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.
Obstructing Access to Legal Abortion after Rape in Mexico
This 92-page report details the disrespect, suspicion and apathy that pregnant rape victims encounter from public prosecutors and health workers. The report also exposes continuing and pervasive impunity for rape and other forms of sexual violence in states throughout Mexico.
In March 2005, members of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) Working Group on Explosive Remnants of War (ERW) issued a questionnaire to states parties regarding ERW and International Humanitarian Law (IHL).
Memorandum to Delegates to the Convention on Conventional Weapons
This memorandum contains an updated analysis of the responses provided by states parties to the questionnaire on explosive remnants of war and international humanitarian law issued by members of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) Working Group on Explosive Remnants of War in 2005 .
Human Rights Abuses Impeding Ukraine’s Fight Against HIV/AIDS
This report documents how draconian drug laws and routine police abuse of injection drug users – the population hardest hit by HIV/AIDS in Ukraine – keep them from receiving lifesaving HIV information and services that the government has pledged to provide.
Arbitrary Detention of Women and Girls for “Social Rehabilitation”
This 40-page report documents numerous and serious human rights abuses that women and girls suffer in "social rehabilitation" facilities in Libya. These include violations of their rights to liberty, freedom of movement, personal dignity, privacy and due process. Libyan authorities are holding many women and girls in these facilities who have committed no crime, or who have completed a sentence.
This document details recent violations by both the Burundian government and the rebel National Liberation Forces (Forces Nationales de Libération, or FNL), with which the government is still at war. The report calls on both the government and the international community to establish mechanisms to deliver justice for serious past crimes by government and rebel forces.
This report documents an alarming rise in attacks against civilians in Chad by Sudanese government-backed Janjaweed militias and Chadian rebel groups. The Janjaweed and Chadian rebel forces operate from bases in Sudanese government-controlled areas of Darfur. Sudanese government troops and helicopter gunships have at times supported these cross-border attacks in eastern Chad.
On September 30, 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoon depictions of the Prophet Mohammed that its editors said they solicited as part of an experiment to overcome what they perceived as self-censorship reflected in the reluctance of illustrators to depict the Prophet.
Despite impressive displays of independence from the Electoral Commission and the judiciary, the first multiparty elections in two decades have been marred by intimidation of the opposition, military interference in the courts and bias in campaign funding and media coverage, Human Rights Watch said in a <a href="http://hrw.org/backgrounder/africa/uganda0206/">briefing paper</a> released today.
Since October 19, 2005, Saddam Hussein and seven other former Iraqi officials have been on trial for crimes that took place in the town of al-Dujail in 1982. Government security forces allegedly detained and tortured hundreds of individuals from al-Dujail in retaliation for an assassination attempt on Saddam Hussein as his motorcade passed through the town, sixty kilometers north of Baghdad.
In March 2005, the War Crimes Chamber began operations within Bosnia’s State Court to try cases of serious war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina that could not be prosecuted within the mandate or timeframe of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The chamber will also handle serious war crimes cases initiated locally.
The absence of legal guarantees is one of the main causes of Saudi Arabia’s serious human rights problems. Without specific legal protections, neither the government nor judges, not to mention ordinary citizens, can know with certainty what is permissible and what is forbidden.
This 84-page report is based primarily on Human Rights Watch’s first-ever trip to Libya, made in mid-2005, which the organization praised as a welcome step towards transparency. The authorities provided access to a wide range of high-level officials, as well as police stations, an immigration detention center and five prisons, where 32 prisoners were interviewed in private.
This report examines the evolving role in the Darfur conflict of the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS), from its inception as a ceasefire monitoring body in June 2004 to its current incarnation as a major operation with a mandate to protect civilians that includes armed troops, unarmed civilian police, unarmed military observers, and support teams.
At the Sixth Summit of the African Union (A.U.) in Khartoum on January 23 and 24, Human Rights Watch calls on the Assembly of African Heads of State and Government to put the protection of civilians and the prosecution of human rights abusers at the top of its agenda.
