or sexually assaulted them. Human Rights Watch documented five cases of abductions in Ankara and Izmir between March and June 2017 that could amount to enforced disappearances – cases in which the authorities take a person into custody but deny it or refuse to provide information about the person’s whereabouts.