Special Collections
Human Rights Collection
- Table View
- List View
“We are Not the Enemy”
by Human Rights WatchPublic officials tried vigorously to contain a wave of hate crimes in the United States after September 11, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Nevertheless, anti-Muslim hate crimes in the United States rose 1700 percent during 2001. The report documents anti-Arab and anti-Muslim violence and the local, state and federal response to it. The forty-one page report, “We Are Not the Enemy,” draws on research with police, prosecutors, community activists, and victims of hate crimes in six cities (Seattle, Washington; Dearborn, Michigan; Chicago, Illinois; Los Angeles, California; Phoenix, Arizona; and New York, New York) to review steps taken by government officials to prevent and prosecute hate crimes after the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. The report also examines the scope and extent of these hate crimes, which included murder, assault, arson, and vandalism. “Government officials didn’t sit on their hands while Muslims and Arabs were attacked after September 11,” said Amardeep Singh, author of the report and U.S. Program researcher at Human Rights Watch. “But law enforcement and other government agencies should have been better prepared for this kind of onslaught.”
A Violent Education
by Human Rights WatchIn this 125-page report, the ACLU and Human Rights Watch found that in Texas and Mississippi children ranging in age from 3 to 19 years old are routinely physically punished for minor infractions such as chewing gum, talking back to a teacher, or violating the dress code, as well as for more serious transgressions such as fighting. Corporal punishment, legal in 21 states, typically takes the form of “paddling,” during which an administrator or teacher hits a child repeatedly on the buttocks with a long wooden board. The report shows that, as a result of paddling, many children are left injured, degraded, and disengaged from school.
Custody and Control
by Human Rights WatchThis 136-page report provides an in-depth look at the abuses and neglect suffered by girls confined in two remote New York State juvenile facilities known as Tryon and Lansing. The facilities are operated by the New York Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) and are the only two higher-security facilities in New York State holding girls.
Ill-Equipped
by Human Rights Watch StaffMentally ill offenders face mistreatment and neglect in many U.S. prisons. One in six U.S. prisoners is mentally ill. Many of them suffer from serious illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression. There are three times as many men and women with mental illness in U.S. prisons as in mental health hospitals. The rate of mental illness in the prison population is three times higher than in the general population. This 215-page report examines how prisons are dangerous and damaging places for mentally ill people. Other prisoners victimize and exploit them. Prison staff often punish mentally ill offenders for symptoms of their illness - such as being noisy or refusing orders, or even self-mutilation and attempted suicide. Mentally ill prisoners are more likely than others to end up housed in especially harsh conditions, such as isolation, that can push them over the edge into acute psychosis. Woefully deficient mental health services in many prisons leave prisoners undertreated - or not treated at all. Across the country, prisoners cannot get appropriate care because of a shortage of qualified staff, lack of facilities, and prison rules that interfere with treatment. The report is based on more than two years of research and hundreds of interviews with prisoners, corrections officials, mental health experts and attorneys and makes recommendations on services and regulations that would assist and protect mentally ill prisoners.
Forced Apart
by Human Rights WatchThis 88-page report is the first comprehensive assessment of the deportation of non-citizens with criminal convictions and the impact on families and communities in the US. The mandatory deportation of legal immigrants convicted of a crime, even a minor one, has separated an estimated 1.6 million children and adults, including US citizens and lawful permanent residents, from their non-citizen family members. Many of those deported arrived in the US as children and were lawful permanent residents who had lived legally in the country for decades.
Decades of Disparity
by Human Rights WatchThis 20-page report says that adult African Americans were arrested on drug charges at rates that were 2.8 to 5.5 times as high as those of white adults in every year from 1980 through 2007, the last year for which complete data were available. About one in three of the more than 25.4 million adult drug arrestees during that period was African American.
Submission to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
by Human Rights Watchthis 48-page report, Human Rights Watch documents US noncompliance with ICERD in seven key areas. The treaty, ratified by the United States in 1994, requires member governments to take affirmative steps to eliminate discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national or ethnic origin in all areas of public life. The Human Rights Watch report was prepared for submission to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, an international body that monitors and reports on compliance with ICERD. The committee will examine US compliance with ICERD at a session in Geneva, Switzerland, on February 21-22, 2008.
Forced Apart
by Human Rights WatchThe 64-page report uses data from 1997 to 2007 from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to evaluate the effects of sweeping deportation laws passed in 1996. It shows that some of the most common crimes for which people were deported were relatively minor offenses, such as marijuana and cocaine possession or traffic offenses. Among legal immigrants who were deported, 77 percent had been convicted for such nonviolent crimes. Many had lived in the country for years and were forced apart from close family members.
Cruel and Degrading
by Human Rights WatchThis 20-page report publicly reveals this practice for the first time. It also shows that the practice is not only cruel, but wholly unnecessary as there are safer, more humane alternatives that corrections officers can use – and most across the country do use – to remove prisoners from their cells.
So Long as They Die
by Human Rights WatchThis 65-page report reveals the slipshod history of executions by lethal injection, using a protocol created three decades ago with no scientific research, nor modern adaptation, and still unchanged today. As the prisoner lies strapped to a gurney, a series of three drugs is injected into his vein by executioners hidden behind a wall. A massive dose of sodium thiopental, an anesthetic, is injected first, followed by pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes voluntary muscles, but leaves the prisoner fully conscious and able to experience pain. A third drug, potassium chloride, quickly causes cardiac arrest, but the drug is so painful that veterinarian guidelines prohibit its use unless a veterinarian first ensures that the pet to be put down is deeply unconscious. No such precaution is taken for prisoners being executed.
Testing Justice
by Human Rights WatchThe 68-page report reveals that the backlog of untested rape kits in Los Angeles County is larger and more widespread than previously reported. Through dozens of interviews with police officers, public officials, criminalists, rape treatment providers, and rape victims, the report documents the devastating effects of the backlog on victims of sexual abuse.
Collateral Casualties
by Human Rights WatchExcessively severe drug laws have deprived thousands of children of their parents, Human Rights Watch said today. Governor Pataki and New York politicians in Albany are now debating legislation to reform these drug laws.Releasing a new report with the first statistics on the number of children in New York who have had parents sent to prison for drug offenses, Human Rights Watch said the statistics should spur a swift agreement on major reform of the state's drug laws.Human Rights Watch has consistently urged New York to eliminate harsh mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders and to authorize judges to tailor criminal sanctions that reflect the individual offender's conduct and other relevant factors.
No Easy Answers
by Human Rights WatchThis 146-page report is the first comprehensive study of US sex offender policies, their public safety impact, and the effect they have on former offenders and their families. During two years of investigation for this report, Human Rights Watch researchers conducted over 200 interviews with victims of sexual violence and their relatives, former offenders, law enforcement and government officials, treatment providers, researchers, and child safety advocates.
Beyond Reason
by Human Rights WatchTwenty-five U.S. states still permit the execution of offenders with mental retardation and should pass laws to ban the practice without delay. The United States appears to be the only democracy whose laws expressly permit the execution of persons with this severe mental disability.
World Report 2009
by Human Rights WatchHuman Rights Watch is increasingly recognized as the world's leader in building a stronger awareness for human rights. Their annual World Report is the most probing review of human rights developments available anywhere. Written in straightforward, non-technical language, Human Rights Watch World Report prioritizes events in the most affected countries during the previous year. The backbone of the report consists of a series of concise overviews of the most pressing human rights issues in countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, with particular focus on the role--positive or negative--played in each country by key domestic and international figures. Highly anticipated and widely publicized by the U.S. and international press every year, the World Report is an invaluable resource for journalists, diplomats, and all citizens of the world.
World Report 2015
by Human Rights WatchThe human rights records of more than ninety countries and territories is put into perspective in Human Rights Watch's signature yearly report, which, in the 2014 volume, highlighted the armed conflict in Syria, international drug reform, drones and electronic mass surveillance, and more, and also featured photo essays of child marriage in South Sudan, the cost of the Sochi Winter Olympics in Russia, and religious fighting in Central African Republic. Reflecting extensive investigative work undertaken in 2014 by Human Rights Watch staff, in close partnership with domestic human rights activists, the annual World Report 2015 is an invaluable resource for journalists, diplomats, and citizens, and is a must-read for anyone interested in the fight to protect human rights in every corner of the globe.From the Trade Paperback edition.
"I Had To Run Away"
by Human Rights WatchThis 120-page report is based on 58 interviews conducted in three prisons and three juvenile detention facilities with women and girls accused of "moral crimes." Almost all girls in juvenile detention in Afghanistan had been arrested for "moral crimes," while about half of women in Afghan prisons were arrested on these charges. These "crimes" usually involve flight from unlawful forced marriage or domestic violence. Some women and girls have been convicted of zina, sex outside of marriage, after being raped or forced into prostitution. The fall of the Taliban government in 2001 promised a new era of women's rights. Significant improvements have occurred in education, maternal mortality, employment, and the role of women in public life and governance. Yet the imprisonment of women and girls for "moral crimes" is just one sign of the difficult present and worrying future faced by Afghan women and girls as the international community moves to decrease substantially its commitments in Afghanistan.
Abusing the User:Police Misconduct, Harm Reduction and HIV/AIDS in Vancouver
by Human Rights WatchAn anti-drug crackdown by the Vancouver Police Department has driven injection drug users away from life-saving HIV prevention services, raising fears of a new wave of HIV transmission in the city that is already home to the worst AIDS crisis in the developed world, said Human Rights Watch. In a 25-page report released today, "Abusing the User: Police Misconduct, Harm Reduction and HIV/AIDS in Vancouver," Human Rights Watch documents instances of unnecessary force and mistreatment, arbitrary arrest, and other intimidation and harassment of drug users as part of a campaign commonly referred to as Operation Torpedo. The crackdown began on April 7 in the city's impoverished Downtown Eastside neighborhood. Though drug traffickers are the ostensible target, drug users not charged with selling drugs have been driven to places where health workers cannot reach them to ensure access to sterile syringes and other HIV prevention services.
Restrictions on AIDS Activists in China
by Human Rights WatchThis 57-page report based on on-the-ground interviews with Chinese AIDS activists, gay rights activists, activists working with drug users, and website managers shows that while senior officials have said they want to encourage China's emerging civil society, many AIDS activists face state harassment and bureaucratic restrictions. First-hand accounts provided to Human Rights Watch reveal that activists conducting AIDS information workshops or working with those at high risk of HIV have been harassed or detained, and that pornography laws are used to censor websites providing AIDS information to gay men and lesbians under pornography laws.
An Unbreakable Cycle:Drug Dependency Treatment, Mandatory Confinement, and HIV/AIDS in China’s Guangxi Province
by Human Rights WatchIn China, illicit drug use is an administrative offense and Chinese law dictates that drug users "must be rehabilitated." In reality, police raids on drug users often drive them underground, away from methadone clinics, needle exchange sites, and other proven HIV prevention services. And every year Chinese police send tens of thousands of drug users to mandatory drug treatment centers, often for years, without trial or due process. This report finds that most mandatory treatment centers, while ostensibly meant to provide drug treatment, do not actually offer forms of drug dependence treatment internationally recognized as effective. Mostly, drug users are forced to work or to spend their days in crowded cells little different from prisons.
A Testing Challenge
by Human Rights WatchThis 60-page report found that the Know Your Status (KYS) campaign, begun in 2005 with the goal of testing 1.3 million people, was underfunded and had tested only 25,000 people by August 2007, four months before the campaign ended. Ambitious goals to train and pay thousands of lay counselors and expand support groups for people living with HIV were largely sidelined. Supervision of counselors and post-test referrals to HIV prevention or treatment was poorly carried out. The program also took insufficient steps to ensure proper respect for such rights-related requirements as informed consent and confidentiality.
Barred from Treatment
by Human Rights WatchIn this 53-page report, Human Rights Watch found that New York prison officials sentenced inmates to a collective total of 2,516 years in disciplinary segregation from 2005 to 2007 for drug-related charges. At the same time, inmates seeking drug treatment face major delays because treatment programs are filled to capacity. When sentenced to segregation, known as "the box," inmates are not allowed to get or continue to receive treatment. Conditions in the box are harsh, with prisoners locked down 23 hours a day and contact with the outside through visitors, packages, and telephone calls severely restricted.
Just Die Quietly
by Human Rights WatchThe Ugandan government's failure to protect women from domestic violence and discrimination increases women's risk of contracting HIV. This 77-page report documents widespread rape and brutal attacks on women by their husbands in Uganda, where a specific domestic violence law has not been enacted and where spousal rape is not criminalized. Many women told Human Rights Watch that a fear of violent repercussions impeded their access to HIV/AIDS information, HIV testing, and HIV/AIDS treatment and counseling. The Human Rights Watch report says that HIV/AIDS programs focusing on fidelity, abstinence, and condom use do not account for the ways in which domestic violence inhibits women's control over sexual matters in marriage. In the report, Human Rights Watch urges the Ugandan government to enact domestic violence legislation, and to make women's health, physical integrity, and equal rights in marriage a central focus of AIDS programming.
Hated to Death
by Human Rights WatchJamaica's growing HIV/AIDS epidemic is unfolding in the context of widespread violence and discrimination against people living with and at high risk of HIV/AIDS, especially men who have sex with men. Myths about HIV/AIDS persist. Many Jamaicans believe that HIV/AIDS is a disease of homosexuals and sex workers whose "moral impurity" makes them vulnerable to it, or that HIV is transmitted by casual contact.
"Life Doesn't Wait"
by Human Rights WatchMore 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 health.