Reports

Thise 141-page report documents the government’s use and abuse of a range of broad and vaguely worded laws to criminalize peaceful expression, including debates on matters of public interest. The report also spotlights a disturbing trend of abuse of the legal process, including late night arrests and unjustifiable remands, and a pattern of selective prosecution.

This 81-page report finds that men with perceived or actual psychosocial disabilities face abusive restraints, beatings, involuntary treatment, and overcrowding in private and public health centers. Most are held against their will and have no possibility of challenging their detention. In private centers in particular, those with psychosocial disabilities face punitive and prolonged chaining, confinement, seclusion, and severe restrictions on their movement. The findings highlight the importance of mental health services in post-conflict regions. According to the World Health Organization, Somaliland has high rates of psychosocial disability. 

This 59-page report documents various torture methods used by the Sri Lankan police against criminal suspects, including severe beatings, electric shock, suspension from ropes in painful positions, and rubbing chili paste in the genitals and eyes. Victims of torture and their families may spend years seeking justice and redress with little hope of success.

This 31-page report documents how prison authorities have ceded control of detention facilities to the “keyholders,” who sell drugs and sleeping space to fellow detainees, and deploy violent “militias” to enforce their rule, according to former detainees, family members, and two state officials interviewed by Human Rights Watch.

This 44-page report documents Human Rights Watch investigations into the killings of 25 people, including 16 members of the public and 9 police officers, in five Terai districts between August 24 and September 11, 2015. Human Rights Watch found no evidence that any of these victims were posing a threat at the time that they were killed.

This 96-page report highlights the increased burden facing the government of Kenya to ensure access to water, food, health, and security in the Turkana region. The region also presents an example of how climate change, with rising temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns, disproportionately affects already vulnerable people, especially in countries with limited resources and fragile ecosystems.
 

This 102-page report shows how, despite massive international support and attention, the so-called Minova rape trial failed to deliver justice for either the victims or the accused. The report describes the military justice system’s response to the rape of at least 76 women and girls by thousands of retreating army troops who rampaged through the small market town of Minova and neighboring villages in eastern Congo in November 2012.

This 39-page report documents how thousands of Filipino children – some just 9 years old – work in illegal, small-scale gold mines, mostly financed by local businessmen. Children work in unstable 25-meter-deep pits or underwater along the coastal shore or in rivers, and process gold with mercury, a toxic metal. In September 2014, a 17-year-old boy suffocated in an underground mine because there was no machine providing oxygen. The Philippine government should act on its public commitment to end child labor in mining, Human Rights Watch said.

This 70-page report is based on research conducted in 2014 and 2015 by Human Rights Watch and PEMA Kenya, a community organization in Mombasa that provides support to gender and sexual minorities on human rights, health, HIV/AIDS, and economic well-being. The groups documented rights abuses against members of sexual minorities in Kenya’s coast region, including mob violence, assault, rape, incitement to violence, and inadequate protection. The groups identified ways the Kenyan authorities could improve their response to these abuses.

This 48-page report documents prolonged and unlawful detention in the center, in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, between 2011 and 2015. The arbitrary detention of people such as street vendors, sex workers, beggars, homeless people, and suspected petty criminals at Gikondo (known colloquially as Kwa Kabuga) reflects an unofficial policy of keeping people the authorities consider “undesirable” away from the public eye. Until 2014, many street children were also detained there. 

The 36-page report, “Australia at the Human Rights Council: Ready for a Leadership Role?” examines Australia’s readiness to operate effectively as a Human Rights Council member if elected. The government should demonstrate more leadership on global human rights issues, respond more constructively to concerns about its own human rights performance, and engage more closely with nongovernmental organizations, the two groups said.

This 84-page report documents the government’s failure to provide adequately for residents during and after the evictions in North Sinai. Since July 2013, ostensibly to eliminate the threat of smuggling tunnels, the military has arbitrarily razed thousands of homes in a once-populated buffer zone on the border with the Gaza Strip, destroying entire neighborhoods and hundreds of hectares of farmland.

The 59-page report documents physical and verbal abuse at the hands of Macedonian officials at the border with Greece, ill-treatment by police guards in the Gazi Baba detention center between June 2014 and July 2015, and the failure of the authorities to investigate or hold those responsible to account. Human Rights Watch also documented arbitrary detention of migrants and asylum seekers in inhuman and degrading conditions in Gazi Baba. 

This 60-page report uses satellite imagery to corroborate accounts of witnesses that the damage to homes and shops in Tikrit, and the towns of al-Bu ‘Ajil, al-Alam, and al-Dur covered entire neighborhoods. After ISIS fled, Hizbollah Battalions and League of Righteous forces, two of the largely Shia pro-government militias, abducted more than 200 Sunni residents, including children, near al-Dur, south of Tikrit. At least 160 of those abducted remain unaccounted for.

This 81-page report describes the human rights situation in Gambia since President Yahya Jammeh took power in 1994 and ruthlessly repressed all forms of dissent. State security forces and shadowy paramilitary groups carry out unlawful killings and arbitrarily arrest, detain, and forcibly disappear people, causing hundreds to flee the tiny country, best known internationally as a tourist destination. Most of the abuses documented in the report are from 2013 to 2015.