Reports

The 40-page report, “An Agenda for Action: Alternative Processes for Negotiating a Killer Robots Treaty,” is copublished by Human Rights Watch and the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic. It proposes that countries initiate a treaty-making process based on past humanitarian disarmament models, such as for the treaty banning cluster munitions.

The 59-page report, ‘“Those Who Returned Are Suffering’: Impact of Camp Shutdowns on People Displaced by the Boko Haram Conflict in Nigeria” documents the effect of the shutdowns, which have disrupted food support for internally displaced people and compelled them to leave the camps. The authorities have failed to provide adequate information or sustainable alternatives to ensure their safety and well-being. As a result, displaced people are struggling to meet their most basic needs including food and shelter in the places to which they have returned or where they have resettled.

The 38-page report, “You Can’t Call Bahrain A Democracy: Bahrain’s Political Isolation Laws,” documents the use of Bahrain’s 2018 political isolation laws to keep political opponents from running for parliament seats or even serving on the boards of governors of civic organizations. Human Rights Watch found that the government’s targeted marginalization of opposition figures from social, political, civil, and economic life in Bahrain resulted in a spectrum of other human rights abuses.

The 61-page report, “‘The Court is Satisfied with the Confession’: Bahrain Death Sentences Follow Torture, Sham Trials,” based primarily on court records and other official documents, found serious and persistent human rights violations underlying the convictions and death sentences of cases of eight men examined for the report. The men are among 26 who are currently on death row, their appeals exhausted. Trial and appeal courts cavalierly dismissed credible allegations of torture and ill-treatment during interrogation instead of investigating them, as required by international and Bahraini law. The courts routinely violated defendants’ rights to fair trials, including the right to legal counsel during interrogation, the right to cross-examine prosecution witnesses, and through reliance on secretly sourced reports.

The 63-page report, “‘We Deserve to Have a Place to Live:’ How US Underfunding Public Housing Harms Rights in New York, New Mexico, and Beyond,” examines the impact of a decline in federal funding for public housing, which has been accompanied by a modest increase in investment in affordable housing programs that rely on the private sector, such as voucher and subsidy programs. Human Rights Watch found that budget cuts have led to deteriorating living conditions in public housing in New York City, as well as in northern New Mexico, and have reduced the public housing stock nationwide. It also finds that other affordable housing programs, which rely on the private sector, have often failed to guarantee long-term affordability for people with the lowest incomes.

The 88-page report, “‘It’s as If They’re Poisoning Us’: The Health Impacts of Plastic Recycling in Turkey,” documents the consequences of the Turkish government’s ineffective response to the health and environmental impacts of plastic recycling on the right to health. Air pollutants and toxins emitted from recycling affect workers, including children, and people living near recycling facilities.

The 71-page report, “‘It Was Really Hard to Protect Myself’: Impact of the Armed Conflict in Syria on Children with Disabilities,” details the abuses faced by children with disabilities, including a heightened risk during attacks and a lack of access to the basic support services they need. The absence of inclusive and universal programs – including in education, delivery of humanitarian aid, and mental health and psychosocial support services – compounds the difficulties children with disabilities in Syria already experience.

The 71-page report, “‘We Had No Choice’: ‘Filtration’ and the War Crime of Forcibly Transferring Ukrainian Civilians to Russia,” documents the transfers of Ukrainian civilians. The transfers are a serious violation of the laws of war that constitute war crimes and potential crimes against humanity. Russian and Russian-affiliated authorities also subjected thousands of Ukrainian citizens to a form of compulsory, punitive, and abusive security screening called “filtration.”

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination should direct the United States government to take immediate, tangible measures to dismantle structural racism in the United States, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union said today, releasing a joint report to the committee.

In the 129-page report, “They’ll Get You No Matter What: Morocco’s Playbook to Crush Dissent,” Human Rights Watch documents a range of tactics that, when used together, form an ecosystem of repression, aiming not only to muzzle dissenting voices but to scare off all potential critics. The tactics include unfair trials and long prison terms for nonspeech criminal charges, harassment and smear campaigns in state-aligned media, and targeting dissidents’ relatives. Critics of the state were also subjected to video and digital surveillance, and in some cases to physical intimidation and assault that the police failed to investigate properly.

The 40-page report, “‘We Just Want to Live Our Lives’: El Salvador’s Need for Legal Gender Recognition,” exposes the pervasive discrimination that trans people experience due to a mismatch between their gender and their identity documents. The researchers focused on discrimination in four key areas: health, employment, voting, and banking. Human Rights Watch and COMCAVIS TRANS found that a lack of accurate documents, often in combination with anti-trans bias, seriously impedes the realization of these rights for trans people.

The 63-page report, “‘We Can’t Live Like This’: Spain’s Failure to Protect Rights Amid Rising Pandemic-Linked Poverty,” documents the enduring weaknesses in Spain’s social security system. Efforts by the authorities to supplement a weak safety net have fallen short, leaving people unable to afford essentials. The violations of people’s rights to food, social security, and an adequate standard of living could worsen as global food and fuel costs spiral. This research is the first in a series of investigations in Europe into people’s right to an adequate standard of living in the context of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and rapidly increasing living costs across the globe.

The 36-page report, “Prison or Exile: Cuba’s Systematic Repression of July 2021 Demonstrators,” documents a wide range of human rights violations committed in the context of the protests, including arbitrary detention, abuse-ridden prosecutions, and torture. The government’s repression and its apparent unwillingness to address the underlying problems that drove Cubans to the streets, including limited access to food and medicine, have generated a human rights crisis that dramatically increased the number of people leaving the country.

The 45-page report, The Forever Mines: Perpetual Rights Risks from Unrehabilitated Coal Mines in Mpumalanga, South Africa documents the threats to communities from coal mines that have not been properly cleaned up, the failure of the national government to make progress on addressing the impacts of abandoned coal mines, and the inaction of industry to address the ongoing problems.