Reports

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.

Police remove an unhoused woman from her tent

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  • August 8, 2006

    Zimbabweans in South Africa’s Limpopo Province

    <table cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0"><tr><td><img src="http://hrw.org/images/home/2006/100/safric13923.jpg&quot; align="left" border="0" /></td> <td valign="top">This 54-page report documents how state officials arrest, detain and deport undocumented foreign migrants in the northern border province of Limpopo in ways that flout South Africa’s immigration law.</td></tr></table>

  • August 2, 2006

    Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon

    This report documents serious violations of international humanitarian law (the laws of war) by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Lebanon between July 12 and July 27, 2006, as well as the July 30 attack in Qana. During this period, the IDF killed an estimated 400 people, the vast majority of them civilians, and that number climbed to over 500 by the time this report went to print.
  • August 1, 2006

    Romania’s Failure to Protect and Support Children and Youth Living with HIV

    More than 7,200 Romanian children and youth aged 15 to 19 are living with HIV. The vast majority were infected with HIV between 1986 and 1991 as a direct result of government policies that exposed them to contaminated needles and “microtransfusions” in which small children were injected with unscreened blood in the mistaken belief that this would improve their immunological status.
  • July 28, 2006

    Government Failures, Human Rights Abuses and Squandered Progress in the Fight against AIDS in Zimbabwe

    This 72-page report documents how the abusive policies and practices of the Zimbabwean government are fueling the HIV/AIDS epidemic, increasing vulnerability to infection, and obstructing access to treatment.
  • July 27, 2006

    Abuses against Domestic Workers Around the World

    This 93-page report synthesizes Human Rights Watch research since 2001 on abuses against women and child domestic workers originating from or working in El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Togo, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States.

  • July 26, 2006

    A Topical Digest of the Case Law of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

    This unique 861-page book organizes the decisions of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia by topic, including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, individual criminal responsibility, command responsibility, affirmative defenses, jurisdiction, sentencing, fair trial rights, guilty pleas and appellate review.
  • July 22, 2006

    Soldiers' Accounts of Detainee Abuse in Iraq

    Torture and other abuses against detainees in U.S. custody in Iraq were authorized and routine, even after the 2004 Abu Ghraib scandal, according to accounts from soldiers in this 53-page report. Soldiers describe how detainees were routinely subjected to severe beatings, painful stress positions, severe sleep deprivation, and exposure to extreme cold and hot temperatures.
  • July 10, 2006

    Attacks on Education in Afghanistan

    This 142-page report documents 204 incidents of attacks on teachers, students and schools since January 2005. This number, which underestimates the severity of the crisis due to the difficulty of gathering data in Afghanistan, reflects a sharp increase in attacks as the security situation in many parts of the country has deteriorated.

  • June 28, 2006

    On November 7, the Supreme Court agreed to review the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who is challenging the lawfulness of the U.S. government trying him for alleged war crimes before a military commission at Guantánamo Bay. The Court is expected to render a decision in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in late June, 2006.
  • June 28, 2006

    In the summer of 1996, stories began to filter out of Libya about a mass killing in Tripoli’s Abu Salim prison. The details remained scarce, and the government initially denied that an incident had taken place. Libyan groups outside the country said up to 1,200 prisoners had died.
  • June 27, 2006

    The State of the Art

    This 101-page report looks beyond shrill debates about the concept and examines how it is working in practice. Based on interviews with judges, investigators, lawyers and officials in eight European countries, the report describes how some governments, including Britain, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands, have created special war crimes units to conduct investigations across the globe.
  • June 22, 2006

    The Human Rights Crisis in Eastern Chad

    This paper documents a drastic deterioration in the human rights situation on the Chad side of the Chad-Sudan border, where Sudanese government-backed “Janjaweed” militias raid at will, and Darfur rebels opposed to Khartoum forcibly recruit Sudanese refugees, including children, to serve as rebel fighters.
  • June 21, 2006

    Making Justice Accessible to Those Most Affected

    On March 29, 2006 former Liberian President Charles Taylor was surrendered to the U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone. Taylor’s surrender for trial provides an extraordinary opportunity for the people of Sierra Leone and West Africa to see justice done for atrocities committed during Sierra Leone’s armed conflict since 1996.