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.
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.
On August 6, 1993, the Kuwaiti government ordered the dissolution of all unlicensed organizations. Especially targeted were groups tracking the fate of Kuwaitis disappeared during the Iraqi occupation and believed held in Iraq, as well as human rights groups, including the Kuwaiti Association to Defend War Victims, Kuwait’s main human rights organization.
Ethnic hatred and violence directed against Gypsies in Romania has escalated dramatically since the 1989 revolution: rarely a month passed without another Gypsy village being attacked. Gypsy homes have been burned, their possessions destroyed, they have been chased from their villages, and often not allowed to return.
Following the liberation of Kuwait, the thirst to avenge the horrors of the Iraqi occupation spawned a new round of human rights victims this time at Kuwaiti hands. Despite calls to defend human rights in rallying support for the war against Iraq, the reinstated Kuwaiti government has trampled on those rights at nearly every turn, often with the use of violence.
Human Rights in Mexico One Year After the Introduction of Reform
In spite of a surge in human rights activity in Mexico during the past year, the human rights situation does not seem to have improved: the volume and severity of reported abuses remain unchanged.