Reports

The 26-page report, “You’ll Die Waiting for Justice,” confirms that the Royal Eswatini Police Service and the Umbutfo Eswatini Defence Force improperly used tear gas, and rubber bullets, and physically assaulted civilians during the June 2021 unrest. The security forces also shot indiscriminately at protesters and passers-by with live ammunition, killing scores of protesters and injuring hundreds more, including children. The findings shine a spotlight on the absence of accountability since then and the precarious and desperate situation for the victims, requiring urgent action to remedy their situation.

The 89-page report, “Whose Abortion Is It? The Harms of State-Mandated Parental Notification for Abortion and Judicial Bypass in the United States,” documents how state-mandated parental notification laws in six US states threaten young people’s health and safety and undermine their human rights. Most young people considering abortion involve a parent in their decision. Those who do not often have no access to a parent or fear that parental involvement will lead to severe consequences, such as physical abuse, loss of housing, family alienation, or forced continuation of a pregnancy against their wishes. The alternative to notifying a parent involves petitioning a judge for a court order in an invasive, stressful, and often traumatizing process called “judicial bypass.”

The 86-page report “Tainted: JBS and the EU’s Exposure to Human Rights Violations and Illegal Deforestation in Pará, Brazil,” details how cattle ranchers illegally seized land and devastated the livelihoods of lawful residents in the Terra Nossa smallholder settlement and the Cachoeira Seca Indigenous territory, affecting their rights to housing, land, and culture. Human Rights Watch analysis of official sources shows that illegal farms in these areas sold cattle to several JBS direct suppliers.

The 101-page report, “Tax Giveaways, Struggling Schools: How Low Taxes Drove Sri Lanka’s Economic Crisis and Squandered its Education Lead,” describes how Sri Lanka’s successive governments have adopted policies that resulted in inadequate revenues, contributing not only to Sri Lanka defaulting on its debt but also to a decades-long decline in public education spending as a share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to among the lowest in the world. It also documents the impacts of inadequate funding on children’s right to education. Moreover, low corporate and personal tax revenues have led to an average of 80 percent of taxes coming from goods and services, which generally are regressive because they claim a higher share of poorer people’s income.
 

The 120-page report, “Debt Traps: Predatory Microfinance Loans and the Exploitation of Cambodia’s Indigenous Peoples,” documents that over-indebtedness among Indigenous communities in Cambodia’s northeastern provinces has led to coerced land sales, debt-driven suicides, food insecurity, and loss of access to health care and education. Cambodian microfinance institutions (MFIs) have routinely issued loans to Indigenous borrowers through credit officers and loan documents using Khmer, a language many Indigenous people do not understand, for amounts far exceeding their ability to repay.
 

The 51-page report, “‘Are you Alawi?’ Identity-Based Killings During Syria’s Transition,” documents widespread abuses by government forces, government-aligned armed groups, and armed volunteers, including summary executions, deliberate destruction of property, and abuse of detainees. The findings show that these crimes unfolded within the framework of a centrally coordinated military operation directed by the Defense Ministry, whose officials continued to coordinate deployments even after the mass killings became public.

The 59-page report, “‘We Pray to God by Torturing Journalists’: Warring Parties’ Systematic Violations Against Journalists and Press Freedom in Yemen,” documents the warring parties’ wide range of violations against journalists and media institutions, including the widespread use of arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, torture, and other inhuman treatment. The authorities on all sides of the conflict have also carried out broader violations against Yemenis’ right to free expression and against the media, including seizing media organizations, intimidating and harassing media workers and obstructing their movement and work.

The 142-page report, “‘They Accused Me of Trying to Go to Europe’: Migration Control Abuses and EU Externalization in Mauritania,” documents abuses by the Mauritanian police, coast guard, navy, gendarmerie, and army during border and migration control, including torture, rape, and other violence; sexual harassment; arbitrary arrests and detention; inhumane detention conditions; racist treatment; extortion and theft; and summary and collective expulsions. The crackdowns and rights violations were exacerbated by the European Union and Spain, bilaterally, continuing to outsource migration management to Mauritania, including through years of support to Mauritania’s border and migration control authorities.

The 72-page report, “‘Waiting for God’: Flood Displacement and Planned Relocation of Fisherfolk in Saint-Louis, Senegal,” concerns families who lost everything when coastal floods hit their historic fishing communities on the Langue de Barbarie peninsula in 2015 and 2016. They were moved to a site called Khar Yalla, which Senegalese officials acknowledge is unfit for permanent habitation. Authorities have violated their economic, social, and cultural rights through inaction, and left them out of a climate-related, planned relocation benefitting others from their communities.

The 50-page report, “Disrupted, Throttled, and Blocked: State Censorship, Control, and Increasing Isolation of Internet Users in Russia,” documents the impact of the government’s increasing technological capacities and control over the internet infrastructure. Human Rights Watch found that this allows the authorities to carry out more widespread and nontransparent blocking and throttling of unwanted websites and censorship circumvention tools, as well as internet disruptions and shutdowns under the pretext of ensuring public safety and national security.

The 92-page report, “‘You Feel Like Your Life is Over’: Abusive Practices at Three Florida Immigration Detention Centers Since January 2025,” documents that people detained at Krome North Service Processing Center (Krome), Broward Transitional Center (BTC), and the Federal Detention Center (FDC) in Miami have been held in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions and subjected to degrading treatment, and have not been given access to prompt and adequate medical care. The groups also reported the experiences of 17 immigrants in at the three detention facilities since January 20.

The 48-page report, “‘I’ll Never Feel Secure’: Undocumented and Exploited Myanmar Nationals in Thailand,” examines how the Thai police frequently stop and interrogate Myanmar nationals and extort them with the threat of arrest and detention if they fail to pay bribes. Human Rights Watch found this practice to be prevalent in the town of Mae Sot near the Myanmar border, where people refer to Myanmar nationals as “walking ATMs.” Myanmar nationals, living under the constant threat of deportation that could put them at grave risk, restrict their movements to stay out of sight of police and other authorities seeking to exploit them.

The 72-page report, “Punished for Getting Older: South Korea’s Age-based Policies and Older Workers’ Rights,” documents how three age-based employment laws and policies – the mandatory retirement age of 60 or older, the “peak wage” system, and re-employment policies – harm older workers, and how inadequate social security programs exacerbate their situation.

The 43-page report, “Congress in Cahoots: How Peru’s Legislature is Allowing Organized Crime to Thrive,” details how recent legislative actions and decisions by Congress have undermined efforts to investigate and prosecute criminal networks, eroded the autonomy of key public institutions, and rolled back environmental protections. President Dina Boluarte’s administration has often enabled this agenda, while relying heavily on declaring “states of emergency” – which suspend constitutional rights – as its primary crime-fighting tool.

The 88-page report, “‘Without Water, We Are Nothing’: The Urgent Need for a Water Law in Guatemala,” documents the pervasive lack of access to safe and sufficient water and sanitation services in Guatemala, which disproportionately affects Indigenous people, particularly women and girls. It also details the impact of inadequate access to water and sanitation on the right to health, including for children, in a country where nearly one in two children under five suffers from chronic malnutrition.