On May 30, 2024, three judges handpicked by the Beijing-controlled Hong Kong chief executive convicted 14 activists and former elected lawmakers under the draconian National Security Law. Two were acquitted. Earlier, 31 other defendants had pleaded guilty in hopes of more lenient sentencing. The court will announce sentences,...
- Volkswagen (VW) in 2023 commissioned a deeply flawed audit at a plant in China's Xinjiang province operated by a subsidiary of Volkswagen’s joint venture with SAIC, a Chinese state-owned carmaker....
German environmental activists are facing increasingly harsh rhetoric and legal action from authorities as they mobilize to confront the climate crisis....
People in the United States are more reliant than ever on using the internet for all aspects of their lives. But one in six US households may lose internet access by June when current federal funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) ends....
Three lesbian women have died and one more is in critical condition in Buenos Aires, Argentina, after a man threw a Molotov cocktail into their boarding house room on May 6, setting them all on fire. One woman, Pamela Fabiana Cobas, was severely burned and died almost immediately. Her partner, Mercedes Roxana Figueroa, died of...
The Chinese government forcibly returned about 60 North Korean refugees on April 26, putting them at grave risk of enforced disappearance, torture, sexual violence, wrongful imprisonment, forced labor, and execution....
Israeli security forces have unlawfully used lethal force in fatal shootings of Palestinians in the West Bank. Research into eight deaths in four incidents between July 2022 and October 2023 concluded that Israeli forces wrongfully fatally shot or deliberately executed Palestinians who posed no apparent security threat....
The German government is falling short in protecting Muslims and people perceived to be Muslims from racism amid rising incidents of hate and discrimination, Human Rights Watch said today. The absence of a working definition of anti-Muslim racism and a lack of official data on incidents and of investment in institutional support...
Children in Gaza have been dying from starvation-related complications since the Israeli government began to use starvation as a weapon of war, a war crime....
According to the United Nations, in 2024, 23.7 million people – more than half of the country's population – will need humanitarian assistance. The statistics are startling: 69 percent of people do not have enough food; 67 percent have trouble accessing water, worsened by a prolonged drought linked to climate change; the...
“The International Court of Justice is set for the first time to broadly consider the legal consequences of Israel’s nearly six-decades-long occupation and mistreatment of the Palestinian people,” said Clive Baldwin, senior legal adviser at Human Rights Watch....
Global carmakers, including General Motors, Tesla, BYD, Toyota, and Volkswagen, are failing to minimize the risk of Uyghur forced labor being used in their aluminum supply chains, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today....
Human Rights Watch interviewed dozens of LGBT people who indicated that they had reported being harassed, doxxed, outed, and abused on Facebook and Instagram, but in all these cases, Meta either did not respond to their complaints or found that the content they reported did not violate its policies, and the content remained...
On January 23, 2024, Human Rights Watch, Social Media Exchange (SMEX), INSM Foundation for Digital Rights, Helem, and Damj Association, launched [link to presser] the “Secure Our Socials” campaign engaging Meta (Facebook, Instagram) to be more transparent and accountable in protecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender...
In a historic decision last week, a longstanding United Nations body recognized that the international human rights system doesn’t fully protect older people’s rights, and it recommended a new human rights treaty to help correct this....
Belarusian authorities have unrolled systematic and widespread repression targeting lawyers who represent clients in politically motivated cases or who shed light on rights abuses, Human Rights Watch, the Belarusian Association of Human Rights Lawyers, and the Right to Defence Project said in a report released today....
Volkswagen should inform shareholders at its May 29, 2024 annual general meeting how the company plans to eliminate Uyghur forced labor in its operations and supply chains....
Adding to existing policies designed to obstruct ships operated by nongovernmental organizations, Italian authorities are now targeting small airplanes used by rescue organizations like Sea-Watch and Pilotes Volontaires....
The imminent trial of nine survivors of the June 2023 Pylos shipwreck off Greece raises fair trial concerns, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said today. The survivors are charged with smuggling, aggravated by the deaths of passengers, causing a shipwreck, irregular entry, and forming and membership of a criminal...
Rwandan immigration authorities denied entry to Clémentine de Montjoye, a senior researcher in the Africa division at Human Rights Watch, upon arrival at Kigali International Airport, on May 13, 2024....
