The Cruel and Ineffective Criminalization of Unhoused People in Los Angeles
The 337-page report, “‘You Have to Move!’ The Cruel and Ineffective Criminalization of Unhoused People in Los Angeles,” documents the experiences of people living on the streets and in vehicles, temporary shelters, and parks in Los Angeles, as they struggle to survive while facing criminalization and governmental failures to prioritize eviction prevention or access to permanent housing. Law enforcement and sanitation “sweeps” force unhoused people out of public view, often wasting resources on temporary shelter and punishments that do not address the underlying needs. Tens of thousands of people are living in the streets of Los Angeles; death rates among the unhoused have skyrocketed.
This report, based on four weeks of field research by Human Rights Watch researchers in southern Iraq, shows that more than six weeks after the fall of Basra, the security situation remained poorly addressed by coalition forces.
This report attempts to tell the story of the mass graves around al-Hilla. It identifies the victims, the circumstances of their arrest, and their ultimate execution and mass burial.
Since the mid-1990s, Armenian authorities have used administrative detention as a tool of repression, locking up protesters and activists at times of political tension. The 2003 presidential election and its aftermath mark the most sustained, extensive abuses in the last seven years.
State-Sponsored Homophobia and its Consequences in Southern Africa
Many leaders in southern Africa have singled out lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people as scapegoats for their countries' problems, Human Rights Watch and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) state in this report.
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.
Attacks on Refugees and Other Foreigners and Their Treatment in Jordan
Attacks and harassment amidst the security vacuum in Iraq forced refugees and other foreigners to flee the country and become refugees again, this time in Jordan. Based on research in Baghdad and Jordan, this 22-page Human Rights Watch report details the abuses against refugees and foreigners in Iraq, as well as their treatment upon arrival in Jordan.
This briefing paper analyzes the new peace plan in the light of previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements – all of which fatally ignored basic human rights and international humanitarian law protections. Instead, the plans let abuses proliferate to the point where they undermined the entire negotiating process.
The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) is labeling possible political opponents "divisionist" and taking steps to silence them in order to ensure victory in upcoming elections.
Police Misconduct, Harm Reduction and HIV/AIDS in Vancouver, Canada
An anti-drug crackdown by the Vancouver Police Department has driven injection drug users away from life-saving HIV prevention services, raising fears of a new wave of HIV transmission in the city that is already home to the worst AIDS crisis in the developed world, said Human Rights Watch.
The Uzbek government persecutes human rights defenders and obstructs human rights work, in violation of its international commitments. In the past twelve months alone, it has imprisoned six human rights defenders and harassed numerous others.
The draft agreement between the United Nations and the Cambodian government for the establishment of a "mixed tribunal" based in Cambodia is deeply flawed.
Domitien Ndayizeye, a Hutu of the Democratic Front for Burundi (Front pour la Dmocratie au Burundi, Frodebu), will take over the presidency of Burundi from Major Pierre Buyoya, on April 30. The new government must deliver on promises to end a nine-year long war and to deliver justice for the many violations of international humanitarian law committed during the war.
Child soldiers who fought in the Angolan civil war have been excluded from demobilization programs, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. April marks the one-year anniversary of the agreement that brought peace to mainland Angola in 2002.