U.S. Policy on Voting Rights in Global Perspective
The 55-page report, “Out of Step: US Policy on Voting Rights in Global Perspective,” examines the laws of 136 countries around the world with populations of 1.5 million and above and finds that the majority—73 of the 136—never, or rarely, deny a person’s right to vote because of a criminal conviction. In the other 63 countries, the United States sits at the restrictive end of the spectrum, disenfranchising a broader swath of people overall.
While torture by the police in Argentina is viewed as a serious problem by its citizens, and efforts have been made to curb its use, it is still widespread.
The government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide compiled a record on human rights which showed much promise but which was also marked by certain troubling practices.
The United States imprisons more than a million of its citizens at any given time, a larger number than anyother country. After visits to more than twenty institutions in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, including state, INS, and federal prisons as well as jails, Human Rights Watch concludes that the most troubling aspect of the human rights situation in U.S.
Human Rights Violations Since the November Cease-fire
On November 28, 1990, Liberia's warring factions signed a cease-fire agreement, theoretically ending 11 months of fighting that had ravaged the country.
Human Rights Since the Assassination of Archbishop Romero
The most comprehensive account now available on human rights violations in El Salvador, A Decade of Terror documents the civil war between an armed insurgency and the military-backed government, and explains how it has led to a decade of ferocious political violence that has cost thousands of civilian lives.
Heads of state of Commonwealth nations meet this month in Harare, Zimbabwe. Their gathering is an important opportunity to take tangible steps to recognize the importance of human rights in the member states and to commit the Commonwealth to an initiative that would significantly enhance its role in combatting human rights abuses.
Human rights abuses are persistent and chronic in Northern Ireland, affecting Protestants and Catholics alike, and are committed by both security forces and paramilitary groups in violation of international standards.
The Brazilian government is failing to prosecute violence against women in the home fully and fairly. Despite ever-increasing domestic violence (particularly wife-murder, battery and rap) impunity and discriminatory treatment in favor of the perpetrators of domestic violence are still the rule in the Brazilian justice system.
On or before October 1, 1992, Nigeria’s government will hand over the reins to civilian leaders of the Third Republic. In this report, Africa Watch shows how years of military rule have sapped the courts of the power to play a vital role in shaping a new democratic society. Bannings and detentions have brought Nigeria’s once lively universities to their knees.
The Human Rights Record Of The Principal Regional Parties
This report includes the four governments that are coming to Madrid to negotiate peace agreements, as well as Egypt -- an observer at the conference -- and the Palestinian leadership.
Hidden under the reforms initiated by President de Klerk since February 2, 1990, human rights violations continue unabated in Bophuthatswana, one of South Africa's four so?called "independent" homelands. In the past 18 months political violence has resulted in the killing of 23 people, detention of 633 and injury of 481.
In 1989, Helsinki Watch severely criticized conditions in the Czech prison system. The criticism was in a report prepared by Professor Herman Schwartz, Chairman of the Human Rights Watch Prison Project Advisory Committee, and was based on numerous interviews in early 1988 with recently released prisoners.
The government of President Alberto Fujimori has been seriously challenged by insurgent threat from Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA); both groups having been responsible for civilian casualties and other gross violations of the laws of war.
he Arab Women's Solidarity Association (AWSA), headed by Dr. Nawal El-Saadawi, a well-known writer and leading figure in the Arab women's movement, has been ordered dissolved by the Egyptian authorities. AWSA will contest the dissolution order in legal proceedings scheduled to begin on October 31 before the State Council Court.
