Gaps in Support Systems for People with Disabilities in Uruguay
The 50-page report, “I, Too, Wish to Enjoy the Summer”: Gaps in Support Systems for People with Disabilities in Uruguay, documents Uruguay’s shortcomings in meeting the support requirements under its National Integrated Care System for everyone with a disability. Many are ineligible for the care system’s Personal Assistants Program due to their age, income, or how “severe” their disability is. People with certain types of disabilities, like intellectual and sensory disabilities, and those with high-support requirements, are effectively excluded from the program because personal assistants are not trained to support them. Human Rights Watch found that Uruguay has not sufficiently involved organizations of people with disabilities in the design, administration, and monitoring of personal assistance under the care system, resulting in its failure to recognize users as rights-holders and its delivery of inadequate, limited services.
In this paper, Human Rights Watch noted that Senegal had not even passed the legislation needed to try Habré. Human Rights Watch called on the African Union to name a special envoy to help Senegal prepare Habré’s trial.
This document sets out developments in the use of diplomatic assurances in select individual cases since the publication of our April 2005 report “Still at Risk: Diplomatic Assurances No Safeguard Against Torture.
State Collusion in Abductions and Child Recruitment by the Karuna Group
In this 100-page report, Human Rights Watch documents a pattern of abductions and forced recruitment by the Karuna group in Sri Lanka over the past year. With case studies, maps and photographs, it shows how Karuna cadres operate with impunity in government-controlled areas, abducting boys and young men, training them in camps, and deploying them for combat.
This 20-page report documents two incidents in late November 2006 in which 13 persons were killed. On November 19, genocide survivor Frederic Murasira was killed in the commercial center of Mugatwa in eastern Rwanda. Within hours, residents of a nearby village inhabited by genocide survivors killed eight Mugatwa residents who apparently had played no part in the murder.
While some governments have already started making meaningful reforms to help domestic workers work in greater safety and dignity, others are pursuing superficial changes that fail to address the root causes of exploitation and abuse. Governments around the world have choices to make about the route they will take; this essay identifies some of the positive options available.
Human Rights Watch’s 556-page World Report 2007 contains survey information on human rights developments during 2006 in more than 75 countries. In addition to the introductory essay on the European Union, the volume contains essays on freedom of expression since 9/11, the plight of migrant domestic workers, and a human rights agenda for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.
Militia Attacks and Ethnic Targeting of Civilians in Eastern Chad
This 70-page report documents a drastic deterioration in the human rights situation in eastern Chad, where more than 300 civilians were killed and at least 17,000 people displaced in militia violence in November 2006 alone. In most instances, civilians were targeted on the basis of ethnic identity.
This 17-page briefing paper outlines the sweeping powers that Egypt's Political Parties Law grants to the Political Parties Committee, a body dominated by the president and the ruling party, to license and suspend political parties. The law gives President Mubarak and the ruling party broad authority to choose who may compete against them and under what terms.
The Impact of Turkey’s Compensation Law with Respect to Internally Displaced People
In this 40-page briefing paper, Human Rights Watch analyzes how the Turkish government is failing to provide fair compensation for hundreds of thousands of mainly Kurdish villagers displaced by the military’s brutal counterinsurgency campaigns in the southeast.
During the Israel-Hezbollah war, Israel was accused by Human Rights Watch and numerous local and international media outlets of attacking two Lebanese Red Cross ambulances in Qana on July 23, 2006.
Torture and Extrajudicial Killings by Bangladesh’s Elite Security Force
This 79-page report describes how Bangladesh's Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), established in 2004 to stop spiraling crime, has made a practice of killing criminal suspects in detention. Torture methods used by the force include beatings, boring holes in suspects with electric drills, and the application of electric shock.
New Regulatory Curbs on Lawyers Representing Protesters
This 71-page report details the “Guiding Opinions on Lawyers Handling Mass Cases,” which were introduced in March 2006, and discusses subsequently adopted local variants. The report explains how the Guiding Opinions let local authorities interfere in cases involving 10 or more plaintiffs, making it more difficult for the cases to get a fair hearing in court.
After fleeing violence and persecution in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis living in Jordan face a daily threat of arrest, fines and deportation because the Jordanian government treats them as illegal immigrants rather than refugees. Since the war in Iraq began in 2003, more than 1 million Iraqis have fled, but none of Iraq’s neighbors, nor the United States, treats them as refugees.
This 95-page report is based on 10 months of observation and dozens of interviews with judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers, and is the most comprehensive analysis to date of the trial.