Ecuador’s Slow Progress Tackling and Preventing School-Related Sexual Violence
The 60-page report, “‘Like Patchwork’: Ecuador’s Slow Progress Tackling and Preventing School-Related Sexual Violence,” documents significant gaps in the government’s response to prevent and tackle abuses in Ecuador’s education system. Many schools still fail to report abuses or fully implement required protocols. Judicial institutions do not adequately investigate or prosecute sexual offenses against children, affecting survivors’ ability to find justice.
In recent weeks civilians have once again paid the price of local and international struggles to control the resource-rich eastern and northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Hundreds have been killed and injured and tens of thousands have fled their homes to join about two million others previously displaced.
Free trade alone cannot ensure greater respect for workers' rights nor prevent millions of people from being excluded from the benefits of globalization. Human Rights Watch believes that measures to protect workers' rights should be built into trade agreements to ensure that globalization does not come at the expense of human rights.
The Turkish government, security forces and paramilitaries are obstructing the return of hundreds of thousands of displaced villagers to their homes in the formerly war-torn southeast.
In recent months, the conflict between the northern Ugandan rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and the Ugandan government has significantly escalated, with resulting serious human rights abuses against civilians not only in northern Uganda but also in southern Sudan.
Less than a year after the signing of the 2001 Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health in Doha, Qatar, parties to the proposed thirty-four-country Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) are revisiting the relationship between intellectual property rights and access to essential medicines.
Turkey's parliamentary elections scheduled for November 3 will present an important test for the country, just one month before the European Union's Copenhagen summit, at which the E.U. is expected to give Turkey a signal about its prospects for membership in the Union.
When a civilian government was reinstated in Nigeria in 1999, many of those living in the Niger Delta region, the source of Nigeria's oil wealth, hoped that a "democratic dividend" would end decades of neglect they had suffered under successive military regimes.
Burma is believed to have more child soldiers than any other country in the world. The overwhelming majority of Burma's child soldiers are found in Burma's national army, the Tatmadaw Kyi, which forcibly recruits children as young as eleven. These children are subject to beatings and systematic humiliation during training.
The people responsible for planning and carrying out suicide bombings that deliberately target civilians are guilty of crimes against humanity and should be brought to justice, Human Rights Watch said in a new report today.
In 2002, steps were taken by the administration to ensure that the military could control the current electoral process and its outcome, principally by restricting the activities of opposition political parties while providing increasingly transparent support for pro-Musharraf parties.
The countries of Central and Eastern Europe, including several that are candidates for European Union (E.U.) membership, have long been a major source of weapons flows to human rights abusers, conflict regions, and clients suspected of diverting weapons to unauthorized destinations. There has been some recent progress to tighten controls, but serious problems remain.
Backgrounder on the European Union Regular Report on Turkey
The European Union's (E.U.) Regular Report on Turkey, scheduled for release October 9, will provide the E.U.'s assessment of recent reforms in Turkey and an early indication of whether the E.U. intends to move forward on Turkey's membership application at its December summit.
The Bush Administration is attempting to negotiate bilateral impunity agreements with numerous countries around the globe. The goal of these agreements is to exempt U.S. military and civilian personnel from the jurisdiction of the ICC. The U.S. argues that such agreements are contemplated under Article 98(2) of the Rome Statute.
Why the International Community Should Reject Australia's Refugee Policies
The government of Australia has taken increasingly aggressive measures in recent years to prevent unauthorized asylum seekers from reaching its shores. One year ago, on September 26, 2001, it enacted new legislation that extended the legal basis for its policies, which are among the most restrictive in the developed world.
Akaev won the presidency of independent Kyrgyzstan in 1991 and consolidated power through a presidential referendum in 1994. Akaev was re-elected to his second term of office in 1995. Despite a constitutional provision limiting the head of state to two terms in office, Akaev ran for president again in 2000.
