Reports

This report documents how both Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed militants have carried out indiscriminate or deliberate attacks on schools. Both sides have used schools for military purposes, deploying forces in and near schools, which has turned schools into legitimate military targets. The resulting destruction has forced many children out of school and many schools to stop operating or to operate under overcrowded and difficult conditions, Human Rights Watch found.

 

This 62-page report documents the major obstacles that prevent Syrian refugee children from getting formal education in Turkey, which is hosting more than 2 million refugees from the Syrian conflict that began in 2011. The government adopted an important policy in September 2014 that formally grants Syrian children access to public schools, but key obstacles including a language barrier, social integration issues, economic hardship, and lack of information about the policy, remain one year later, Human Rights Watch found.

The 45-page report found many barriers that can prevent children with disabilities from studying in mainstream schools. These include a lack of ramps or lifts to help children enter and move within buildings and the absence of accommodations such as large-print textbooks for children with low vision, assistive technology, or teachers’ aides. Infrastructure barriers and limited accessible transportation prevent some children from leaving their homes and reaching school.

This 94-page report found that South Africa has failed to guarantee the right to education for many of the country’s children and young adults due to widespread discrimination against children with disabilities in enrollment decisions. Human Rights Watch research in five out of South Africa’s nine provinces showed that children with disabilities face discriminatory physical and attitudinal barriers, often beginning early in children’s lives when government officials classify them according to their disabilities. 

The 77-page report documents discrimination by school authorities in four Indian states against Dalit, tribal, and Muslim children. The discrimination creates an unwelcome atmosphere that can lead to truancy and eventually may lead the child to stop going to school.

The 43-page report examines Senegal’s mixed record in addressing the problem in the year since a fire ripped through a Quranic boarding school in Dakar housed in a makeshift shack, killing eight boys.

This 75-page report documents the struggles of children and young people with disabilities to be educated in mainstream schools in their communities.

This 111-page report details the harm public registration laws cause for youth sex offenders. The laws, which can apply for decades or even a lifetime and are layered on top of time in prison or juvenile detention, require placing offenders’ personal information on online registries, often making them targets for harassment, humiliation, and even violence.

The 95-page report documents the consequences of child marriage, the near total lack of protection for victims who try to resist marriage or leave abusive marriages, and the many obstacles they face in accessing mechanisms of redress.

This 46-page report details the occupation of schools by government security forces, militias, and opposition armed groups, risking the lives and education of tens of thousands of students. Forces on both sides used schools as barracks, bases, surveillance posts, and firing positions.

This 104-page report details unlawful recruitment and other laws-of-war violations against children by all parties to the conflict in Somalia since 2010. The report is based on over 164 interviews with Somali children, including 21 who had escaped from al-Shabaab forces, as well as parents and teachers who had fled to Kenya.

This 54-page report documents the lifelong damage to girls who are forced to marry young. Yemeni girls and women told Human Rights Watch about being forced into child marriages by their families, and then having no control over whether and when to bear children and other important aspects of their lives.

This 40-page report documents the killing of at least 22 teachers and other education personnel by suspected militants between January 2008 and October 2010. The report – based on interviews with teachers, students, victims’ families and friends, and government officials in Balochistan – describes these attacks and their consequences for the quality of education in the province.

This 65-page report addresses the potential challenges to women's rights posed by future government agreements with insurgent forces. The report describes how in areas under Taliban control, women are often subjected to threats, intimidation and violence, girls' education is targeted, and women political leaders and activists are attacked and killed with impunity.

This 114-page report documents the system of exploitation and abuse in which at least 50,000 boys known as talibés - the vast majority under age 12 and many as young as four - are forced to beg on Senegal's streets for long hours, seven days a week, by often brutally abusive teachers, known as marabouts.