Human Rights Watch News

German Coalition’s Troubling Plans on Social Security

Human Rights Watch — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 03:02:01 -0400

The April 9 coalition agreement between Germany’s Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union and Social Democratic Party is unfortunately a return to a harsh social security system packaged as “reform” and “simplification.” Rather than addressing the growing number of people in the country at risk of poverty, the agreement strips back support for people receiving long-term unemployment assistance and punishes them by withholding benefits for “failure to cooperate.”

Human Rights Watch recently documented how social security support in Germany already falls short of what is needed to protect people’s rights to social security and an adequate standard of living, and likely also fails to meet the “minimum subsistence level” (Existenzminimum) required under German constitutional law. Women in particular, including single parents and older women living alone, are foregoing everyday essentials such as food or heating.

The agreement replaces the “Citizen’s Income,” introduced only in 2023, with the “New Basic Income for Jobseekers,” that relies on an older annual inflation-indexing method to calculate social security entitlements, which will result in real-terms cuts to benefits. The indexing method will also apply to other “basic” social security support for people over 65 or people considered permanently unable to work. This stark reality belies the coalition agreement’s stated aim “to maintain the level of social protection.”

Heike, from Cologne, who receives basic social security support because the state considers her permanently unable to work due to a health condition, told us: “One of the things that scares me the most is how social benefits will go back to the old calculation for inflation. When the adjustments are finally made, we will continue to vegetate below the Existenzminimum.”

The coalition plans some positive measures, including improving pension care credits for mothers of young children and improving tax relief for single parents and older people who continue working beyond state pension eligibility age. It also pledges increasing the basic pension supplement for older people on low incomes and adding €5 per month to existing educational support for qualifying families on low incomes.

But these proposed measures will be undermined by the increase in poverty that flows from tightening “basic” forms of social security support, which is the clear priority of the incoming government.

Rather than taking this punitive, restrictive path, Germany’s new government should commit to genuine reform, starting with examining the adequacy of social security support and reviewing its Existenzminimum calculation method, to ensure everyone in the country can enjoy their right to a decent living standard.

The EU Should Press Bhutan to Free Political Prisoners

Human Rights Watch — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 23:00:00 -0400

Click to expand Image Top row: Lok Bahadur Ghaley; Rinzin Wangdi; Chandra Raj Rai; Kumar Gautam. Bottom row: San Man Gurung; Birkha Bdr Chhetri; Omnath Adhikari; Chaturman Tamang. © Private

(Brussels) – The European Union should press Bhutanese authorities to release dozens of political prisoners held for decades in dire conditions, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said today. An EU human rights dialogue with Bhutan is scheduled later this month, just weeks after United Nations human rights experts issued a communication raising concerns over reports that the prisoners were “denied due process and fair trials, including access to lawyers,” and allegedly subjected to torture.

The communication by six UN human rights experts, published on April 4, raises concerns that “the broad and vague definitions [of “treason”], combined with the severity of the punishments, have a severe chilling effect on the enjoyment of human rights … and consequently on democratic life and civic space in the country.”

“Bhutan portrays itself as a land of ‘mindfulness’ and ‘gross national happiness,’ but UN reports paint quite a different picture,” said Smriti Singh, Regional Director for South Asia at Amnesty International. “Dozens are still detained, mistreated, and tortured solely for peacefully dissenting against the government’s policy, an ordeal Bhutan’s King could end at the stroke of a pen.”

Bhutan is seeking to enhance its international partnerships and economic cooperation, including with Australia, India, Thailand, and the EU. The relationship with the EU includes tariff and quota-free access for Bhutanese exports to the EU market under the Everything but Arms scheme, which is linked to international human rights obligations.

The EU is also providing assistance intended to promote human rights and civil society space, as well as investment in infrastructure development. The EU should insist that Bhutan shows its commitment and respect for human rights by immediately releasing all 32 political prisoners and others detained solely for the peaceful exercise of their human rights, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said. On April 14, Members of the European Parliament holding key positions on EU political and trade relations with Bhutan formulated similar calls in a letter to Bhutan’s prime minister.

The UN experts’ communication examines the cases of 19 named individuals, “among others,” expressing serious concern that their fair trial rights appear to have been violated, that they were “severely tortured, both to extract confessions and to punish them,” then convicted under “vague” laws, and jailed in inhumane conditions.

In 2023, Human Rights Watch documented the cases of 37 political prisoners in Bhutan. Since then, 5 have completed their sentences, leaving at least 32 still serving terms of between 32 years and life without parole.

In November 2024, another group of UN experts, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, adopted an opinion on three of the prisoners’ cases, finding that they met the definition of arbitrary detention, which would make their detention illegal under international human rights law. Both groups of experts asked the Bhutan government to respond to the allegations but have received no response.

Most of the cases relate to events in or around 1990, when about 90,000 Nepali-speaking Bhutanese were expelled from Bhutan amid widespread rights violations and became refugees in Nepal. Those who remained in or returned to Bhutan, who publicly opposed the arbitrary citizenship determination, were arrested, tortured, and convicted in unfair trials based on coerced confessions. The longest serving political prisoners have been in jail since 1990, while others were arrested in 2008 after they re-entered Bhutan to campaign for the right to return.

Tens of thousands of Bhutanese refugees eventually received refugee resettlement in third countries, including in the United States. However, the Trump administration has deported close to a dozen of these resettled refugees, stating that they have been accused or convicted of crimes in the US. This is a clear violation of international human rights law, including customary international law and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which prohibits the transfer of any person to another state where the individual could be at risk of being subjected to torture.

The Bhutan government permitted the US government to deport them to Bhutan and then promptly expelled them to Nepal via India, suggesting that the Bhutanese authorities continue to discriminate against this community.

The new UN communication raises allegations that “[p]olitical prisoners are reportedly given inadequate food, water, heating, bedding and warm clothing” and that “detainees [also] suffer shortages of medicines and access to doctors. Those with physical illnesses – some as a result of alleged torture – do not receive necessary medical treatment, which may have contributed to the death of two detainees.” The detainees are prevented from communicating with their families, they said.

The UN experts noted that in 1999 the former King Jigme Singye Wangchuck granted amnesty to 40 political prisoners, including some serving life sentences.
In 2022, the present king granted amnesty to a political prisoner serving a life term. “We implore the King to exercise His Majesty’s power to pardon and release from prison the remaining political prisoners, so as to demonstrate Bhutan’s commitment to upholding human rights and its international legal obligations,” the UN experts wrote.

“Bhutan has adopted significant reforms since 2008, but the continued detention of political prisoners represents a major stain on its human rights record,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Bhutan’s international partners and investors, including the EU, should make it clear that they expect Bhutan to comply with its human rights obligations and release them without further delay.”

Plastics Reform, Regulation Urged by Los Angeles Reproductive Justice Group

Human Rights Watch — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 15:01:23 -0400

The California state government in the United States should better regulate plastics, says the south Los Angeles-based reproductive justice organization Black Women for Wellness. The organization, which interviewed local community members for its new report on plastics, calls on California to legislate a US$5 billion plastic mitigation fund, paid for in part by polluters, to support the communities most impacted by plastics.

Plastics are mostly made of fossil fuels, and the new report echoes Human Rights Watch concerns that Black and Brown communities are often hardest hit with health and other harmful impacts from the fossil fuel industry due to the extraction, manufacturing, use of, and disposal of fossil fuel products. Plastics pose significant threats to human health, including reproductive health, and contribute to the climate crisis.

People told Black Women for Wellness that they feel overwhelmed by the unavoidability of exposure to plastics. This is especially the case when families rely on plastic-wrapped, low-cost food and drinks. They also noted how hard it is to find clear information on the health risks of chemicals contained in plastics and how to protect themselves from exposure to these chemicals.

Southern Los Angeles, the focus of the report, has long endured fossil fuel pollution, specifically from oil drilling and extraction. The community is both densely populated and the site of a massive oil field with thousands of active and idle wells that emit hazardous gases. Many years of advocacy was needed to obtain recent promises to reduce drilling and cap idle wells.

Black Women for Wellness fights racism and environmental harms to women’s and reproductive health, issues that are deeply interconnected. As the report notes, “chemicals released during the lifecycle of plastic are endocrine disrupting chemicals, which are linked to reproductive harms and infertility.” More work like this is needed to highlight and warn of the links between myriad forms of fossil fuel industry pollution and adverse maternal and newborn health outcomes, such as preterm birth and low birth weight.

US President Donald J. Trump’s administration has already begun to roll back environmental regulations, which could profoundly harm maternal and reproductive health. This makes the group’s recommendations to the state of California, including increasing public education about the plastic lifecycle, better regulating the fossil fuel industry, and helping communities access more sustainable options, all the more important.

Lebanon: Journalists, Activist Summoned for Investigations

Human Rights Watch — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 14:00:00 -0400

(Beirut) – Lebanese journalists, media organizations, and civil society groups are facing the repeated use of criminal defamation charges and other vague legal provisions in response to their work alleging corruption and financial mismanagement in the country, Human Rights Watch said today. On April 10, Lebanon’s public prosecution summoned journalists from Daraj and Megaphone, two Lebanese media organizations, and the executive director of Kulluna Irada, an advocacy group, for investigative hearings on April 15. Security services previously summoned Daraj journalists in March for questioning.

“Lebanon’s recent political changes have not deterred authorities form clamping down on independent media and civil society organizations investigating and reporting on alleged financial misconduct and corruption,” said Adam Coogle, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Once again, we are witnessing the weaponization of criminal defamation laws and other dubious legal provisions in order to stifle attempts to shed light on years of financial malpractices.”

Lebanon’s new president and government, including the minister of information, as well as the current parliament should publicly commit to protecting the right to freedom of expression.

Since March 2025, Lebanon’s Anti-Cybercrime and Intellectual Property Rights Bureau, an Internal Security Forces unit tasked with combating cybercrime and enhancing online security, has twice summoned the editor-in-chief of Daraj following lawsuits over its investigations. Daraj’s lawyer told Human Rights Watch that documents he reviewed related to the lawsuits stated they were filed by Antoun Sehnaoui, the CEO of Lebanese bank Société Générale de Banque au Liban (SGBL). The lawsuits, which accuse Daraj of “defamation” and other vague charges, were filed following the media organization’s reporting on alleged financial malpractices by SGBL and the Lebanese banking sector more generally.

Media reports and Daraj’s lawyer say that Sehnaoui first filed a libel and defamation lawsuit against Daraj’s editor-in-chief, Hazem al-Amin, and journalist Jana Barakat in March 2024 in response to a 2023 investigative report on alleged financial malpractices by SGBL and Sehnaoui in the years leading up to and following Lebanon’s economic and financial crisis in 2019. Sehnaoui filed a second lawsuit against al-Amin, the lawyer said, on March 10, 2025, in relation to a video report commenting on Sehanoui’s initial lawsuit and al-Amin’s summons by the cybercrime bureau. Human Rights Watch sent a letter outlining its findings and posing questions to Antoun Sehnaoui on April 4 but has not received a response.

A third complaint, filed by three lawyers in March, accuses Daraj and Megaphone of “undermining the state’s financial standing and destabilizing confidence in the Lebanese currency and bonds,” “inciting depositors to withdraw their funds,” “stirring up strife,” “undermining the prestige of the state and national sentiment,” “assault and conspiracy against state security,” and “receiving foreign funding for media campaigns seeking to harm Lebanon.” On March 26, Lebanon’s top public prosecutor referred this complaint to the public prosecutor at the court of appeals.

On March 11, a separate group of lawyers filed a complaint against the Lebanese advocacy group Kulluna Irada, accusing the group of publishing false or exaggerated information “that seeks to weaken the morale of the nation,” “undermine the prestige of the state or its financial standing,” and “to cause a decline in the value of national banknotes or undermine confidence in the strength of the state’s currency, its bonds, and all other securities related to public financial confidence.” On March 25, Lebanese TV reported that Lebanon’s public prosecutor also had referred the complaint to the public prosecutor at the court of appeals.

Human Rights Watch has previously documented the Lebanese authorities’ increasing use of defamation and insult laws to silence journalists, activists, and others critical of government policies and corruption. Even if the judiciary is quick to dismiss such complaints, they are an intimidation tactic that can have a chilling effect on the media and lead to self-censorship, Human Rights Watch said.

As parliament debates a new media law, it should affirm Lebanon’s human rights obligations by repealing insult and defamation provisions in the penal code and replacing them with civil penalties. Parliament should ensure that the new media law meets international human rights standards, including by eliminating all charges and penalties based on peaceful speech, Human Rights Watch said.

In a 2019 report, Human Rights Watch found that the Cybercrimes Bureau had initiated 3,599 defamation investigations between January 2015 and May 2019. The numbers the bureau provided to Human Rights Watch at the time indicated a 325 percent increase in defamation cases for online speech between 2015 and 2018, coinciding with worsening economic conditions and public disillusionment in Lebanon.

In a joint statement in March, Lebanese media organizations, civil society groups, and parliament members condemned the ongoing campaign to silence media outlets and called on Lebanon’s Public Prosecution Offices to reject politically motivated investigations of journalists and civil society organizations.

Lebanon’s constitution guarantees freedom of expression “within the limits established by law,” but the penal code criminalizes defamation against public officials and authorizes imprisonment for up to one year.

“Without serious reforms, criminal defamation laws in Lebanon are easily exploited to stifle legitimate speech,” Coogle said. “As Lebanon’s government promises key financial, judicial, and social reforms, it should also work to strengthen freedom of expression protections afforded under Lebanese law.”

UN Landmines Resolution Highlights Human Rights Impact

Human Rights Watch — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 02:30:00 -0400

Click to expand Image Delegates sit at the opening of the 41th session of the Human Rights Council, at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, June 24, 2019. © 2019 Magali Girardin/Keystone via AP

(Geneva, April 14, 2025) – The United Nations Human Rights Council’s first resolution on landmines strongly endorses the long-standing international treaty prohibiting antipersonnel mines at a critical time, Human Rights Watch said today. The council Resolution 58/22 on “the impact of anti-personnel mines on the full enjoyment of all human rights” was adopted without a vote on April 4, 2025, the International Day for Mine Action and Mine Awareness.

Since March, five European countries have announced their intention to withdraw from the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, while US government aid cuts have disrupted mine clearance operations around the world, putting civilian lives at risk.

“The UN Human Rights Council resolution on antipersonnel landmines, supported by countries from around the world, sends a clear message that these weapons violate fundamental human rights,” said Mary Wareham, deputy crisis, conflict and arms director at Human Rights Watch. “Countries contemplating leaving the Mine Ban Treaty should reconsider given the devastating, long-term risk posed to civilians and the global support for the ban.”

The resolution directs the UN high commissioner for human rights to report on the impact of antipersonnel mines “on the enjoyment of all human rights, with particular emphasis on economic, social and cultural rights.” It sets up an interactive dialogue on landmines at the council’s 62nd session in the first half of 2026.

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Antipersonnel mines are designed to explode in response to a person’s presence, proximity, or contact. They are typically placed by hand, but can also be scattered by aircraft, rockets, and artillery or dispersed from drones and specialized vehicles. They cannot distinguish between soldiers and civilians, making them unlawfully indiscriminate under international humanitarian law.

Uncleared landmines pose a danger until cleared and destroyed. Mined land can drive displacement of the civilian population, hinder the delivery of humanitarian aid, and prevent agricultural activities. A Human Rights Watch report published on April 8, 2025, says that contamination from landmines, cluster munitions, and other weapons used during the 14-year conflict in Syria has killed at least 249 people, including 60 children, and injured another 379 since December 8, 2024.

The Landmine Monitor in its 2024 report found that civilians made up 84 percent of all recorded landmine casualties in 2023, while children were 37 percent of casualties when the age was recorded. The highest number of casualties in 2023 was recorded in Myanmar, where antipersonnel mines have been used by junta forces and opposition, and ethnic armed groups in all 14 Myanmar states and regions, affecting about 60 percent of the country’s townships.

A group of countries from all regions, including Algeria, Croatia, Mozambique, Peru, South Africa, United Kingdom, and Vanuatu, submitted the resolution to the council. The resolution notes the positive efforts of countries, international organizations, and civil society to address the humanitarian impacts of antipersonnel mines through implementation of the Mine Ban Treaty, also called the Ottawa Convention. It urges all countries to accede to the treaty and “strengthen their efforts to put an end to the suffering and casualties caused by antipersonnel mines.”

The Mine Ban Treaty, ratified by 165 countries, prohibits use, production, transfer, and stockpiling of antipersonnel mines and requires parties to destroy stockpiles, clear mined areas, and assist victims. Russia has not joined the treaty and its forces have used antipersonnel landmines extensively in Ukraine since its full-scale invasion in 2022, causing civilian casualties and contaminating agricultural land. Mine Ban Treaty member state Ukraine has also used antipersonnel mines since 2022 and has received them from the United States, in violation of the treaty.

Russia’s war in Ukraine and uncertainty over Europe’s future security are contributing to a difficult environment as five European Union member states are considering leaving the treaty. On March 18, defense ministers from Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania announced their governments’ intent to withdraw from the treaty. On April 1, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo of Finland announced that his government is preparing to withdraw from the treaty to “give us the possibility to prepare for the changes in the security environment in a more versatile way.”

Withdrawal from the Mine Ban Treaty typically requires formal parliamentary approval by the state party concerned. Article 20 of the treaty explicitly prevents a state party that is engaged in armed conflict from withdrawing before the end of the conflict. Any withdrawal will take effect six months after the denunciation documents are submitted to the UN and the convention’s states parties as long as the country is not engaged in armed conflict at that time.

For over three decades, the United States has been the world’s largest contributor to humanitarian demining, mine risk education, and rehabilitation programs for landmine survivors. But the Trump administration’s deep cuts to foreign aid are now disrupting mine clearance operations. Thousands of deminers have been fired or put on administrative leave pending the completion of ostensible reviews.

Of the 47 current members of the council, 40 have ratified the Mine Ban Treaty. China, Cuba, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco, South Korea, and Vietnam have not.

The council resolution says that all states and other relevant stakeholders should cooperate to accelerate demining efforts and ensure inclusive, non-discriminatory, and comprehensive victim assistance. It also urges “coordinated, multi-sectoral efforts” so that the needs of landmine survivors—in particular children, their families and communities—are effectively addressed and “their human rights promoted and protected.”

“Statements by European countries looking to withdraw from the Mine Ban Treaty ignore the reasons they joined the treaty in the first place,” Wareham said. “They should remind themselves why antipersonnel mines have been thoroughly stigmatized for decades and not seek a return of this ghastly weapon.”

Human Rights Watch is a co-founder of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which received the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, and the Cluster Munition Coalition. It contributes to the campaign’s annual Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor reports.

EU-PA Dialogue Should Focus on Palestinians’ Rights

Human Rights Watch — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 00:00:00 -0400

Click to expand Image European Union's foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas (L) and Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa at a press conference following their meeting in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, March 24, 2025. © 2025 Nasser Nasser/AP Photo

(Brussels, April 14, 2025) – European Union High Representative Kaja Kallas and EU foreign ministers should focus on the protection of Palestinians’ rights during the high-level dialogue with the Palestinian Authority (PA) on April 14, 2025, Human Rights Watch said today.

In recent months, the PA has escalated its repression of dissent, arbitrarily arresting and torturing critics and opponents with impunity. Following the February 24 EU-Israel Association Council meeting, Israeli authorities have ratcheted up their repression of Palestinians in the West Bank, part of their crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution, and are continuing to carry out acts of genocide in Gaza.

“Israeli authorities’ atrocities do not give the Palestinian Authority a free pass to arrest and torture critics and opponents.” said Claudio Francavilla, associate EU director at Human Rights Watch. “The EU should denounce the Palestinian Authority’s abuses, but it won’t be taken seriously unless it ends its own double standards and addresses Israel’s apartheid and acts of genocide against the Palestinians.”

As the main donor to the PA, the EU should press to end arbitrary arrests, mistreatment, and torture. Palestinian security forces arbitrarily arrest critics and opponents and taunt, mistreat, beat, and torture detainees with impunity, as Human Rights Watch has extensively documented.

Hamza Zbeidat, 40, told Human Rights Watch that PA police forces arrested him from his home in the Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem on February 20, hours after he called on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to step down in a Facebook post. He said that PA forces “hit me nonstop across my body, cursed at me and yelled, ‘you dog, you animal, we will educate you.’” They placed him in an overcrowded cell and dumped cold water on him on a frigid day, he said. Interrogators questioned him about the post and prosecutors charged him with insulting “higher authorities,” under their restrictive cybercrime law, as well as with assault of an officer during his arrest, court documents show. The PA routinely uses the charge of insulting “higher authorities,” as they also did following a 2021 arrest of Zbeidat for participating in a protest over the killing of a prominent activist by PA forces, and related charges to criminalize peaceful dissent. They released him on February 28, but the charge remains outstanding.

In 2024, the Palestinian statutory watchdog, the Independent Commission for Human Rights, received 231 complaints for arbitrary arrests, including detention without trial or charge, and 124 complaints of torture and ill-treatment during detention by the PA. In an April 2024 report, the commission said it received 1,148 complaints about torture and ill-treatment against the PA, 766 against the police, between 2018 and 2022 and highlighted widespread impunity for these abuses.

Human Rights Watch wrote to PA Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa on February 27 to request updated information about arrests and treatment of detainees but has not received a substantive response.

Between December 5 and January 21, the PA conducted security operations in the Jenin refugee camp in which at least 11 people were killed in December alone. Those killed included security officers, but also at least two children, a journalism student, and an unarmed resident riding a motorcycle, the commission reported. Seven camp residents told Human Rights Watch that amid these operations they often could not safely enter and leave the camp, access to food, electricity, and water was limited, and many homes were damaged. The Palestinian legal organization Lawyers for Justice documented over 200 arrests and abuses, including arbitrary detention, restrictions on access to lawyers, and communication with family, and torture.

On January 21, the Israeli army raided the Jenin refugee camp, which they have controlled since, and displaced more than 16,000 residents, destroyed critical infrastructure, and killed 25 Palestinians.

Amid Al Jazeera’s reporting on the PA operations in Jenin, the Palestinian attorney general on January 1 suspended the international media outlet from broadcasting from the occupied territory, following a ministerial committee’s assessment that it had broadcast “inciting” material and “misinformation, sedition and interference in Palestinian internal affairs.”

On January 5, a Palestinian court restricted local access to several Al Jazeera websites, claiming that their reporting “threaten[s] national security and incite[s] the commission of crimes.” The Israeli government has also banned Al Jazeera and closed its Ramallah office. The bans on Al Jazeera are an alarming escalation by Israeli and Palestinian authorities to restrict media freedom and further limit the spread of information about serious abuses in Israel and Palestine, Human Rights Watch said.

In January, the Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council wrote to President Abbas about the “numerous violations” they had documented by Palestinian security forces, including “torture, ill-treatment, violations of freedom of opinion and expression, arbitrary arrests and detentions as punitive measures, collective punishments, including holding citizens as hostages, the closure of newspapers, media outlets, and websites … issuance of administrative decisions aimed at intimidating citizens, and failure to respect and implement judicial decisions.”

In March, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights documented a “pattern of arbitrary detention and torture and ill-treatment of detainees, including perceived opponents in the West Bank … journalists, human rights defenders and other individuals deemed to be critical” by the PA.” It highlighted accounts by men and boys of “severe beatings” and “prolonged placement in stress positions, threats, and solitary confinement.”

During the EU-Israel Association Council meeting with Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar on February 24, EU foreign ministers raised concerns about Israeli abuses against Palestinians, but their calls went unanswered. Israeli authorities again blocked all aid from entering Gaza, in flagrant violation of international law and a genocidal act, and launched renewed airstrikes that have killed hundreds of civilians, including women and children, journalists, and paramedics. In the northern West Bank, Israel is increasingly using abusive tactics from Gaza in an escalating campaign.

In July 2024, a groundbreaking ruling by the International Court of Justice found that Israel’s occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful and that Israel is responsible for racial segregation and apartheid – adding to the consensus within the human rights movement. The court stated that Israeli settlements should be dismantled and that no other country – including the EU and its member states – should recognize or support Israel’s occupation, including trading with or investing in the settlements.

In February, 163 organizations and trade unions, including Human Rights Watch, urged the EU to ban trade and business with the settlements. They have yet to receive a reply, and requests for meetings with EU leaders to discuss the matter have been dismissed.

Given Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, the governments of Spain and Ireland, numerous organizations, including Human Rights Watch, and Members of the European Parliament have urged the EU to review, with a view to suspend, the EU-Israel Association Agreement. Other calls supported by Human Rights Watch and other groups include suspending arms transfers to Israel, given the high risk of complicity in serious crimes, and support for the International Criminal Court and execution of all its arrest warrants. EU member states, though, are sharply divided and the EU Commission is reluctant to hold Israeli authorities to account.

“Palestinians find themselves between a rock and a hard place, and the EU is supporting both repressive authorities,” Francavilla said. “If the EU really cares about the human rights of Palestinians, it should take long overdue action to hold Israeli authorities to account and stop financing the PA’s machinery of repression.”

EU Border Agency: Use Aerial Surveillance to Save Lives at Sea

Human Rights Watch — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 00:00:00 -0400

(Brussels, April 14, 2025) – Frontex, the European Union’s Border and Coast Guard agency, should ensure that its aerial surveillance capacity is used to save lives at sea, Human Rights Watch said today. The organization met with Frontex Executive Director Hans Leijtens on April 2, 2025, to deliver an EU-wide petition calling on the agency to take concrete steps that would enable more timely rescues of vessels in distress.

“The shocking death toll in the Mediterranean requires concerted action,” said Judith Sunderland, associate Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “As an actor at sea, Frontex has a responsibility under international law to use its resources to facilitate rescues that end in disembarkation of rescued people in a safe place.”

Click to expand Image Iskra Kirova, Europe and Central Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, in front of the Frontex headquarters in Warsaw, Poland, April 2, 2025. © 2025 Judith Sunderland/Human Rights Watch

Over the last decade, at least 31,700 people have died or been reported missing in the Mediterranean Sea, according to the International Organization for Migration. More than three-fourths of these deaths and disappearances occur in the Central Mediterranean, between North Africa and Italy/Malta, making it by far the deadliest stretch.

The petition calls on Frontex to take clear steps to uphold its EU and international human rights obligations by prioritizing saving lives at sea. The agency should ensure that information about boats in distress sighted by Frontex aircraft is shared with nongovernmental rescue ships in the area. It should issue more frequent emergency alerts that go to all vessels and provide continuous monitoring as much as possible of vessels in distress.

Frontex should address any current constraints on its ability to take these steps, Human Rights Watch said. This includes ensuring it can operate on a broad interpretation of distress that reflects the foreseeable danger facing unseaworthy boats at sea and the positive obligations attached to the right to life.

In December 2024, a group of United Nations agencies, along with the Centre for Humanitarian Action at Sea, called jointly for a “broad understanding of distress,” resulting in a humanitarian and precautionary approach to identifying and responding to distress situations.”

The European Commission has signaled its intention to significantly expand Frontex by tripling its standing corps to 30,000 border guards and to review its mandate in 2026 to increase its role in deportations. Frontex’s size, role, and responsibilities have grown significantly since it was created in 2004. The agency’s mandate was significantly expanded already in 2019 when a revised regulation expanded its tasks and empowered it to have a standing corps of 10,000 border guards. Frontex’s annual budget skyrocketed from €142 million in 2015 to €922 million in 2024.

Any changes to Frontex’s mandate should strengthen rather than dilute its human rights standards, transparency, and accountability, Human Rights Watch said. This would include making sure that providing Frontex assets and services to member states is conditional on a broad definition of distress, cooperation with humanitarian organizations, and monitoring of distress cases and rescue operations.

The petition delivered to Frontex is part of the Human Rights Watch #WithHumanity campaign. Almost 18,000 people signed the petition, with almost half of all signatures coming from Italy, which is on the front lines of rescue-at-sea efforts, with the remaining signatures primarily from France, Germany, Spain, and Sweden. Twenty-two nongovernmental organizations supported the initiative. The overall engagement with the campaign reflects strong support for measures to address the appalling loss of life in the Mediterranean Sea, Human Rights Watch said.

A 2022 analysis by Human Rights Watch and Border Forensics of Frontex aerial surveillance concluded that the agency’s practices make it complicit in well-documented abusive and indefinite arbitrary detention and other serious human rights violations in Libya.

While largely abdicating responsibility for search-and-rescue operations since 2017, the EU and its member states have focused on shoring up the ability of countries on the southern rim of the Mediterranean Sea to patrol their coastlines. Aerial surveillance by Frontex in the Central Mediterranean is part of this strategy: the agency shares the location of migrant boats it spots with relevant EU member states but also with authorities in Libya and Tunisia. This enables interdictions followed by returns to those countries, where migrants face serious human rights abuses.

As an EU agency, Frontex has human rights obligations under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights as well as under the 2019 Frontex Regulation and the agency’s own Fundamental Rights Action Plan. International human rights law obliges Frontex to refrain from violating anyone’s human rights directly and not to expose them indirectly to serious violations of those rights, such as torture, elsewhere. The agency should therefore take steps to mitigate the human rights risks of its intelligence-gathering and border management activities. Frontex is also bound to protect the right to life, including by taking positive steps to prevent loss of life where there are foreseeable threats and life-threatening situations.

“People across the EU are sending a message that no one should be left to die at sea,” Sunderland said. “As warmer weather may see more attempts to cross the Mediterranean, Frontex should act now to ensure it does everything it can to prevent avoidable tragedies.”

Sudan: After 2 Years of War, Global Action Needed

Human Rights Watch — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 23:00:00 -0400

Click to expand Image A view of the damage surrounding Al-Shaab Teaching Hospital following intense clashes between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces in Khartoum, Sudan, on March 29, 2025. ©2025 Mohammed Nzar Awad/Anadolu via Getty Images

(Nairobi) – Leaders gathering in London on April 15, 2025, should urgently work to protect civilians and guarantee safe, unfettered aid provision as the conflict in Sudan enters its third year, Human Rights Watch said today. The conference, co-hosted by the United Kingdom, the European Union, France, and Germany, takes place as civilians across Sudan continue to face egregious abuses and deliberate harm.

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have committed widespread abuses, including extrajudicial killings, sexual violence, and rampant looting, and destruction of civilian infrastructure since conflict broke out on April 15, 2023. The RSF and allied militias have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in a campaign of ethnic cleansing in West Darfur. Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more injured. An estimated 12.9 million people have fled their homes; half the country’s population faces acute hunger, and famine is spreading.

“For the last two years, Sudan’s warring parties have subjected the population to horrific abuses and suffering, and blocked aid, plunging the country into the world’s worst humanitarian disasters,” said Mohamed Osman, Sudan researcher at Human Rights Watch. “International leaders should ensure that discussions to improve the humanitarian situation go hand in hand with commitments at the highest level to protect civilians.”

Click here to read major Human Rights Watch reports documenting some of the serious civilian harm in the conflict

The UK, as co-host of the conference, should build on past efforts at the United Nations Security Council to advance the discussion on civilian protection. They should ensure that like-minded countries, including from Africa and Middle East, make concrete commitments to protect civilians such as by forming a coalition of countries dedicated to moving this agenda forward and considering options such as the deployment of a mission to protect civilians, Human Rights Watch said.

Participants should also publicly acknowledge the lifesaving role of local responders and health workers, commit to provide them with support and protection, and make it clear that war crimes like attacks on medical facilities and personnel will have consequences.

In recent weeks, the SAF has regained control over areas previously under RSF control. On March 27, 2025, Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, SAF’s commander, announced his forces had pushed the RSF out of the capital, Khartoum, which had been largely under RSF control since the conflict’s onset. On March 20, the UN reported that dozens of civilians including local humanitarian workers had been killed in shelling and bombings, and that the RSF had summarily executed people in their homes, while forces from both sides had looted civilian property and aid supplies.

Three volunteers in Khartoum told Human Rights Watch that in the months before the SAF drove the RSF out of Khartoum, the RSF targeted community kitchens in areas under their control, detaining several volunteers, looting food supplies, and imposing so called “protection fees.” The SAF has also intimidated, and arrested volunteers in areas under their control.

On April 3, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk condemned reports of “widespread extrajudicial killings of civilians in Khartoum following its recapture by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) on 26 March.”

As displaced people start returning to Khartoum, images are emerging confirming massive destruction of civilian infrastructure and looting of property. International media outlets reported the discovery of an RSF detention center and up to 550 new graves, and former detainees spoke of torture and starvation at the site.

“We came back to Khartoum to find it in ruins,” a 51-year-old woman who returned home to Bahri, Khartoum’s sister city, told Human Rights Watch. “In our neighborhood, everyone lost a relative or neighbor because of the fighting. Some of our neighbors have been missing for months. We found out that people are using a playground nearby as a graveyard because they couldn’t bury their loved ones properly in the cemetery.”

Civilians are still under attack in areas where hostilities continue. For almost a year, incessant fighting in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, has killed countless civilians and forced many to flee to Zamzam, a camp for displaced people 15 kilometers away, where famine was first declared last August and which the RSF has repeatedly attacked in 2025. In January, an alleged drone strike on a hospital in El Fasher reportedly killed dozens of people. These attacks forced the UN World Food Programme to pause food distribution there in February. According to the UN, at least 70 children have been reportedly killed or maimed in El Fasher in the last three months alone. Leaders meeting in London should press the warring parties in and around El Fasher to protect civilians, allow safe movement of people and aid in line with their international humanitarian law obligations and the Security Council resolution adopted in June 2024.

During the SAF offensive to recapture Gezira state, which was largely under RSF control between December 2023 and February 2025, SAF and allied militia attacked civilians in the capital city, Madani, and surrounding areas. Human Rights Watch found that the Sudan Shield, an armed group fighting alongside SAF, intentionally targeted civilians and their property in an attack on the village of Tayba on January 10, 2025, killing at least 26 people. The RSF, which has carried out widespread summary killings, rape, and looting in Gezira while the state was under its control, also reportedly continued to attack parts of the state, killing at least 18 people in March 2025.

Aerial bombardments by SAF continue, including an attack on a busy market in Tora, North Darfur, in March 2025 that reportedly killed and injured dozens of people.

Both sides are obstructing aid and continue to target local responders, while funding cuts to humanitarian aid, including those imposed by the Trump administration, have further undermined aid operations including the operating capacity of local responders. UN experts said in June 2024, that both parties are using starvation as a weapon of war. On March 14, 2025, the secretary general of the international medical charity MSF (Doctors Without Borders) told the Security Council that “violence against civilians is driving humanitarian needs.”

Impunity for the crimes in Sudan emboldens abusive forces, Human Rights Watch said. In February 2025, Türk said that “accountability, regardless of the rank and affiliation of the perpetrators, is critical to breaking the recurring cycle of violence and impunity in Sudan.”

Governments should also commit to closing the impunity gap, including by ensuring the necessary political and financial support for ongoing investigations, notably by the International Criminal Court, the UN Fact-Finding Mission, and the African Commission for Peoples’ and Human Rights, as well as pushing the warring parties to allow access to Sudan by independent monitors and investigators.

Another key factor fueling the violence and emboldening the warring parties is the undeterred flow of weapons from external actors. In September 2024, Human Rights Watch documented the use of apparently newly acquired foreign-made equipment in regions of Sudan including Darfur, where a UN arms embargo is still in effect.

Leaders meeting in London should condemn arms embargo violations, including by the UAE, and commit to expanding the UN arms embargo and sanctions regime and to preventing the sale of any arms that could end up in the hands of Sudan’s warring parties.

“Global leaders have a chance to take firmer action to stop the warring sides from carrying out atrocities against civilians and allow aid to flow to those in dire need,” Osman said. “Leaders should provide life-saving aid, provide financial and political backing to local responders, support accountability efforts, and support creation of a global mission to protect civilians.”

China: Police Arrest Tibetans for Internet, Phone Use

Human Rights Watch — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 19:00:00 -0400

(New York) – China’s government has arrested dozens of people in Tibetan areas since 2021 for politically motived phone and internet-related offenses, Human Rights Watch said today. Tibetan journalists in exile report that these arrests typically target Tibetans accused of keeping “banned content” on their phone or contacting people outside China, including relatives.

The full scale of such arrests and prosecutions is unknown, as Chinese authorities do not disclose official data for political offenses. The more than 60 reported cases appear related to an increase in government surveillance during this period, including through mass phone searches and the use of mandatory phone apps with built-in government surveillance, as well as a tightened regulatory regime on data and religion.

“For Tibetans, simply using a cellphone has become dangerous, and everyday activities like posting a humorous video or contacting loved ones abroad can bring arrest, detention, and torture,” said Maya Wang, associate China director at Human Rights Watch. “Tibetans, particularly those living in remote areas, once celebrated the arrival of cellphones so they could stay in touch with friends and family, but their phones have effectively become government tracking devices.”

Human Rights Watch reviewed relevant cases since 2021 reported by Tibetan exile media, including Radio Free Asia and the Tibet Times, general media outlets, and official Chinese government sources. Human Rights Watch also interviewed residents in Tibetan areas, and a retired official with direct knowledge of the situation.

In many cases, those arrested were accused of keeping “banned content” on their phones or sharing it online. Such “banned content” typically includes references to Tibetan religious figures, particularly the exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and expressions of pro-Tibetan sentiment. Chinese authorities have applied the ambiguous language of the law broadly: in one case, a man was arrested for setting up a WeChat group celebrating the birthdays of 80-year-old Buddhist monks. The police said it was “illegal” to form such a chat group “without permission.”

Tibetans have also been arrested for posting content online that the police deem to be promoting the use of Tibetan language and opposing the Chinese government’s language policy in primary schools, which replaces Tibetan with Mandarin Chinese as the medium of instruction. The authorities have closed down several Tibetan-language websites hosting cultural and educational content since 2020, including the popular Luktsang Palyon blog in April 2024, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy reported. A leading Tibetan webmaster, Bumpa Gyal, was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2022 for engaging in unspecified “illegal activities,” after he offered technical support to Tibetan cultural and education websites.

Chinese authorities have also arrested Tibetans for using their electronic devices to contact people outside China and for sharing information about Tibet abroad. Those arrested have been prosecuted and received lengthy prison sentences for such activities. In 2021, Human Rights Watch documented the arrest of four monks in southwest Tibet who were sentenced to up to 20 years in prison for contacting Tibetan monks of the same monastic order living in Nepal.

It is often unclear what happened to people who have been arrested, given the extreme information controls in the region. However, in the few cases where information was available, some of those arrested were imprisoned, mistreated, and tortured. In a particularly egregious case, a 38-year-old monk named Losel from Lhasa’s Sera Monastery was beaten and died from his injuries in May 2024. He had been arrested for allegedly “collecting and sending information abroad,” Tibetan exile media reported.

Many Tibetans have relatives living in exile in South Asia, Europe, and North America. The Chinese government’s intensified security measures following the 2008 Tibetan protests, which put an end to unauthorized border crossings and its discriminatory restrictions on the issuance of passports to Tibetans since 2012, have made foreign travel impossible for most Tibetans. The restrictions and monitoring of internet use and the punishment of users suspected of having contacts outside China mean that Tibetans in China and those in exile now have extremely limited contact.

Many of the Chinese government’s tactics against Tibetans to cut off their communication with the outside world are similar to those being used against Uyghurs, Human Rights Watch said.

The Chinese government should respect Tibetans’ rights to privacy and freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, association, and religion, Human Rights Watch said. The government should allow United Nations monitors, independent human rights researchers, and journalists unfettered access to the region to examine these cases and the general human rights situation.

“Tibetans have not only lost their rights to freely express themselves and to access information, but they are losing even their basic right to communicate with their loved ones,” Wang said. “Even as global communications grow, the Chinese government increasingly seeks to close off and control entire populations.”

Policing the Internet
The Chinese government’s monitoring of people’s online activity is not new. The Ministry of Public Security employs internet police personnel at provincial, prefecture, and county levels to censor and surveil internet users, while social media companies censor and monitor online content through teams of content moderators in addition to automated restrictions.

In addition, the authorities offer cash rewards to people for informing on one another. This became a formal policing method under the “Anti-Gang Crime” campaign that was adopted in 2018. The campaign has effectively criminalized and eliminated civil society activism in Tibetan areas. A retired senior official of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) told Human Rights Watch in December 2019 that:

In Lhasa residential courtyards and neighborhood committees there are letter boxes, WeChat numbers, and notice boards for reporting people who say things that are not allowed to say, meet people they are not allowed to meet, spread “reactionary” talk they are not allowed to spread.... There are rewards ranging from RMB100 (US$14) to RMB10,000 ($1,400) according to the importance and the quality of the leads provided. The large rewards given to suppliers of major leads are announced in public for all to see.

A six-point public notice from the Qinghai Party Committee’s Internet Information Office in November 2024 offers up to RMB100,000 ($14,000) for tipoffs on anyone writing online who commits offenses from a list that is largely political, starting with “opposing the leadership of the Party.”

In March 2022, the TAR Internet Illegal and Harmful Information Reporting Center received 1,395 reports, of which 35 percent were “politically harmful information,” 26 percent were “harmful information related to Tibet,” and 12 percent were “socially harmful information.” By comparison, “obscene and pornographic information” accounted for 6 percent of reports received.

Increased Manual Phone Searches
Intimidation and random searching of phones by police has been more frequent during security campaigns preceding sensitive anniversaries such as March 10 – the anniversary of the 1959 Lhasa uprising – or major political events in China such as the annual Chinese Communist Party meetings, based on reports. Police search people’s phones either by using phone scanning devices (known as Universal Forensic Extraction Devices, or UFEDs) that allow access to data on people’s phones or by forcing people to unlock their phones. Police have done this at checkpoints in Lhasa and other cities.

The first reports of Chinese police carrying out mass manual phone searches in rural areas of Tibet appeared in Tibetan exile media outlets in mid-2021. According to these reports, police in Sershul county, northwest Sichuan province, detained 117 Tibetans in 2021 for weeks of extrajudicial “political education” after the authorities claimed they had “banned content” on their phones. Since then, there have been several reports of manual phone searches to target Tibetans accused of sending news abroad:

In Drango county, Kandze prefecture, Sichuan province in February 2022, following the demolition of a giant Buddha statue by county authorities despite popular opposition, police conducted mass phone inspections searching for people who had reported this event online.In Derge county, Kandze prefecture, Sichuan province in February 2024, when local protests against dam construction attracted international attention, the authorities shut down internet services and made mass arrests, and police checked people’s WeChat and TikTok accounts to identify Tibetans who had posted reports of these events online.At Taktsang Lhamo monastery, Dzorge county, Ngawa prefecture, Sichuan province in October 2024, after Tibetan monks messaged contacts to say that their monastery school had been closed by Chinese authorities, authorities checked the phones of the monks and confiscated some of them.

Human Rights Watch has independently confirmed reports of local police systematically searching cell phones for banned text and images in rural areas in Nagchu municipality, TAR, that were not connected to specific incidents. In November 2021, a rural Nagchu resident told Human Rights Watch that leaders of his village committee ordered residents to gather at the village center to have their cellphones screened by the township police, particularly those of young people who might have “illegal” images of religious signs, content, or songs.

The police said if anyone is caught with such things, “the crime is more serious than killing,” as their family would also be affected. The resident said that this was not new but had been in place for several years, and some young men were detained for having such items in their phones.

Compulsory Download of Government ‘Anti-Fraud’ App
Media reporting on several Tibetan areas found that police have forced Tibetans to download a government app to their phones en masse at security checkpoints and during compulsory meetings, ostensibly to educate the public about online fraud. Official reports describe police and party members being mobilized to visit homes and businesses in Tibetan areas to “promote,” “guide,” and “assist” on the installation of the anti-fraud app, which China’s National Anti-Fraud Center created in 2021.

The research network Turquoise Roof conducted a technical analysis of the app that found that in addition to its stated purpose of countering online fraud and allowing them to report potential scams, the app “grants operators access to sensitive user data or control over key device functionalities, allowing for highly invasive surveillance.” When downloaded to a smart phone, according to the analysis, it can access a user’s data including sensitive personal information, activity logs, private messages, call records including time stamps and contact information, and browser history, all without the user’s consent and knowledge.

The app requires a user to scan their face and their ID card to begin using it, utilizing facial verification technology to compare images, and capturing biometric data that can be networked with other data sources in a large government database with data analytics capabilities to track and monitor people at population scale.

The forced download of the “anti-fraud” app has been reported elsewhere in China. Party workers have publicly complained about having to meet monthly app installation quotas as part of their performance evaluation. Given the severe repression in Tibetan areas, Tibetans have found it more even difficult to refuse to comply with these police orders.

Increasing Online Restrictions on Religion
In March 2022, Chinese internet management regulations banned in the TAR all religious content not authorized by the government. Authorization is granted only to religious teachers considered politically reliable. Many ordinary Tibetans, both monastic and laity, rely on the internet and social media for access to religious teachings and materials, particularly as the government has closely managed physical access to religion.

While similar regulations have been applied nationwide to eliminate religious expression not sanctioned by the state, implementation is particularly strict in Tibetan areas, where Tibetan Buddhism is considered a direct threat to the Chinese Communist Party’s legitimacy.

Police routinely question, detain, and criminally prosecute lay believers for circulating religious teachings online, exile media reported. Two women from Sershul county, Sichuan province, known for participating in local prayer meetings and social service initiatives were reportedly forcibly disappeared by police in December 2023, and their whereabouts remain unknown. Also that month, a court sentenced Semkyi Drolma, a young woman from Damshung county, Lhasa city, to 18 months in prison for “leaking state secrets.” Sources said her only offense was participating in religiously oriented WeChat groups.

The retired senior TAR official told Human Rights Watch in December 2019 that the authorities have for years subjected monks and nuns to greater online surveillance:

The government monitors the WeChat and social media activity of monks even more strictly than that of ordinary citizens. From what I hear, the internet monitoring units read and listen to each monk or nun’s WeChat individually, and apart from religious services inside the monastery or greeting their relatives, they are not allowed to take or send any photos of monastery sub-police stations, work team personnel, political education meetings, etc.

International and Domestic Law
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) – which China signed in 1998 but has not ratified – protect the rights to privacy, freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and religion.

Both the Universal Declaration and the ICCPR state that “no one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with their privacy, family, home, or correspondence,” and that “everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference.” Any interference with the right to privacy, including the collection, retention, and use of an individual’s personal data, must be necessary and proportionate, to pursue a legitimate aim, and subject to a clear and public legal framework.

For three decades since the introduction of the internet in China, the Chinese government has promulgated various laws and regulations that broadly prohibit a wide range of content on China’s internet, such as information that “incites subversion” or that “incites splittism,” including activities deemed to promote Tibetan independence. Such overbroad provisions are inconsistent with international human rights protections.

Current Chinese national laws do not meet privacy requirements provided for in international human rights law. The Chinese government has developed an increasingly sophisticated data regulatory regime since 2017, with the enactment of China’s Cybersecurity Law. It then promulgated various laws and regulations, including the Data Security Law in June 2021, and the Personal Information Protection Law in August 2021.

This evolving regime serves several purposes, which include regulating companies’ collection of consumer data, but also tightening government information control under the guise of “protecting national security” – whatever the Chinese Communist Party deems affects its hold on power – without providing meaningful protections against unlawful or abusive government surveillance.

Mozambique: No Arrests in Post-Election Political Killings

Human Rights Watch — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 18:00:00 -0400

Click to expand Image Mozambique police officers look on as protesters gather in Maputo while Daniel Chapo is sworn in as Mozambique’s president on January 15, 2025. © 2025 AMILTON NEVES/AFP via Getty Images

(Johannesburg) – Mozambican authorities have failed to conduct credible investigations into the wave of political killings following the October 2024 general elections, Human Rights Watch said today. Unidentified gunmen, some wearing security force uniforms, shot dead at least 10 key opposition party officials from October through March 2025.

Most of the people targeted had been involved in organizing national street protests contesting the election results. They either belonged to the main opposition party, Optimistic People for the Development of Mozambique (Partido Optimista pelo Desenvolvimento de Moçambique, or Podemos) or were supporters of the independent presidential candidate, Venâncio Mondlane. The police have announced investigations into some of the cases but have not identified or arrested any suspects or provided public updates on the status of investigations.

“The failure of Mozambique’s police to credibly investigate the killings of key opposition members sends a chilling message that the authorities have no interest in bringing those responsible to justice,” said Ashwanee Budoo-Scholtz, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Prompt, thorough, and effective investigations and fair prosecutions are needed if these apparently politically motivated killings are to stop.”

Human Rights Watch documented the killings of 10 opposition figures across the country through remote interviews with 21 people, including witnesses, relatives of the victims, journalists, and the police.

In one case, gunmen in a car ambushed Elvino Dias, the lawyer for Mondlane and the Podemos party, and Paulo Guambe, a Podemos election official, in Maputo and shot them dead. The other cases, most of them Podemos party officials and supporters, were similar.

On October 24, Mozambique’s election commission declared Daniel Chapo and his ruling party Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique, or Frelimo) the winners of the country’s October 9 general elections. The elections were marred by political killings, widespread irregularities, and tight restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly.

The opposition Podemos party contested the election results in nationwide demonstrations. Security forces cracked down on the protests, killing over 300 people and injuring hundreds more. Podemos submitted a report to the Office of the Attorney General alleging that more than 100 party members were killed and alleged that the police planned and carried out the killings.

Victims’ relatives and lawyers told Human Rights Watch that they regularly reached out to police for details of the investigations but did not receive any indication that there was any investigation under way or that authorities had identified a suspect in any of the cases. No updates were provided to family members or the public.

International human rights treaties to which Mozambique is party, including the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, obligate the government to investigate and prosecute alleged violations of human rights and provide appropriate remedies to victims.

The Southern African Development Community, the African Union, concerned governments, and major developmental partners of Mozambique should call on the government to ensure that there is a thorough investigation into the post-election violence, including apparent politically motivated killings, and fairly prosecute all those responsible, Human Rights Watch said.

“Impunity for attacks against political rivals encourages further political violence and undermines democratic governance,” Budoo-Scholtz said. “The Mozambican authorities should order a serious and impartial investigation into abuses before, during, and since the October elections and hold all those responsible to account.”

For further details on politically motivated killings documented by Human Rights Watch, please see below.

The protests following the October 2024 elections in Mozambique drew thousands of people contesting their results as well as the rising cost of living and other social problems. They forced the temporary closure of banks, schools, and shops in Maputo and other cities. The media reported extensive looting and vandalism and cases of protesters killing police officers and destroying state and private structures and offices of the ruling party, Frelimo, across the country.

Security forces were implicated in serious human rights abuses, including the unlawful killing of over 300 protesters and bystanders, among them children. Security forces have also injured hundreds of people and arbitrarily detained thousands of others.

Opposition parties have alleged that agents of the National Criminal Investigation Service (Serviço Nacional de Investigação Criminal, SERNIC) have gone from house to house assaulting people accused of organizing demonstrations. Podemos alleged that 106 of its members and supporters have been murdered since the protests began.

The local monitoring group Plataforma Decide documented at least 18 killings of prominent opposition members across the country as of March 25.

Apparent Politically Motivated Killings Since October 2024

Elvino Dias and Paulo Guambe, in Maputo

On October 18, 2024, after 9 p.m., unidentified gunmen shot dead Elvino Dias, the lawyer for the Podemos party and independent presidential candidate, Venâncio Mondlane, and Paulo Guambe, a Podemos election official, in Maputo. A 27-year-old witness told Human Rights Watch that gunmen in civilian clothes, driving a white Mazda BT-50, ambushed the victims’ car as it made a turn onto Joaquim Chissano Avenue, firing several shots from what appeared to be Kalashnikov-style assault rifles. The Center for Democracy and Human Rights and the media reported that 25 bullet rounds were fired at the vehicle.

The police said the two men died at the scene. The attack drew worldwide condemnation, including from United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. Following the attack, SERNIC reportedly confiscated the CCTV cameras from banks and an embassy near the scene, allegedly to assist with investigations. During a news conference on November 22, a SERNIC spokesperson said an investigation was underway, but no one has been arrested or charged with the killings, and there has been no public update on the status of the investigation.

Eugénio Raúl Madeira, in Zambezia Province

On December 22, in the early hours of the morning, unidentified gunmen fatally shot Eugénio Raúl Madeira, the Podemos mobilization secretary for Mocuba district, in Zambezia province, near his house. A friend of Madeira who witnessed the attack told Human Rights Watch that a white Toyota vehicle with tinted windows and without a license plate approached the square, as Madeira and others prepared to start their workday as moto-taxi drivers. The friend said that someone fired two bullets from inside the car, striking Madeira in the head:

We were positioning our motorbikes to start the day when this Toyota approached slowly. I initially thought it was a client, but I then realized the car didn’t have a license plate. While I was still trying to figure out what was happening, the window of the front passenger seat opened, a pistol emerged and fired two bullets straight at Eugénio’s head. He died there.

Madeira and another Podemos official, Xadreque Francisco, had been the party’s focal points in Mocuba district and leaders of the protests there. During a violent protest in November, Zambezia provincial police had accused the two men of acts of vandalism.

Four days after Madeira’s killing, three gunmen in civilian clothes broke into Francisco’s house early on December 22 and fired several shots, wounding him, the media reported.

Abudo Bacar Lawia, in Cabo Delgado Province

On the evening of January 3, 2025, Abudo Bacar Lawia, the chef mobilizer of the protests in the Montepuez district of Cabo Delgado province, was gunned down outside a friend’s house. The friend said that at about 8 p.m., as they stood by the gate of the compound, two men approached wearing the uniforms of the communal militia, a government-organized local counterterrorism force.

“We didn’t suspect them because we thought they were doing their normal night patrolling of the town,” the friend said. “Then suddenly I heard gunshots, and I lost consciousness. … I woke up at the hospital where I was treated for a gunshot injury [in the shoulder].”

Two witnesses, a friend of Lawia and a police officer, said that Lawia died after being hit in the chest by two bullets fired from a pistol.

Before his death, Lawia had received death threats in messages and phone calls, a relative told Human Rights Watch. “He was an open supporter of VM [Venâncio Mondlane] and didn’t shy away from leading and organizing protests,” he said. “Police officers warned him several times that he would be targeted one day, but he didn’t care.”

On January 6, a police spokesman for Cabo Delgado confirmed that the investigative police had collected evidence from the crime scene and that a criminal file had been opened. Human Rights Watch contacted the Cabo Delgado police spokesperson on February 7 via text message seeking an update on the status of the investigation. The spokesperson referred Human Rights Watch to her superiors, but the Cabo Delgado police did not respond to Human Rights Watch calls.

Rachide Eduardo, in Cabo Delgado Province

Rachide Eduardo was shot and killed on January 6, at about 6 p.m., at his home in Ntutupue town, in the Ancuabe district of Cabo Delgado province. Eduardo was a Podemos party leader in Ntutupue and had helped organize and lead various anti-government demonstrations across the district. He was a close friend of Arlindo Chissale, a journalist actively supporting the opposition candidate, who was allegedly forcibly disappeared on January 7 by a group of men, three of whom wore military uniforms.

A neighbor of Eduardo said that on the night of his death, he heard several gunshots coming from inside his house. He saw two men quickly leave the premises and enter a Mahindra pickup vehicle, like those used by Mozambican security forces. He said:

I saw the car parked for about an hour outside Rachide’s house. It wasn’t the first time. Every now and then, that car would park in different places along our road. Sometimes the occupants wore uniforms … that dark green uniform like UIR [Unit of Rapid Intervention]. On the day they killed Rachide, the two assassins were wearing plain clothes.

Sande Antonio, in Sofala Province

Sande Antonio, 30, a Podemos party delegate in Sofala province, was shot dead at his home in Buzi town, in the early hours of January 16. A Podemos official, Vale Magalhaes, told the media that at about 1 a.m. that day, Antonio sent a text message saying that police officers had surrounded his home. When Magalhaes tried to phone Antonio, no one answered. He said he later received the news that unidentified gunmen had shot Antonio three times, “one [bullet] in his head, one in the chest, and another in the back.”

A journalist who had interviewed Antonio on several occasions said that the politician had fled his home for a safer location after he started receiving death threats for denouncing ballot stuffing during the elections.

The journalist said Antonio returned to his home on January 15 because he believed that it was safe to do so since Chapo had been sworn into office as president.

As of March 26, police had not made any public comments about Antonio’s killing. One of his relatives said that the police had informed the family that a criminal investigation had been opened and that they were trying to trace the gunmen, but no further information was provided.

Daniel Guambe and Rafito Sitoe, in Inhambane Province

On March 8, at about 10 p.m., two gunmen stepped out of their car carrying Kalashnikov-style assault rifles and fired at least seven bullets at an Isuzu vehicle transporting two prominent Podemos members, Daniel Guambe, 28, and Rafito Sitoe, 21, in Massinga village, Inhambane province, various sources reported. Members of the community tried to rescue the men, but they died on their way to the hospital, Podemos confirmed in a statement. Days before the fatal attack, Sitoe and Guambe had led the preparations for a surprise visit by Mondlane to Massinga on February 26, a party official told Human Rights Watch. The police have yet to publicly comment on the killings.

Ivo Armando Nhantumbo and João de Deus Nhachengo, in Inhambane Province

On March 15, local residents found the bodies of Ivo Armando Nhantumbo and João de Deus Nhachengo, two well-known Podemos members and Mondlane supporters, in Inhambane province, media reported. Plataforma Decide reported that the body of Nhachengo had three bullet wounds to the chest, while Nhantumbo had one bullet wound to the head and his genitals had been cut off.

The Mozambican police have yet to publicly comment on the killings of Nhachengo and Nhantumbo. On March 21, the spokesman for the General Command of the Mozambican Police, Orlando Mudumane, told Human Rights Watch that “authorities are concerned about the killings, and investigative units are on the terrain searching for the perpetrators of the crimes.”

Civilians Around Sudan’s El Fasher Face New Attacks

Human Rights Watch — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 17:01:47 -0400

Global leaders need to respond to reports of fresh attacks by Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on the Zamzam displacement camp near North Darfur’s capital of El Fasher. The camp hosts at least half a million people who have fled past and present violence and abuse in Darfur.

In recent days, hundreds of desperate civilians have arrived in Tawila, a town 60 kilometers west of Zamzam, destitute, hungry, and thirsty, reporting that conditions in Zamzam had become unbearable.

Since May 2024, the RSF have besieged civilians living in and around El Fasher, cutting off supplies and shelling populated areas. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and their allied joint forces, which claim to be defending the city, have not appeared to take all feasible measures that they could to minimize harm to civilians, including during heavy fighting in and around populated areas.

The RSF attacked the Zamzam camp in February 2025, destroying civilian infrastructure. International bodies had earlier confirmed famine in the camp, but civilians there had largely been spared from the fighting. Following the new attacks, however, the handful of aid organizations operating in the camp, including Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders or MSF) and the United Nations’ World Food Programme, halted services for civilians dying of hunger.

There have been worrying signs of a large-scale imminent attack for days. Abdel Raheem Dagalo, the deputy RSF leader, was recently filmed mobilizing forces engaged in El Fasher. On April 10, RSF shelling hit El Fasher’s Abu Shouk camp. Local responders reported more than a dozen people, including children, had died.

There were similar warning signs ahead of the RSF’s attacks on the suburb of Ardamata in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur and the last safe haven for ethnic Massalit, in late 2023; a massacre of civilians ensued.

In June 2024, the UN Security Council passed a resolution condemning the RSF siege of El Fasher and pressing all parties to protect civilians, guarantee their safe movement, and calling for safe aid access. But the RSF has ignored these calls.

The consequences of a large-scale attack for the civilian population are all too clear. Global leaders need to act. The UN Security Council should meet and respond to the crisis, including by imposing sanctions on abusive commanders and condemning countries providing support to parties in violation of the ongoing UN arms embargo.

US/El Salvador: Venezuelan Deportees Forcibly Disappeared

Human Rights Watch — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 00:00:00 -0400

Relatives of Venezuelan migrants deported from the US to a maximum security prison in El Salvador attend a vigil in front of the El Salvadoran embassy in Caracas on April 2, 2025. © JUAN BARRETO/AFP via Getty Images

(Washington, DC) – The governments of the United States and El Salvador have subjected more than 200 Venezuelan nationals to enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention, Human Rights Watch said today.

On March 15, 2025, the US government removed 238 Venezuelans to El Salvador, where they were immediately transferred to the mega prison known as the Center for Confinement of Terrorism (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, CECOT), known for its abusive conditions.

Since then, the Venezuelans have been held incommunicado. United States and Salvadoran authorities have not disclosed a list of the people removed, although CBS News published a leaked list of names. Relatives of people apparently transferred to El Salvador told Human Rights Watch that US authorities said that they were unable to share any information on their relatives’ whereabouts, while Salvadoran officials have been completely unresponsive.

“These enforced disappearances are a grave violation of international human rights law,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “The cruelty of the US and Salvadoran governments has put these people outside the protection of the law and caused immense pain to their families.”

US authorities should publicly identify the Venezuelans who were removed to El Salvador. The Salvadoran government should confirm their current whereabouts, disclose whether there is any legal basis for their detention, and allow them contact with the outside world.

Human Rights Watch has so far interviewed 40 relatives of people apparently removed to El Salvador. Human Rights Watch sent a letter to Salvadoran authorities on April 5, asking for information on the identity of people detained, their conditions of detention in CECOT, and the legal basis for their detentions. The government of El Salvador has not responded.

All family members interviewed said that US immigration authorities initially told their relatives, who were in immigration detention, that they would be sent back to Venezuela. None of the detainees were told that they would be sent to El Salvador, the relatives said.

The US authorities announced on March 17 that 238 Venezuelans had been removed and had arrived in El Salvador. The government of El Salvador published a video showing the faces of some of them, but neither government published a list of the people who were sent to and detained at CECOT, nor explained the legal basis, if any, for their detention there. The same day, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that 137 people had been deported under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, an archaic and seldom-used statute that allows the president of the United States to order the arrest and removal of people connected to a “hostile nation or government.” Leavitt said 101 others had been removed under Title 8, pursuant to regular immigration procedures.

The Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act against “Tren de Aragua,” a Venezuelan organized crime group. Yet, the government has produced no evidence establishing that the people removed are affiliated with Tren de Aragua. A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official acknowledged that “many” of those deported to El Salvador “do not have criminal records in the United States.” Additionally, many of the relatives of people sent to El Salvador shared with Human Rights Watch researchers government documents indicating they had “no criminal records” in Venezuela or in other countries in Latin America where they lived in recent years.

ICE maintains an Online Detainee Locator System (ODLS), which lawyers and relatives use to find people held during immigration proceedings. Human Rights Watch cross-referenced the case numbers of some of the deportees and confirmed that they had been removed from the system. ICE indicates on its website, most recently updated on April 7, 2025, that “the ODLS only has information for detained aliens who are currently in ICE custody or who were released from ICE custody within the last 60 days.” This seems to indicate that the names of the Venezuelans Human Rights Watch interviewed were deleted sooner than is standard ICE practice.

Some relatives said that when they called US detention centers or ICE offices to ask about their relatives’ whereabouts, officials told them that they could not provide any information, that their family members no longer appeared in the locator system, or that their whereabouts were unknown. In a few cases, officials informed them that their relatives had been removed from the United States, but did not say where they had been sent.

On March 20, CBS News obtained and published an internal US government list of names, without identification numbers, of people sent to El Salvador. Neither Salvadoran nor US authorities have confirmed the authenticity of the list, although Human Rights Watch found all the names of the cases it has documented on the list.

Many of the relatives interviewed said they are unfamiliar with the legal system in El Salvador and do not know which authorities they should contact to obtain information about their relatives.

Some said they emailed the Salvadoran presidential high commissioner for human rights and freedom of expression, Andrés Guzman, but have received only an automatic acknowledgment of receipt or a response indicating that their request had been forwarded to the “relevant institutions.” A Salvadoran lawyer representing several of the detainees told Human Rights Watch he has not been allowed to meet or speak with his clients.

The interviewees said that they believed their family members are in El Salvador because of compelling scraps of evidence they have been able to piece together. Some identified their relatives’ faces or parts of their bodies in a video posted by Salvadoran authorities. Others discovered that their family member’s names had been removed from ICE’s location database on or around March 16, or found their relative’s name on the CBS News list.

The Salvadoran government has articulated no legal basis for detaining the Venezuelan deportees and has offered no indication of when, if ever, they would be released from incarceration. It appears that their detention is wholly arbitrary and potentially indefinite; a grave violation of El Salvador’s human rights obligations, Human Rights Watch said.

Under international law, an enforced disappearance occurs when authorities deprive a person of their liberty and then refuse to disclose that person’s fate or whereabouts. This violation is especially serious because it places people outside the protection of the law, making further abuses likely.

“Nobody should be forced to piece together bits of information from the media or to read into the authorities’ silence to find out where their relatives are being held,” Goebertus said. “Salvadoran authorities should urgently disclose the names and locations of all detainees transferred from the US, and allow them to contact their families.”

Instead of Addressing Child Abuse Prevention, Trump Attacks Trans Youth

Human Rights Watch — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 12:53:15 -0400

In his proclamation for National Child Abuse Prevention Month, rather than addressing real threats to children like the federal government should do, United States President Donald J. Trump focused almost exclusively on attacking supporters of transgender youth. He declared broadly defined “gender ideology” as “one of the most prevalent forms of child abuse” and labeled gender-affirming care as “evil”.

Gender-affirming care is recognized as the gold standard of medical care for transgender youth by major medical associations. This care consists of social practices (changes to one’s name, wardrobe, etc.) to mental health counseling to medical interventions, such as puberty blockers and hormone therapies. In all, the care emphasizes a personalized, multidisciplinary, and gradual approach. Studies demonstrate that youth receiving this care experience 60 percent lower odds of depression and 73 percent lower odds of suicidality, with approximately 98 percent of youth continuing this care into adulthood.

Contrary to the proclamation’s assertions about the prevalence of gender-affirming care, a dataset of private insurance claims from 2018-2022 covering more than 5 million adolescents found that less than 3,000 transgender youth had access to puberty blockers or hormone therapies. Currently, 27 states ban some form of gender-affirming care for transgender youth.

A January 28, 2025, executive order aims to withdraw federal funds and support for such care to people younger than 19.

The proclamation’s language also echoes state-level efforts to weaponize child welfare systems against supportive families of transgender youth. In 2022, Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered state agencies to investigate parents whose children receive gender-affirming care, jeopardizing their custodial rights. This year, Texas and Montana advanced legislation to classify some or all gender-affirming care as child abuse.

While the administration targets families of transgender youth, actual child welfare crises remain inadequately addressed, including the harm Black and Indigenous people and families living in poverty face in child welfare systems, the indiscriminate prosecution of children as adults, hazardous child labor conditions, and family separation at border facilities.

US officials should prioritize protecting children from genuine harms rather than threatening the wellbeing of supportive families.

The Trump Administration’s Assaults on Black History

Human Rights Watch — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 06:00:00 -0400

This week, it was reported that the United States National Park Service had begun scrubbing information from its exhibits about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad; one of the most significant stories of resistance against chattel slavery in the United States. The move would have destroyed knowledge about how oppressed people in the United States have successfully fought for freedom. While the Park Service walked back the revisions after public outcry, it’s just one example of the Trump administration’s campaign to curtail understanding of racism’s legacy in the United States.

Click to expand Image Harriet Tubman. © 1885 National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

The erasure at the Park Service follows President Donald J. Trump’s recent executive order targeting the National Museum of African American History and Culture for being “divisive,” which led to museum director Kevin Young’s resignation last Friday. Leaders called the order a sign of the administration’s attempts to stifle cultural spaces dedicated to preserving Black history and truths that don’t align with Trump’s political ideology. The Institute for Museum and Library Studies has also been subjected to staff and funding cuts.

These actions continue similar efforts during Trump’s first term, including his ban on efforts to “inculcate” what he called “divisive concepts.” He was targeting work like the 1619 Project, a publication exploring the enduring impacts of racial slavery in the United States, including in housing, incarceration, health care, and education. Trump also created the 1776 Commission, which aimed to produce “patriotic education” that whitewashed history and understated the role racism played in shaping US political, economic, and legal systems.

International human rights bodies have condemned these kinds of practices. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination maintains that states should “educate the population as a whole in a spirit of non-discrimination,” specifically regarding people of African descent. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protects minorities’ rights to enjoy their culture, including in community with others. To exercise that right, people need access to accurate historical knowledge about their communities.

Assaults on historical truth serve a purpose. They prevent Americans from understanding that racism is less about individual blame, but is instead a system built and maintained through centuries of law, policy, and violence. The attacks also deny people access to models of courage and organized resistance like Tubman and the Underground Railroad. This isn’t only about the past; it’s about politicians trying to foreclose the possibility of confronting ongoing and future injustices.

People across the United States took to the streets last weekend to demand the Trump administration keep its “hands off” democracy. It should keep its hands off Black history too.

New Data Exposes Global Healthcare Funding Inequalities

Human Rights Watch — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 01:00:00 -0400

New data from the World Health Organization reveals that many governments’ public funding of health care falls short of what is needed to meet their human rights obligations.

The vast majority of people live in countries where low public funding undermines their access to health care. Sometimes this is due to major constraints like war and debt, but often governments just don’t prioritize it.

Governments should ensure that everyone can achieve their right to health by reducing reliance on regressive sources of financing. Wealthier governments should support appropriate tax reforms and provide debt restructuring or relief when necessary.

(Geneva) – New data from the World Health Organization (WHO) reveals that many governments’ public funding of health care falls short of what is needed to meet their human rights obligations, Human Rights Watch said today.

Most people have little access to even healthcare services considered most “essential” by the United Nations. As global health systems worldwide recoil from the United States’ sudden termination of much foreign aid and assistance, richer governments should consider debt restructuring or relief that, along with appropriate tax reforms, can help improve resourcing of public health care.

“The vast majority of people around the world live in countries where their access to health care is undermined in part by low public funding,” said Matt McConnell, economic justice and rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Sometimes this is because of major constraints like war and debt, but often governments just don’t prioritize it. Either way, people suffer.”

Human Rights Watch analyzed the most recent WHO Global Health Expenditure Database, which includes healthcare spending data from 2022 for more than 190 countries around the world. These data show that public funding for health care faltered as the Covid-19 pandemic waned and global inflation surged.

Under international law, all governments have obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill all economic, social, and cultural rights, including the right to health, which requires access to quality healthcare facilities, goods, and services. Countries must devote as many resources as possible to advancing the right to health and avoiding backsliding, which can occur when governments reduce funding for healthcare systems or fail to match their population’s growing requirements.

Most governments are not spending enough to ensure that healthcare systems can deliver on the right to health. In 2022, 141 governments spent less than 5 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on health care through public means, a widely accepted international spending benchmark for assessing healthcare spending. About 84 percent of the world’s population, or 6.6 billion people, lived in a country where public healthcare funding missed this benchmark that year.

Richer countries generally rely more heavily on public sources of funds to finance health care than poorer countries. But the level of public financial support governments provide varies widely among both rich and poor countries, indicating that this is at least in part the result of policy choices.

The relationship between public healthcare spending and improved health outcomes is complicated by many factors, including the social and commercial determinants of health. But these data also show that higher levels of public funding generally correlate with improved access to health care.

Decreases in public funding of health care need to be subject to human rights scrutiny and, unless fully justified by governments, as outlined by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, may constitute human rights violations.

Insufficient public funding shifts the burden of financing health care to individuals and households, which can significantly undermine access, particularly for people with low or irregular incomes. In many countries, including some of the world’s poorest, large segments of the population have no choice but to pay the costs themselves if they are to receive health care.

Such cost-based access barriers are incompatible with health care as a human right for all. They can also undermine people’s ability to pay for goods and services essential for realization of other human rights, including housing, food, and education.

Financial resources are limited and unevenly distributed, but WHO data shows that many governments could do better. If 17 low-tax governments had raised tax revenues in 2022 to 15 percent of GDP—a “tipping point” threshold identified by the World Bank that is well below the global average of 23 percent of GDP—they could have raised more than enough money to spend at least 5 percent of GDP on health care.

Many countries, particularly in the Global South, face significant financial and practical constraints to adequately fund health care through public sources. Some richer countries may have contributed to many of these constraints, including through the forced expropriation of resources, and should consider assuming a special responsibility to help alleviate them.

In 2022, at least 48 low- and middle-income governments paid more to service debt to foreign creditors than they spent on health care for their people. Funds from foreign governments or intergovernmental bodies such as the World Bank accounted for more than 20 percent of healthcare spending in 49 countries in 2022 and were the principal financing mechanism in 16 countries, many of which now face financial shortfalls following the United States’ suspension of foreign aid and assistance and other potential funding cuts.

In January 2025, US President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order suspending about US$44 billion in foreign aid and assistance, disrupting an estimated $12.4 billion allocated toward addressing urgent health crises worldwide. While the administration subsequently issued limited waivers to allow some of these funds to continue supporting vital programs protecting and promoting human rights, the impacts of this suspension are still unfolding and are poised to further undermine the right to health in many countries.

The extent to which governments rely on taxes for social spending varies, but greater tax revenues can both increase the financial resources available to spend on social services like health care and address inequalities in the enjoyment of rights, while also possibly improving government accountability.

Governments should ensure the right to health by reducing reliance on regressive sources of financing like out-of-pocket costs and by increasing public revenues for health care through progressive taxes and reducing tax abuses, Human Rights watch said.

They should also ensure transparency and accountability by setting specific targets for their health spending such as a minimum threshold of 5 percent of GDP or 15 percent of government expenditures, as well as improving the collection and publication of reliable health spending data that track achievement toward such targets.

Wealthier governments should meet their obligations of international cooperation and assistance. Creditor governments should assess the impacts of debt payments on debtor governments’ abilities to meet human rights obligations and provide debt restructuring or relief when necessary to enable debtor governments to adequately fund health care. Such governments should also support rights-aligned reforms to international tax rules during the ongoing UN Tax Treaty negotiations, and provide financial support for multilateral global health initiatives, particularly amid the recent US withdrawal.

The next few months will provide multiple opportunities for governments to make progress toward the realization of the right to health, including at the 78th World Health Assembly in May, at the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development in June, and at the 2nd World Social Summit in November.

“Who pays and how is a key factor is what makes healthcare systems more or less resilient to the kinds of shocks they’ve experienced in recent years,” McConnell said. “Reducing inequalities of healthcare financing between and within countries is essential to building healthcare systems that work for all and ensure we no longer leave billions of people behind.”

Analysis of Newly Available WHO Data on Healthcare Funding

As Human Rights Watch documented in 2024, the more a country spends on health care through domestically generated public sources such as tax revenues or social health insurance contributions, the less reliant its healthcare system is on fees paid out of pocket by individuals and households.

These out-of-pocket costs include a range of charges such as over-the-counter prices, deductibles, and copayments for a healthcare good or service. All out-of-pocket costs worsen health care inequalities by creating barriers to accessing health care based on the ability to pay.

The WHO considers it “catastrophic health spending” when a household must spend more than 40 percent of their combined income on health care after paying for things like food, housing, and utilities. According to WHO estimates, the risk that individuals in a country will reach that catastrophic threshold falls to negligible levels only when out-of-pocket costs average no more than 15 to 20 percent of a country’s total expenditures on health care.

Out-of-pocket costs financed more than 20 percent of the healthcare system in 126 countries in 2022, 7 more than the previous year. On average, only high-income countries (at 18.4 percent) kept out-of-pocket payments below the upper bound of this risk threshold for catastrophic health spending, while upper-middle (30.8 percent), lower-middle (35.6 percent), and low-income (42.6 percent) countries averaged far higher.

In 55 countries in 2022, out-of-pocket payments were the primary source of healthcare financing, surpassing all other forms of domestically generated public and private funding, as well as foreign sources of financing like aid and assistance. In 27 of these countries, out-of-pocket payments accounted for the majority of all money spent on health care, equal to more than three out of every four dollars spent on health care in Turkmenistan, Armenia, Afghanistan, and Nigeria.

In 2021, the most recent year with complete data, there was a moderate-to-strong relationship between a country’s share of healthcare spending coming from public funds and its achievement on the WHO’s Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Service Coverage Index, which assesses countries’ progress toward the UN Sustainable Development Goal 3.8.1 on “coverage for essential health services.”

Most Countries Still Missing the 5-Percent-Of-GDP Benchmark

Numerous studies from health economists have found that achieving UHC, a framework developed by the UN to measure access to health care and an important element of the right to health, generally requires that governments spend at least 5 to 6 percent of their GDP on health care.

Consistent with these findings, analysis of the newly available 2022 WHO data showslast year a moderate-to-strong correlation between public healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP and coverage for essential healthcare services as measured by the WHO’s UHC Service Coverage Index. Countries that met the 5-percent-of-GDP indicator in 2022 were also much less likely to depend on inherently regressive out-of-pocket costs to fund their healthcare system.

In all, 141 governments spent less than 5 percent of their GDP on health care in 2022. Only high-income countries (at 5.8 percent) averaged above this benchmark, compared to upper-middle (4 percent), lower-middle (2.4 percent), and low-income (1.2 percent) countries. Notably, no low-income country met the benchmark.

Among all countries, the global average of public healthcare spending in 2022 was only 3.8 percent of GDP. While above the pre-pandemic average of 3.5 percent of GDP in 2019, this continued a trend of year-over-year decline since the mid-pandemic peak of 4 percent in 2020.

The changes in public funding during the pandemic were not evenly distributed. Between 2019 and 2022, healthcare spending declined as a share of GDP in 69 countries. In three of these countries—Suriname, the Marshall Islands, and Costa Rica—healthcare spending fell from above 5 percent of GDP to below 5 percent.

Assessing healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP helps control for differences in the size of countries’ economies, but changes in the percentage over time can hide stagnation or decline in absolute terms. For example, if spending as a percentage of GDP stays the same while a country’s GDP shrinks, hospitals and clinics can receive less funding.

Some countries hardest hit by economic and political crises during the pandemic, such as Lebanon and Afghanistan, experienced declines in both GDP and public health spending as a share of GDP. This means that their actual healthcare spending dropped more than changes in their healthcare spending as share of GDP would suggest.

In other countries, GDP grew over this period while public health spending as a percent of GDP declined, such as in Guyana, Ireland, Bangladesh, and Tanzania. Still other countries’ public spending increased faster than GDP, indicating a higher prioritization of healthcare spending, including many countries in the Global South, such as Nepal, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Zimbabwe, and Guinea Bissau.

Most Countries are Still Not Meeting the 15-Percent-of-Government-Expenditures Benchmark

On average, a country’s national budget equates to about one-third of its GDP; in 2022, it was 33.5 percent globally. If a country’s budget-to-GDP ratio is around this global average, 15 percent of its national budget will equate to about 5 percent of GDP, the level of public investment that generally corresponds to better healthcare access and outcomes.

This 15-percent-of-budget measure is another good indicator and goal for governments that seek to improve healthcare systems. In part because of this, countries in the African Union made an explicit commitment to meet this 15-percent-of-budget benchmark in the 2001 Abuja Declaration on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Other Related Infectious Diseases.

Even so, in 2022, 147 countries spent less than 15 percent of their national budgets on health care. This means that about 6.6 billion people—or 83 percent of the world’s population—lived in a country that did not reach the threshold.

In 2022, public funding for health care as a share of government budgets was above pre-pandemic levels. Globally, the average rose from about 10.4 percent in 2019 to 10.8 percent in 2022. But these changes in public funding during the pandemic were not evenly distributed.

Inflation-Adjusted Changes in Healthcare Spending Per Capita Between 2019 and 2022

Trends in public healthcare spending during the pandemic are most stark when data is adjusted for changes in inflation, purchasing power, and population growth.

On average, the real value—the actual purchasing power—of per capita public healthcare spending around the world grew by about 27 percent between 2019 and 2022. Nevertheless, 37 countries experienced declines in the real value of their public healthcare spending from pre-pandemic levels, such as Lebanon and Malawi, where spending respectively declined by 71 and 41 percent between 2019 and 2021.

37 Countries' Real-Terms Healthcare Spending Declined

Evolution of public healthcare expenditures in local economies adjusted for changes in the purchasing power (PPP/capita)

Country % Change 2019-2022 2019 2020 2021 2022

Domestic General Government Health Expenditure (GGHE-D), in current international $ (PPP) per capita (i.e., gghed_ppp_pc)

Source: WHO GHED.

Funding Health Care is a Policy Choice

Some governments provided far more public funding for health care than their peer-income-country average in 2022. In The Gambia, for example, public funds accounted for 46.9 percent of all healthcare spending, more than twice the average for low-income countries (about 22 percent) and even greater than the average among considerably richer, lower-middle income countries (about 40 percent).

Differences in Public Healthcare Spending by Income Group

Public health spending as a percentage of total government spending among countries within the same income group, and difference from the average spending in 2022

In contrast, some governments spent far less than their peers. Some of the governments, whose public healthcare spending fell significantly short of their income-group peers, were experiencing armed conflicts or significant social and economic upheaval. Others may have faced different constraints that made funding healthcare difficult, including public debt.

Increasing Public Revenues for Healthcare Spending

There is no international tax benchmark. World Bank research has identified 15 percent of GDP as a minimum tax threshold, or “tipping point,” beyond which low-income countries are better able to graduate to middle-income status. But this rather low threshold may not be appropriate for all countries.

According to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which publishes tax data on 130 countries, total tax revenues equated to about 23 percent of GDP on average across all countries in 2022. Only low-income countries (at 13.5 percent) averaged below this 15-percent-of-GDP indicator that year, while lower-middle (17.3), upper-middle (20.1), and high-income countries (32.0) came in above it.

Comparing governments’ public healthcare spending to their tax-to-GDP ratio shows that countries that spent less on health care (as measured against international benchmarks) had significantly lower tax revenues.

Among the 43 countries with OECD tax data that spent more than 5 percent of GDP on health care in 2022, tax revenues amounted to 31.8 percent of GDP on average. The remaining 87 countries that did not meet the 5 percent benchmark in 2022 had tax revenues equal to just 18.8 percent of GDP on average.

No country managed to spend more than 5 percent of GDP on health care that year with tax revenues below 15 percent of GDP.

Many of these very low-tax governments could significantly increase healthcare spending by raising tax revenues to just this 15-percent-of-GDP measure, which is only slightly above the current average for low-income countries.

For 17 of these governments, shown below, raising tax revenues to 15 percent of GDP from current levels could generate enough additional funds to fully meet 5 percent of GDP healthcare spending. An additional 35 governments could meet the 5 percent benchmark by increasing tax revenues to the average for their income group.

Many Low-Tax Governments Leave Money on the Table

If 17 low-tax governments increased tax revenues to 15% of GDP, they could generate more than enough additional revenue to fully fund public healthcare spending beyond 5% of GDP

Country Current Tax Revenues (% GDP) Current Public Healthcare Spending (% GDP) Add'l Public Healthcare Spending to Meet 5% GDP (USD per capita) Funds Available if Tax Increased to 15% GDP (USD per capita) Source: International Monetary Fund, Government Finance Statistics Yearbook and data files, and World Bank and OECD GDP estimates.

The government of Sri Lanka, for example, generated the equivalent of about 7.4 percent of GDP through taxes in 2022, while spending only about 1.8 percent of GDP on health care. Meeting the 5-percent-of-GDP healthcare spending benchmark would require an additional US$108 per person of public healthcare spending, while increasing taxes to 15 percent of GDP could generate an additional $252 per person.

Increasing tax revenues can be politically and practically difficult, particularly for low- and middle-income governments that face strong external constraints, including a global race-to-the-bottom for corporate tax rates and harmful conditionalities attached to loans from actors such as the International Monetary Fund. Additionally, some taxes support the realization of rights better than others.

For example, as recently recognized in a statement by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, value-added taxes (VAT) are inherently regressive and can partly offset the benefits of increased social spending made possible by those taxes. As such, it is important for governments to ensure that their tax revenues are generated in an equitable manner. UN member states currently negotiating a first global treaty on international tax cooperation should also press for rights-aligned reforms to international tax rules.

Debt is a Major Impediment to Healthcare Spending for Many Governments

Greater international cooperation around resolving public debt is also vital for helping governments increase healthcare spending, as such debts significantly hamper the efforts of many countries, like Sri Lanka, to fund public services.

Many governments spend significant amounts paying off debts that the government accrued over time. The cost of servicing this public debt can often greatly exceed public healthcare spending.

The World Bank’s Debtor Reporting System has data for 116 of about 132 low- and middle-income countries. When measured in US dollars per capita, 48 of these countries spent more servicing their external public and publicly guaranteed debts in 2022 than they did on health care.

The government of Mongolia, for example, spent US$158 per person on health care through public means in 2022, which equated to about 3.1 percent of GDP. But that same year, Mongolia spent the equivalent of about $631 per person in the country to repay its obligations to creditors.

Such external debt obligations can form major constraints on many governments’ ability to adequately fund health care. Of the 141 governments that spent less than the 5 percent of GDP on health care through public means in 2022, at least 30 paid more to creditors than the amount needed to increase public healthcare spending to meet the 5 percent benchmark. To meet 5 percent of GDP, for example, Mongolia would have needed to increase public healthcare spending by an additional $95 per person in 2022; just 15 percent of what they paid to creditors that year.

Download the Data Used on this Article

2025 WHO: Global Health Data Excel format 2025 WHO: Global Health Data CSV format 2025 WHO: Global Health Data Column Reference CSV format

South Sudan: Incendiary Bombs Kill, Burn Civilians

Human Rights Watch — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 23:00:00 -0400

Click to expand Image Remnants of a burnt tukul (home) in Mathiang, South Sudan, following an attack with an incendiary weapon on March 16, 2025. Many tukuls and other civilian objects were burnt in the fires from incendiary weapons use. © 2025 Private

(Nairobi) – South Sudan’s use of improvised air-dropped incendiary weapons has killed and horrifically burned dozens of people, including children, and destroyed civilian infrastructure in Upper Nile state, Human Rights Watch said today. The government’s use of these weapons in populated areas may amount to war crimes.

Interviewees described the use of improvised incendiary weapons in at least four attacks in Nasir, Longechuk, and Ulang counties, Upper Nile state, which killed at least 58 people and burned others severely. The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), which has a robust mandate to protect civilians, should establish temporary operating bases in high risk areas, and proactively respond to the deteriorating situation. UN Security Council members should urge South Sudan to cease its unlawful attacks and call for the urgent deployment of peacekeeping forces to the affected areas.

“These weapons have killed dozens of people, including children, and left survivors with severe burn injuries causing long-term harm,” said Nyagoah Tut Pur, South Sudan researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The government should immediately stop using indiscriminate incendiary weapons on communities, facilitate safe aid access, and the UN should urgently deploy peacekeepers to the affected areas.”

The government’s aerial bombardments intensified from March 16, 2025, after a March 4 attack on a government military base and Nasir town by armed Nuer youth known as the “White Army” and a March 7 attack by armed men on a UN helicopter that killed a UN crew member and over two dozen South Sudanese soldiers.

On March 17, South Sudan’s information minister said its air force had bombed “so called White Army areas” and falsely implied that civilians who failed to leave the areas could lawfully be targeted. He revealed that Uganda was providing technical support to the South Sudan People’s Defence Forces (SSPDF), which Uganda has acknowledged.

A Ugandan forces’ spokesperson told Human Rights Watch that their support did not include aerial or ground attacks but could, if requested and they deemed it necessary. The Ugandan forces previously refuted allegations that it had targeted civilians and civilian objects and or used “chemical weapons and barrel bombs.”

Incendiary weapons inflict excruciating burns and other physical injuries, which can lead to psychological harm and lifelong scarring and disability, which can result in social and economic exclusion. They also cause fires that can indiscriminately destroy civilian objects. Use of these weapons in populated areas violates international humanitarian law, and if done with criminal intent, constitutes a war crime.

Protocol III to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons explicitly prohibits using air-dropped weapons designed to set fires and burn people in “concentrations of civilians.” While South Sudan is not party to this protocol, its use of these weapons highlights the need to strengthen the international law that governs them.

Eight people interviewed, including witnesses, local responders, and two government officials, described the March 16 attack on Mathiang, in Longechuk county.

Witnesses described “barrels”—improvised incendiary weapons—being dropped from what appeared to be a multi-engine aircraft. A 39-year-old woman said: “It came swooping down, I thought it was going to fall on our compound…. Then we saw it drop barrels. As they dropped, [they caught fire].”

Another woman, 40, woke up feeling “the earth shaking…,” and ran outside … “only to see the village on fire.” She later saw the charred bodies of her neighbors, Khor Ruach Kerjiok, his wife, and their two children under age 10. Another resident said that the burned bodies of two older women aged 60 and above, Nyedier Kuach and Nyeget Kier, were found at home.

A senior health official said that at least 21 people were killed, 3 of whom died while being transported to Ethiopia for treatment. Health workers responding with very limited resources said the victims had extensive burn injuries. One said the burns continued to spread on the patients’ bodies, indicating that a substance that causes burns was used in the attack.

Accounts from witnesses describing what they saw and could smell when the improvised incendiary weapons were dropped, indicate that several types of flammable substances are being used as incendiary agents.

One responder explained how “[t]he area where the [flammable substance] landed was burning for some days, making crackling sounds.” Rain eventually extinguished the fires, “But it still smells … not like gasoline or kerosene,” he said.

Several residential compounds were burned, along with, a responder said, part of the market and two water pumps.

A video posted on social media on March 17 shows a fissure in the ground with visible active fire inside. The video reveals a large, burned area, including several tukuls (homes). Satellite imagery shows a burn scar appeared between March 16 to 17, along with burned tukuls 100 meters northeast of the market.

Click to expand Image Satellite imagery from March 30, 2025, showing burned tukuls (homes) in Mathiang after an attack on March 16. A linear burn scar is visible on satellite imagery and its location was also confirmed by witness accounts. © 2025 Planet Labs PBC. Analysis and graphics © 2025 Human Rights Watch

Two witnesses said at least three women suffered miscarriages or stillbirths following the bombing.

Air-dropped improvised incendiary weapons were also used in Nasir town on March 16 and 19. Two officials said that at least 22 people were killed and dozens of homes burned. Human Rights Watch has also reviewed satellite imagery showing burn scars and burned structures, including a former UNMISS site and dozens of structures along the main road between March 16 and 20.

Click to expand Image Satellite imagery from March 25, 2025, showing multiple burned structures and burn scars over several parts of Nasir town following the attacks of March 16 and March 19, 2025. © 2025 Planet Labs PBC. Analysis and graphics © 2025 Human Rights Watch.

Interviewees and photographs suggest that an incendiary weapon was also dropped in Kuich in Ulang county on March 21. Three witnesses describe seeing what appeared to be a propeller-driven aircraft drop incendiary substances in barrels.

“[The aircraft] dropped something that was on fire and there was a loud explosion [when it hit the ground] and immediately the surrounding caught fire,” one person said. Everyone started running in different directions.” When he returned to the site, he learned that “people [had been] killed on the spot and many people were seriously injured.”

Four witnesses said the attack killed 15 people, including 3 children, and seriously burned 17 others. A responder in Ulang town described victims, most with burn injuries, “their black skin is coming out. One man who died at the hospital was burned even his teeth. I also saw an older woman in her 70s, she had big blisters.” As of March 30, seven remained in critical condition.

Civilian structures burned included a nutrition center and a healthcare clinic. A guard there, Duop Bichiok Diew, in his 50s, died from burn injuries. Shelters and a market were also destroyed.

Photographs posted on social media on March 24, show several structures reduced to ashes near Sobat River in Kuich. Next to the nutrition center, visible impact sites were still burning. Satellite imagery confirmed that at least a dozen structures burned between March 21 and 22.

Click to expand Image Satellite imagery from March 25, 2025, showing burned structures including a destroyed nutrition center in Kuich, after the March 21 attack. © 2025 Planet Labs PBC. Analysis and graphics © 2025 Human Rights Watch.

Government attacks on populated areas in the three counties, notably with helicopter gunfire and munitions continue, putting civilians at further risk and worsening the humanitarian situation, which already included a cholera outbreak.

Tens of thousands of people have fled, including into Ethiopia. Humanitarian access remains heavily constrained, as aid organizations face violence as well as bureaucratic restrictions.

South Sudan remains under a UN arms embargo prohibiting external military support to the country’s warring parties. Ugandan forces’ participation in the operations violates the embargo. The Security Council should call out Uganda’s violations and ensure renewal of the embargo to protect civilians from unlawful violence, Human Rights Watch said. The council should press South Sudan to ensure that the UN mission can safely operate and approve any requests for additional UN troops.

“As the government of South Sudan continues to show utter disregard for civilians, it is now dropping flaming barrels of fire from the air,” Pur said. “The international community should press the government to end these unlawful attacks and ensure concrete steps to protect civilian lives.”

China/Vietnam: Suspicious Death of Tibetan High Lama

Human Rights Watch — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 16:00:00 -0400

(Taipei) – The Vietnamese government should investigate the death under suspicious circumstances of a senior Tibetan lama, Humkar Dorje Rinpoche, in Ho Chi Minh City on March 29, 2025, Human Rights Watch said today.

Humkar Dorje, 56, died following months of concern by the Tibetan community about his whereabouts and well-being. His followers in India, where many Tibetans live in exile, allege that Vietnamese and Chinese authorities had arrested him in Vietnam after he fled Tibet. His monastery, which is under official supervision, instead claimed that he died from illness while on a retreat.

“Humkar Dorje Rinpoche’s death in Vietnam is especially concerning given the Chinese government’s severe repression of Tibetans and its record of snatching its nationals in Vietnam,” said Maya Wang, associate China director at Human Rights Watch. “The Vietnamese authorities should credibly and impartially investigate these claims and take appropriate action, including by providing autopsy findings to Humkar Dorje’s family.”

Humkar Dorje was head of the Lung Ngon monastery in Gabde county in the Golok Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Qinghai province. He had thousands of devotees inside China and abroad, including in Vietnam. He was a prominent educator, having founded, with official permission and oversight, a vocational school and more than 10 other schools in the region, where he sponsored the education of local children.

Humkar Dorje’s disappearance and death occurred amid a Chinese government crackdown on prominent Tibetan educators and the schools that they run, which promote Tibetan language and culture, in eastern Tibetan areas including Golok.

Humkar Dorje had been missing since at least November 2024, according to Tibetan exile media. When people in Gabde county expressed concern about him in December, local authorities reportedly banned all discussion of the issue in public. The silence ended on April 1 when officials in Gabde county showed representatives of the monastery a death certificate issued by a hospital in Ho Chi Minh City.

On April 3, senior monks at Lung Ngon monastery issued a public statement stating that Humkar Dorje had “exhibited signs of ill health,” had “departed alone to an unknown place” at an unspecified date for a religious retreat, and had “suddenly died of illness” in Vietnam on March 29, without giving further details.

On April 5, his followers in India contradicted these claims and said that the high lama had been in Vietnam following a Chinese police interrogation in Tibet late last year. They said Vietnamese police, allegedly acting in concert with operatives of China’s Ministry of State Security, had detained him on March 25. He died four days later.

The monastery’s statement is incomplete and may have been written under some form of duress, Human Rights Watch said, given the Chinese authorities’ tight control over the management of Tibetan monasteries.

Tibetan lamas often go into retreat for extended periods, but it appears highly unlikely that senior monks at their monastery would be unaware of the lama’s location, conceal the information for several months, or be unaware that he had traveled abroad. In addition, if the lama had gone into retreat or had been suffering from illness, the authorities would have no need to ban discussion of his situation.

Humkar Dorje’s followers in India said that he fled his monastery in late September after government officials and local security questioned him in Gabde. An official Chinese media report shows a top county-level official visiting Lung Ngon monastery on October 15 to “inspect temple management.” Uncharacteristically, the report makes no mention of Humkar Dorje by name.

Humkar Dorje had apparently long been in good standing with the authorities. He graduated in 2001 from China’s national-level college for Tibetan Buddhist lamas and held a prestigious position in the county-level People’s Congress, where he was a deputy head of the congressional standing committee. He was also president of Gabde county’s branch of the China Buddhism Association, making him the most senior religious figure in the county.

In July 2024, he conducted a major public religious ceremony at Lung Ngon monastery, which would have required official permission. Official media reports in August showed him as one of the leaders of a government-run delegation visiting another local monastery. In September, official media showed a national-level official and members of a provincial delegation sharing a meal with Humkar Dorje at his monastery, stating that “the various works carried out by Longen [Lung Ngon] Temple in recent years have been fully affirmed by departments at all levels of the province, prefecture and county.”

Official reports of Humkar Dorje’s appearances ended by late September, which coincided with the time when his followers in India said he had fled to Vietnam.

Chinese authorities have long engaged in transnational repression—human rights abuses committed beyond a country’s borders to curtail dissent—including against Tibetans living abroad, targeting those critical of the Chinese government or taking part in activities deemed threatening to the government.

Unconfirmed reports by other followers of Humkar Dorje said that some Lung Ngon monastery members who were in Vietnam with him may have been detained at the same time and may be handed over by the Vietnamese authorities to China despite the severe risk of torture and other mistreatment.

The Vietnamese government is obligated to respect the international law principle of nonrefoulement, which prohibits countries from returning anyone to a place where they would face a real risk of persecution.

The Chinese government is known to have arrested and repatriated at least two political dissidents from Vietnam with the cooperation of the Vietnamese authorities, Dong Guangping in 2022 and Wang Bingzhang in 2002.

Consistent with the Minnesota Protocol on the Investigation of Potentially Unlawful Death, the Vietnamese government should conduct an impartial investigation into the circumstances of Humkar Dorje’s death, including the role of its security services and any involvement of Chinese security personnel or officials. This inquiry should include an autopsy to establish the causes of death, which should be provided to the family along with the body being returned to them. The Minnesota Protocol provides that “[i]n cases of potentially unlawful death, families have the right, at a minimum, to information about the circumstances, location and condition of the remains and, insofar as it has been determined, the cause and manner of death.”

“Foreign governments should press the Vietnamese government for answers on Humkar Dorje Rinpoche’s death,” Wang said. “They should hold Vietnamese officials accountable for complicity in China’s abusive practices in Vietnam and take measures to prevent their recurrence.”

Iran: Imminent Threat to Amputate Prisoners' Fingers

Human Rights Watch — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 12:00:00 -0400

(Beirut) – Iranian authorities are preparing to carry out finger amputation sentences, as early as April 11, 2025, against three men imprisoned for theft following grossly unfair trials, Human Rights Watch said today. All United Nations member states should urgently call on Iran to abide by its human rights obligations and immediately revoke these sentences.

An informed source told Human Rights Watch that on March 13, the office in charge of implementing sentences in Urmia Central Prison in West Azerbaijan Province summoned Hadi Rostami, 38, Mehdi Sharifian, 42, and Mehdi Shahivand, 29, and gave them a letter from prosecutorial officials notifying them that their sentences would be carried out as early as April 11.

“Amputation is torture, plain and simple. Yet Iran persists in carrying out cruel and inhuman punishments that fly in the face of its human rights obligations,” said Bahar Saba, senior Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch. “All officials responsible for ordering and carrying out acts of torture, including any medical professionals participating in them, will be liable for criminal prosecution under international law.”

Authorities’ plans for amputating the three men’s four fingers come in the wake of the gruesome amputation of fingers of two brothers, Mehrdad Teimouri and Shahab Teimouri, also in Urmia Central Prison, in October 2024. At least two other men face amputation sentences in the same prison. Under Iran’s laws, amputations are in principle carried out without any anaesthesia.

Iranian authorities detained the three men in August 2017 over accusations that they had broken into several houses and robbed safes. In November 2019, following a grossly unfair trial, Branch 1 of Criminal Court 1 in West Azerbaijan province convicted the men of theft. The court sentenced all three to amputations of four fingers of their right hands in a manner that “only the palm of their hands and thumbs are left.”

Evidence strongly suggests that the trial was grossly unfair. According to case information reviewed by Human Rights Watch and accounts of informed sources, the men did not have access to lawyers during the investigation phase and only saw a lawyer twice; , once when they signed the retention documents and once during the court hearings. The men have also said that that the authorities tortured and ill-treated them while in the custody of the police’s Investigation Unit (Agahi) in Urmia. The sources indicate that authorities coerced the men into making statements incriminating themselves and each other by beating and flogging them and suspending them from their hands and wrists. All three men subsequently retracted their confessions, but the court relied on the torture-tainted self-incriminating statements to convict them.

Rostami has made torture complaints to high-ranking judicial officials on several occasions. Human Rights Watch has reviewed two letters he wrote, addressed in September 2020 and December 2022 respectively to the heads of Iran’s Judiciary and the Justice Department in West Azerbaijan province.

Rostami states in the letters that he denied the charges but that police officials subjected him to torture and other ill-treatment by beating him. He said they then coerced him into signing a blank piece of paper that he later discovered was filled with incriminating statements attributed to him when he was taken before prosecution officials.

The authorities have dismissed all these complaints and failed to conduct prompt, independent, transparent, and thorough investigations as required under international law. The Supreme Court verdict reviewed by Human Rights Watch confirms that Rostami had raised allegations of torture, informing judicial authorities that his self-incriminating statements had been extracted under torture. The court nonetheless upheld the amputation sentences without ordering investigation into the allegations.

Based on documentation by Amnesty International, the authorities also subjected Rostami to torture in February 2021 by carrying out a flogging sentence of 60 lashes for “disrupting prison order” in retaliation for a hunger strike.

The three men have spent eight years in prison facing repeated threats that authorities would carry out the amputations, threats that themselves constitute a form of torture or other ill-treatment. In a November 2024 letter, the men described the mental anguish they and their families had experienced as a “horrific nightmare that could become reality any second.” In a March 2025 letter published by the Kurdistan Human Rights Network, Rostami once again appealed to the international community and human rights organizations for urgent action to stop the implementation of these inhumane and cruel punishments.

At least two other men, Kasra Karami and Morteza Esmaeilian, are also held in Urmia Central Prison facing amputation sentences.

Iran remains among the handful of countries that retain, impose, and implement corporal punishments. Under international law, cruel and inhumane punishments such as flogging and amputations are strictly prohibited. All states parties to the Convention against Torture are obligated to prosecute or extradite for prosecution anyone suspected of torture within their territories, Human Rights Watch said.

Iran’s legislation governing the implementation of death sentences and corporal punishments requires the presence of medical professionals at the site where amputations are carried out. Amputations, under the law, are carried out without any anaesthesia unless it is deemed that their implementation without local or general anaesthesia would result in injuries excessive to what has been judicially ordered.

Under ethical codes for medical professionals, including the World Medical Assembly’s 1975 Declaration of Tokyo, doctors and other medical practitioners are prohibited, in unambiguous terms, from countenancing, condoning, or participating in torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading punishments and treatments. They must not provide any premises, instruments, substances, or knowledge to facilitate the commission of torture and other ill-treatment or be present during such acts. As with other officials, medical practitioners who participate in torture may be criminally liable.

All member states of the UN should forcefully condemn amputation sentences and other forms of corporal punishment and take action to prevent them, Human Rights Watch said. Countries that have universal jurisdiction provisions should criminally investigate and prosecute anyone suspected of criminal responsibility for acts of torture, including those that are judicially sanctioned, such as amputations and floggings.

Thailand: US Scholar Detained on Royal Insult Charge

Human Rights Watch — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 20:00:00 -0400

(Bangkok) – Thai authorities should immediately release and drop the groundless charges against Paul Chambers, a leading Thai studies scholar, Human Rights Watch said today.

On April 8, 2025, Chambers was detained after he reported to police in Phitsanulok province regarding lese majeste (insulting the monarchy) and cybercrime charges under an arrest warrant dated March 31. The Phitsanulok provincial court denied his bail application, citing flight risks because the alleged offenses carry heavy penalties and he is a foreigner. Chambers is being held in pretrial detention at Phitsanulok provincial prison.

“The Thai authorities have long used the royal insult law to abuse Thai citizens but now seem intent on violating the rights of foreigners,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The baseless prosecution of Paul Chambers poses a serious threat to academic freedom and free speech in Thailand.”

Chambers is widely known for his research on civil-military relations in Thailand and Southeast Asia. He currently teaches at the Center of ASEAN Community Studies at Naresuan University in Phitsanulok province.

Chambers’s prosecution stems from a complaint filed by the Thai army accusing him of responsibility for a blurb advertising an academic webinar about the Thai security forces in October 2024 that the army alleged was critical of the monarchy. Chambers was the speaker at this event, hosted by Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. He is also accused of harming national security by distributing distorted or false information online.

Chambers denied all charges, saying that he neither wrote nor published the blurb.

Royalist and ultraconservative groups have targeted Chambers for many years, including by propagating online disinformation and hate campaigns and by pressing Thai authorities to revoke his visa and have him expelled from the university.

Article 112 of the penal code on lese majeste carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison. Article 14 of Thailand’s Computer-Related Crime Act is punishable by up to five years in prison.

The number of lese majeste cases in Thailand has been rapidly increasing. Thai authorities have in recent years prosecuted at least 272 people on charges of insulting the monarchy. Those arrested, including many for writing or reposting on social media, have often been held in lengthy detention without access to bail. In May 2024, the anti-monarchy activist Netiporn Sanesangkhom, 28, died after suffering cardiac arrest in pretrial detention on lese majeste charges.

The increased use of the lese majeste law has made it more difficult for the police, prosecutors, judges, and other authorities to question the merits of lese majeste allegations, out of concern that they might be accused of disloyalty to the monarchy themselves, Human Rights Watch said.

Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra has not fulfilled her 2023 election campaign pledges to initiate parliamentary discussion about measures to prevent the use of royal insult charges as a political tool and to release on bail detained democracy activists and dissidents.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Thailand has ratified, protects the right to freedom of expression. General Comment 34 of the UN Human Rights Committee, the international expert body that monitors compliance with the covenant, has stated that laws such as those for lese majeste “should not provide for more severe penalties solely on the basis of the identity of the person that may have been impugned” and that governments “should not prohibit criticism of institutions.”

Frank La Rue, then-UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, stated in October 2011: “The threat of a long prison sentence and vagueness of what kinds of expression constitute defamation, insult, or threat to the monarchy, encourage self-censorship and stifle important debates on matters of public interest, thus putting in jeopardy the right to freedom of opinion and expression.”

“Concerned governments and UN agencies should make it clear to Thai authorities that prosecuting scholars speaking on the issues of the day will have an enormously detrimental impact on Thailand’s reputation,” Pearson said. “As a new member of the UN Human Rights Council, the Thai government should be taking concrete steps to promote human rights rather than undermining them.”

Syria: Landmines, Explosive Remnants Harming Civilians

Human Rights Watch — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 00:00:00 -0400

Click to expand Image Nidal Ahmad stands near his olive farm in Aleppo, Syria on March 4, 2025. Its location near a former Syrian Army military camp has prevented him from harvesting crops for years. Last December, Nidal returned to check on his land and lost his foot in a landmine explosion. © 2025 Hibatullah Barakat, Middle East Images via AFP via Getty Images Over 600 people, including children, have been killed or injured by landmines and explosive remnants of war across Syria since December 2024.Extensive contamination from landmines and explosive remnants of war across Syria poses fatal risks to civilians returning home to urban and rural areas.Syria’s transitional government should work with international donors to establish structures, policies, procedures, and programming to urgently survey and clear landmines and explosive remnants of war and to secure stocks of weapons.

(Damascus, April 8, 2025) – Over a decade of conflict has resulted in Syria being extensively contaminated by landmines and explosive remnants of war, a major barrier to safe return and reconstruction efforts, Human Rights Watch said today. Contamination from weapons used during the 14-year conflict has killed at least 249 people, including 60 children, and injured another 379 since December 8, 2024, according to INSO, the international organization dedicated to enhancing the safety of aid workers.

The monthly number of casualties INSO has recorded from these incidents significantly increased after December 8, and international organizations and volunteer deminers told Human Rights Watch that this appears to have been driven by increased movement of displaced people returning home. Syria’s transitional government should work to urgently ensure the survey and clearance of landmines and explosive remnants of war. Stockpiles of weapons held by the former government should be secured and guarded to prevent further injuries and deaths.

“For the first time in over a decade there’s an opportunity to systematically tackle the extraordinary countrywide contamination in Syria by clearing landmines and explosive remnants of war,” said Richard Weir, senior crisis, conflict and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Without urgent, nationwide clearance efforts, more civilians returning home to reclaim critical rights, lives, livelihoods, and land will be injured and killed.”

During a February 2025 visit to Syria, Human Rights Watch spoke with 18 people including victims, parents whose children were injured, and people from communities affected by uncleared landmines and explosive remnants of war from the northern, center, and southern parts of the country. Researchers also spoke to United Nations officials, three people engaged in mine clearance, and staff from nine international and local organizations working to survey and clear landmines and explosive remnants of war across Syria.

On the night of January 27, Raneem Abulhakim Masalma woke up to a loud explosion inside her home that killed her mother and her 7-year-old niece, and injured her and 11 other family members, including her son Bashar, 16. Earlier that day, Bashar had brought home a weapon he found at an unsecured military base 100 meters from their home in Daraa. Bashar was handling the weapon in his room at about midnight when it exploded, causing the injuries and deaths, including metal fragment injuries to both of his legs, and a fire that destroyed much of their home. “He had no idea of the dangers,” Masalma said.

None of the victims and witnesses interviewed – many of whose loved ones had been injured or killed since December 8 because of unexploded ordnance – knew of any way to report the possible presence of explosive remnants of war to authorities. Those interviewed all said that they had not been given any information about the dangers of unexploded ordnance in their area and that lack of knowledge was a key contributor to their relatives being injured or killed.

Between 2011 and December 2024, Syrian government forces, its allies, and armed opposition groups used antipersonnel landmines, cluster munitions, and other explosive weapons extensively, resulting in the contamination of large swaths of the country, some of which have only become accessible since the collapse of the Assad government. Prior to December 8, landmines and explosive remnants of war frequently injured or killed civilians returning home and accessing agricultural land.

Several factors such as the lack of organized information, coordination, and national institutions and bodies, as well as regulatory hurdles, inhibit the ability to address the staggering scale of contamination, members of the mine action community and UN officials said.

A 35-year-old engineer and teacher from Idlib in northwestern Syria, Fahad Walid Al-Ghajar, joined a volunteer demining team to help his neighbors return home. His brother said that on February 21, Al-Ghajar had been helping to clear farmland southwest of Idlib city when a munition he was attempting to move exploded, killing him. Al-Ghajar’s wife and four children have not received any support since then, his brother said.

Landmines and explosive remnants of war result not only in direct loss of life or severe injuries that can cause a permanent disability or life-long scarring, but they also cause psychological trauma, as well as so-called reverberating harm that undermines basic human rights. This includes loss of property, displacement, a reduced standard of living, and impaired access to shelter, health care, education, and basic services such as electricity. Survivors often require long-term medical assistance and specialized treatment, as well as psychosocial and mental health support.

The transitional Syrian government and international donors should prioritize survey, clearance, and risk education, Human Rights Watch said. The transitional government should urgently establish a national civilian-led mine action authority and center, working closely with the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) to coordinate ongoing mine action efforts across the country, develop standards, and revise current registration agreements for humanitarian mine action organizations to facilitate their lifesaving work. The transitional government and donors should also ensure that mine clearance activities are adequately funded and provide adequate payments for victims.

“The explosive remnants of war need to be cleared so that people can return, live safely in their communities, and engage in activities critical to their livelihoods, like agriculture,” Weir said. “The transitional government should work with donors and humanitarian organizations to facilitate this urgent, lifesaving work.”

Human Rights Watch is cofounder of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, 1997 Nobel Peace Co-Laureate, and the Cluster Munition Coalition. It contributes to the campaign’s annual Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor reports.

For more details on contamination across Syria, please see below.
Civilian Casualties from Contamination

Human Rights Watch spoke to four parents whose children were injured by unexploded or abandoned ordnance they encountered at abandoned military bases in Daraa, in southern Syria. Three children now have an acquired disability from their injuries. A community leader told Human Rights Watch that only one of the five major military bases in and around the city has a locked gate guarded by soldiers from the transitional government. The others are not closed or secured, even though the community requested assistance from the transitional government. He also said that since December 8, no one had provided community members with information about the dangers of unexploded, abandoned ordnance in their area and that this had been a key contributor to injuries.

On February 14, Rayan Ashraf Swaidan, 14, lost a finger while playing with his friends at a military base on the northern outskirts of Daraa, said his father, Ashraf Isa Swaidan. A volunteer clearance team had done limited work but did not secure the site or warn the community. Swaidan said his son picked up a munition he found on the ground and threw it at the wall. It exploded, slicing off the index finger on his left hand. “We rushed him to the hospital in Daraa to see if they could reattach his finger, but they could not,” Swaidan said. “He is okay now, but he has become much more solitary. He keeps to himself.”

Sahar Mahmoud al-Bidawi said her son Muatassim Kiwan, 12, was playing with his friends at another military base further north of Daraa on January 15, when the boys decided to start a fire and throw in remnants they had found. Kiwan threw some bullets into the fire, which then exploded, spraying metal fragments into his head and shoulder. He lost hearing in his right ear, has nerve damage in his face, and cannot open his right eye because of the incident, and he requires further surgery on his skull in the coming months.

“He has become scared of everything and now has panic attacks,” Al-Bidawi said. Both she and the community leader said that though a volunteer clearance team carried out some clearance activities at the base after Kiwan was injured, nothing had been done to restrict public access to the base.

Contamination of military bases is only part of the problem. Some rural areas are also heavily contaminated. Aghiad Mohammed Khair, 10, was collecting mushrooms on the outskirts of Daraa city on February 19, when he and his friends came across some unexploded ordnance. “They played with them and then the remnants exploded, leading to the severing of my son’s index finger and a fracture in his middle finger,” his father said. “Nine other children also had minor injuries. There are no warning signs in the area, even though we now know it hasn’t been cleared of landmines or war remnants.”

Ahmed Nayef al-Zgheib, 38, said he had been cautiously collecting firewood to heat his home in al-Jneinah, a village in Deir al-Zor, on February 7:

I cut down a relatively large tree and started dragging it along a path by the river: a route I knew and considered relatively safe. However, as I pulled the tree, I stumbled backward and at that moment, I must have stepped on an antipersonnel landmine, which exploded and threw me into the air about two to three meters. At the moment of the explosion, I lost my right foot, almost at the ankle level. When I was taken to the hospital, my bone was visibly burned, and the flesh was severely torn. During surgery, the doctors had to amputate my leg about 10 centimeters below the knee.

Human Rights Watch could not confirm what type of explosive weapon caused the injury resulting in an acquired disability.

A man who asked to remain anonymous leads a volunteer mine clearance team in Palmyra, in central Syria. On February 12, he was in a car with other volunteers escorting a mechanic, Fawzi al-Ali, who was in the car behind him, to repair a vehicle at a base operated by fighters from the transitional government. Al-Ali had brought along his 8-year-old son and a local resident who knew the area well. The team leader said they were driving on a route he thought safe, when suddenly the car behind them hit something and exploded. He said al-Ali died immediately from serious injuries to his whole body. His son lost his left leg during the explosion, and the resident guide lost both legs.

“What happened to Fawzi is, sadly, not at all unique,” he said in late February. “Last week, 21 people in the area died because of explosions like this.” Human Rights Watch did not independently verify the report. He said an 18-year-old member of his team was recently killed during clearance operations. “We need an international team to come with equipment and do an assessment to support us and our work,” he said.

Contaminated Farmland

Farmers said that the contamination was affecting their livelihoods. Mohammed Al-Nazzal, a farmer from the Raqqa countryside, said that his family’s land and his neighbor’s is all contaminated:

We learned about the landmines from residents of nearby villages, who told us that explosions had injured people on our land. We also saw wires in the ground, so we avoid those areas. But there are no warning signs. We are the ones who now have to inform other people about the presence of landmines if they are not from the area. This has affected us. We cannot do what we used to: cultivate the land and benefit from it, and have our livestock graze on it.

Hassan Zakrya Hassan, 43, from Tabqa, 40 kilometers west of Raqqa, said he and his neighbors returned home in 2018 after several years of displacement only to find out that their farmland was heavily contaminated. Nearly seven years later, he said they’re still unable to use the land:

There is water and labor available, but the land remains contaminated. We have reached out to NGOs for demining assistance, and while they promised to help, they never came. There are no warning signs on the land. We only learned about the contamination from the villagers after two incidents in 2018 that left two shepherds injured. We want to farm our land. It would provide job opportunities for 40 families.

Clearance by Community Members

Communities attempting to return home or restore their livelihoods have turned to volunteers for help to clear land because of the lack of an adequately resourced, coordinated, and effective countrywide response. In many cases, local volunteers and some organizations with little or no specialized equipment and only informal training are responding to pleas from communities.

Human Rights Watch spoke to three residents of Kafr Nabl, a village 35 kilometers south of Idlib, in northern Syria. The mayor said that between 2018 and 2019, the Syrian army forced all of the roughly 450 households from the village out of the area and then turned it into a de facto military base.

The army proceeded to mine the area, he said, which borders on territory that at the time was under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Shams (HTS), an armed group whose members now dominate the Syrian transitional government. Residents said that two or three days after Assad’s government fell, they began to return to the area to see what remained of their homes and agricultural land. They found fields and trees burned down, and many houses heavily damaged.

Soon, some residents came across landmines laid in the fields near the army base. Rizzu Mohammed, 65, a community leader, said that a volunteer team contacted village leaders in early January and offered to come and clear their area of mines. Mohammed said the team spent about a week in the village and successfully cleared at least 70 mines, including 27 mines on his own agricultural land.

That team left, and on January 15, another clearance team of six or seven people with some military experience, who said they had been trained by HTS in demining techniques, came to Kafr Nabl village, residents said. During the clearance operations, the team found a range of additional landmines, including OZM-72, PMN-1, YM-1, POM-2S, and PMN-type antipersonnel mines and YM-2 and YM-3 anti-vehicle mines, a member of the team, Abdo Faisal Hamdi told Human Rights Watch. While Hamdi, 25, was attempting to clear mines in the village of Fatatra, 14 kilometers west of Kufr Nabel, he stepped on one. He lost both his legs, and one eye and has severe damage to the other.

Also in mid-January, Mohammed Sami Sued, 38, a Kafr Nabl resident who said he had demining experience during his military service, reached out to his former neighbors and offered to help them clear their land, so they could start farming again. Zaydan al-Husni, 42, took him up on the offer, having found at least 10 mines on his land.

The two of them returned to the area together, neither wearing any protective equipment, al-Husni said. Al-Husni shared photographs of OZM-72 bounding fragmentation antipersonnel mines, PMN-type antipersonnel mines, and TM-57 and TM-62 anti-vehicle mines with Human Rights Watch, which he said Sued had collected from his land that day.

Al-Husni said he and Sued came across at least six items that Sued wanted to detonate with an explosive charge. He laid the explosive charge but then decided to take a closer look at the items. As Sued was on his knees leaning over them, one of the items detonated. A metal fragment hit his head, and he died immediately, al-Husni said. Al-Husni, who was standing behind him at the time of the explosion, was injured in his right chest, back and left thigh, but survived after neighbors heard the explosion and rushed over to take him to the hospital.

Al-Husni said that since December 8, eight residents of Kafr Nabl had been killed because of explosive remnants of war and at least three more had been killed in neighboring areas.

Need For Action

Urgent steps are needed to improve humanitarian mine action work, which includes clearing landmines and explosive remnants of war and other activities, such as surveys of areas and victim assistance. Members of the mine action sector and UN officials said effective humanitarian mine action work is being inhibited by several factors, including the lack of overall coordination and centralization of information. The years-long fragmentation of governance structures, the sheer scale of contamination, and the lack of a national mine action authority and center have exacerbated the problem. There are also complicated requirements for registration and operation, some of which are inconsistent with the ability of organizations to do their work impartially.

For years, mine action in Syria has been underfunded by donors in comparison to the needs, frustrating efforts to begin new programming or continue basic work, such as mine risk education. Because of these limitations, clearance is often undertaken by local and private groups or individuals with little or no formal training or coordination with national or international mine clearance operators.

In light of these realities, Human Rights Watch is making the following recommendations to the transitional government and international community:

Recommendations to the Transitional Government:Establish and empower independent civilian national mine action institutions, including both a National Mine Action Authority to provide overall strategic direction of mine action work and to link relevant ministries, as well as a National Mine Action Center to help coordinate operational aspects of clearance, including standardization of implementation according to International Mine Action Standards (IMAS), prioritization of response, accreditation, quality assurance, tasking, and information management. United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) should support the authorities in developing these institutions.Centralize and standardize data collection and data sharing from the current and former government agencies and institutions, through the Information Management System for Mine Action.Prioritize clearance efforts and ensure adequate funding for all aspects of humanitarian mine action, technical and nontechnical surveys, risk education, training of additional specialists, and victim assistance.Ensure that adopted standards for clearance and victim assistance follow an integrated approach with clearly defined roles and responsibilities based on the most recent international standards.Eliminate administrative impediments hindering registration of mine action actors in Syria.Facilitate the entry to and movement within Syria of specialists involved in mine action, as well as the use and retention of equipment and materials needed for clearance.Establish and publicize a country-wide system for anonymous reporting of explosive contamination and weapons ownership.Increase risk education activities and make them an integral component of safe return of civilians to residential areas and agricultural land suspected to be contaminated.Enable establishment of a country-wide database of survivors of landmines and explosive remnants of war and persons with disabilities, and remove impediments to mapping services countrywide, for enhanced access to specialized care, physical rehabilitation, psychosocial support, and extensive protection services.Conduct transparent investigations into possible laws-of-war violations by armed groups responsible for using antipersonnel landmines, including victim-activated improvised explosive devices (IEDs).Accede to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty and commit to the comprehensive prohibition of antipersonnel landmines, as well as the destruction of remaining stockpiles.Accede to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions and commit to the comprehensive prohibition of cluster munitions, as well as the destruction of remaining stockpiles.Recommendations to International Donors and Other Governments:Prioritize and increase support for mine clearance activities, risk education to protect people from avoidable deaths and injuries, and survivor assistance programs.Enhance support to the Mine Action Area of Responsibility in the UN’s protection cluster system to boost coordination between government agencies and humanitarian actors.Support information management for centralized data collection and sharing.Urge Syria to accede to the Mine Ban Treaty and Convention on Cluster Munitions.Enable access to multi-year, flexible funding for national and international nongovernmental organizations to address the long-term nature of mine action.Ensure sustained investment in victim assistance programs, including access to physical rehabilitation, mental health and psychosocial support, and prosthetic and orthotic services, as well as education, social inclusion, and livelihood opportunities.