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Click to expand Image Bassirou Diomaye Faye delivers his inaugural speech after being sworn in as Senegal's president in Dakar, Senegal, April 2, 2024. © 2024 AP Photo/Sylvain Cherkaoui

(Nairobi) – Senegal’s newly elected president, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, should make protecting and promoting human rights a priority during his presidency, both within Senegal and regionally, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to the president made public today.

Human Rights Watch outlined five key recommendations to improve human rights in Senegal, urging Faye, during his term in office, to fight impunity for security forces’ abuse; promote and protect the rights to freedom of expression, assembly, and association; improve prison conditions; prioritize rights and saving lives when addressing irregular migration; and develop a foreign policy based on human rights. He should support rights-respecting democracies in West Africa and moves to strengthen the system of international justice.

“Faye has an important opportunity to create a rights-respecting administration that abides by the rule of law,” said Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Sahel researcher at Human Rights Watch. “He should commit to reforms that will safeguard and advance human rights in the years to come.”

Faye, 44, the youngest president in Senegal’s history, was sworn into office on April 2, 2024, following delayed elections, and less than two weeks after he was released from prison, where he was serving a sentence over a Facebook post. On the day he was sworn in, Faye appointed his key backer, Ousmane Sonko, as prime minister.

On February 3, former President Macky Sall announced that presidential elections, slated for February 25, would be delayed, citing an institutional crisis that he said could damage the election’s credibility. In January, Senegal’s constitutional council had decided to exclude several candidates, including Sonko, from the electoral race. Senegal’s parliament set up a commission of inquiry to investigate the council's handling of the vetting process amid accusations of corruption against at least two of the council’s judges.

On February 6, Senegal’s parliament voted to delay the elections to December 15 after a chaotic National Assembly session during which security forces removed opposition lawmakers. This sparked violent protests in the capital, Dakar, and across the country on February 9 and 10, leading to the deaths of four people and the arrest of over 270 others.

On March 13, during a Council of Ministers meeting, following national and international pressure and a decision by Senegal’s constitutional court, Sall shortened the delay and announced that elections would be held on March 24.

The elections followed three years of political unrest, which included Sonko’s arrest in July 2023 and concerns that Sall would seek a third term despite constitutional term limits. The violence shook Senegal’s reputation as an example of a stable democracy in a region ravaged by military coups. Dozens were killed in the protests, and over 1,000 were arrested, including Faye.

Faye is the secretary general of the African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics, and Fraternity (Patriotes africains du Sénégal pour le travail, l'éthique et la fraternité, PASTEF) party, the main opposition group dissolved by the authorities in July 2023. He was arrested on April 14, 2023, following a Facebook message in which he criticized magistrates and was charged with “undermining state security” and fomenting insurrection, among others. Faye was released on March 14 after the National Assembly adopted an amnesty law on March 6.

“By taking bold steps to strengthen human rights protections, President Faye would turn the page on the last years of violence, abuse, and impunity,” Allegrozzi said. “The Senegalese people and the world will be watching his actions closely.”

Click to expand Image Sebastian Duterte, currently the mayor of Davao City, delivers a speech at a campaign rally in Davao City, the hometown of his father, then-President Rodrigo Duterte, May 10, 2019. © 2019 Kyodo via AP Images

(Manila) – The mayor of Davao City in the Philippines, Sebastian Duterte, recently declared a new “war on drugs,” suggestive of the abusive campaign of his father, former President Rodrigo Duterte, Human Rights Watch said today. Local authorities killed five people in the 24 hours after he made the declaration and at least seven within a matter of days.

The failure of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to end the violent anti-drug raids that underpin the “drug war” has emboldened local leaders such as Duterte to adopt measures in violation of international human rights law.

“Davao City Mayor Sebastian Duterte may have sparked another round of police summary executions by reenergizing his father’s abusive ‘drug war,’” said Bryony Lau, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “But the sad reality is that these killings never ended, and the thousands of victims and their families in Davao City and elsewhere struggle without a remedy or justice.”

On March 22, 2024, Mayor Duterte declared a new “war against drugs” in Davao. He gave a speech at an event for the city police in which he conveyed a message to drug users: “If you don’t stop, if you don’t leave, I will kill you.”

Hours after the speech, Davao City media reported several killings by the police during drug raids, in which the police alleged that the victims had “fought back,” the same claim that Philippine authorities have used for years to justify “drug war” killings.

These recent killings in Davao City are merely a spike in a “drug war” that has never stopped, Human Rights Watch said. The University of the Philippines Third World Studies Center has reported that since Duterte became mayor in June 2022, Davao del Sur, the city’s greater provincial area, has had more drug-related killings than any other area in the country, including Metro Manila.

Out of the 342 killings the center recorded from July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023, 53 (15 percent) occurred in Davao del Sur. By comparison, there were 44 killings in Cebu and 43 in Metro Manila, or the National Capital Region. An updated figure published by Rappler indicates that from July 1, 2022, to March 15, 2024, a total of 96 people were killed in “drug-related” incidents in Davao. All but one were committed by police and anti-drug agents during police operations.

Human Rights Watch in 2023 interviewed families of victims of recent drug-related killings in Davao. The 20-year-old wife of a shooting victim said that in April 2023, the authorities had accused her husband of theft and small-time drug dealing: “We had just come from a 7-Eleven to buy food that night when about six men came to our house, dragged my husband to the second floor, where they shot him in the chest.”

She said that a police car, not an ambulance, arrived to retrieve her husband’s body even while about 15 armed men and local officials remained nearby, indicating the authorities were involved in the killing. 

Local activists said that the killings under the current mayor were no different from in previous years. “The killings here have been regular,” said a member of a Davao human rights group. “The perpetrators often just wear civilian clothes, but they are always in groups. It reminds us of the days of the ‘Davao Death Squad,’ that’s how bad it is.” 

Human Rights Watch in 2009 reported on the “Davao Death Squad,” a shadowy group allegedly responsible for hundreds of extrajudicial executions over two decades when Rodrigo Duterte was mayor of Davao City. After he became president in 2016, police conducted sweeping raids and “buy-bust operations” across the country, resulting in thousands of fatalities, most being of poor drug users and small-time drug peddlers. The International Criminal Court is investigating these killings in its ongoing investigation into crimes against humanity in the Philippines. 

President Marcos has continued the anti-drug campaign begun by his predecessor. He has said repeatedly that the campaign against drugs will focus on rehabilitation but killings have continued. Although the rate of killings has dropped since Marcos became president in June 2022, the Third World Studies Center found that more than 600 people were killed in “drug-related” incidents in the 19 months he has been in office.

Marcos appointed a new chief of the Philippine National Police, Rommel Francisco Marbil, who at a news conference on April 2 said he would pursue the anti-drug campaign, although he said he did not want to call it a “war on drugs.” He vowed to abide by the rule of law in achieving “100 percent drug-free” communities and to ensure accountability and transparency in the investigations of drug-related killings such as those in Davao City.

Unless President Marcos clarifies publicly that he has ordered a policy shift to end targeted killings of alleged drug dealers and users, and states clearly that those responsible for unlawful killings will be fully prosecuted, local officials like Duterte will continue to try to justify such killings, Human Rights Watch said.

“The new spate of killings in Davao City and elsewhere shows that President Marcos has not done enough to end the ‘drug war,’” Lau said. “The Marcos administration needs to take stronger action to demonstrate that the ‘war on drugs’ is officially over.”

(Beirut) – The global governing bodies of men’s and women’s professional tennis have effectively enabled the Saudi government’s efforts to “sportswash” its egregious human rights record through the announcement of two separate deals with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) and the Saudi Tennis Federation, Human Rights Watch said today. Neither of the public announcements of the deals mentioned any measures to address human rights.

On April 4, 2024, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) announced that its next three finals, from 2024 to 2026, will be hosted in Riyadh following an agreement with the Saudi Tennis Federation. On February 28, the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) and the PIF announced a “multi-year strategic partnership.”

“Global tennis organizations should not contribute to serving up repression in Saudi Arabia,” said Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch. “The Women’s Tennis Association and the Association of Tennis Professionals should demand improvements to Saudi’s rights record before making deals that launder Saudi government abuses.”

The agreement between the WTA and the Saudi Tennis Federation “will offer record prize money of US$15.25 million at the WTA Finals in 2024 with further increases in 2025 and 2026.” The Saudi PIF became the official naming partner of the ATP Rankings through the strategic partnership.

The tennis federations should press the Saudi government to release jailed rights activists and urge reforms to allow women and girls to exercise their basic human rights, Human Rights Watch said. These sports federations should also adopt a human rights policy that ensures that they do not enable or facilitate Saudi government abuses. They should also reject any nondisparagement or other clauses in their agreements with the Saudi PIF that restrict the associations, their staff, or athletes from publicly criticizing Saudi authorities’ human rights abuses.

Other sports federations, including Formula 1, have added restrictions to athletes speaking out on issues, including about human rights in their agreements with the Saudis. Formula 1’s ban on political statements came after champion racing driver Lewis Hamilton criticized Saudi Arabia’s rights record.

On April 4, Human Rights Watch wrote to the WTA, asking what, if any, human rights due diligence and stakeholder consultations the federation had carried out with Saudi women’s rights defenders and other key stakeholders before the decision to award the finals to Saudi Arabia. The federation has not yet responded.

WTA tour chairman and CEO Steve Simon told a media outlet on April 4 that, “We’ve … shared the concerns around women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights within the Kingdom of Saudi [Arabia]. Our focus is on how we develop women’s tennis for the benefit of everybody involved in the game … We participate in many countries that have different cultures and values systems across the board.”

Businesses, including sports federations, have a responsibility to respect human rights throughout all their operations. The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights sets out these responsibilities, including the expectation that businesses will adopt specific policies and conduct due diligence to identify any risks of contributing to human rights harm. Harms may include conferring reputational benefits that help cover up human rights abuses. That standard has clearly been breached by these agreements, Human Rights Watch said.

Saudi Arabia has an egregious women’s rights record. Saudi women’s rights activists have faced arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, and travel bans. Loujain al-Hathloul, a prominent Saudi women’s rights activist, remains subject to a travel ban after she was detained for more than 1,000 days for her women’s rights activism.

Since 2018, Saudi women have been allowed to drive, and women and girls have been allowed to play sports and watch sports in stadiums. However, Saudi women and girls still face significant barriers preventing or limiting their participation in sports and physical activity.

A 2023 study by researchers at King Saud University found uneven access for Saudi female participation in sports and physical activities: Saudi women and girls in rural areas encountered higher constraints than residents of urban areas. The study found that a lack of physical education classes and sports facilities, in public and private girls’ schools, also negatively affects the ability of Saudi girls to participate in sports and physical activities.

The country’s first codified law on personal status formally enshrines male guardianship over women, despite Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and other Saudi government officials touting the law as “comprehensive” and “progressive.” The law codifies discriminatory practices and includes provisions that facilitate domestic violence and sexual abuse in marriage. The law also uses vague language that gives judges wide discretion when adjudicating cases, increasing the likelihood of inconsistent interpretations.

On March 27, a Saudi court sentenced 12 football fans to prison terms ranging from six months to up to a year for peacefully chanting during a January football match.

The PIF is a Saudi government-controlled sovereign wealth fund with approximately US$750 billion in assets under management. Under the crown prince, the fund has facilitated and benefitted from human rights abuses directly linked to him, including the 2017 “anti-corruption” crackdown that involved arbitrary detentions, abusive treatment, and the extortion of property from former and current government officials, prominent businessmen, and rivals within the royal family, as well as the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

As part of the crackdown, one of bin Salman’s advisers ordered the PIF’s then-supervisor Yasir al-Rumayyan to transfer 20 companies into the fund, according to internal Saudi government documents submitted to a Canadian court as part of an ongoing legal claim filed by a group of Saudi companies.

One of the companies was Sky Prime Aviation, which owned the two planes later used by Saudi agents to travel to Istanbul, murder Khashoggi in the country’s consulate, and return to Saudi Arabia. In February 2021, the United States Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report assessing that bin Salman had approved the operation.

The Saudi government has spent billions of dollars hosting major entertainment, cultural, and sporting events as a deliberate strategy to deflect from the country’s image as a pervasive human rights violator. The investment in major entertainment, cultural, and sports events is tied to the crown prince’s Vision 2030, a plan to overhaul the country’s economy and attract foreign investors and tourists. Among the programs it has developed to realize its vision is one focused on creating more leisure and recreational options to “enhance the image of the Kingdom internationally.”

“The WTA still has leverage to press the Saudi government to release jailed women’s rights activists and to urge permanent reforms to allow women and girls to have basic human rights,” Worden said. “The question for sponsors and others who may be involved in tennis is whether they want to be associated with the abuses of its most influential backer, or will they speak out.”

Click to expand Image Volunteers offer free physical therapy services for a patient at the Seattle/King County Clinic, during an annual free healthcare event held at Seattle Center on February 16, 2024. © 2024 David Ryder/Getty Images

As the world prepares to celebrate World Health Day on April 7, governments’ failure to invest adequate resources or appropriate budgetary support in public healthcare systems undermines the right to health for many people around the world.

Forthcoming Human Rights Watch analysis of the most recent available data in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Health Expenditure Database shows that most governments spent less than 5 percent of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or 15 percent of their national budget on health care in 2021. These two benchmarks are largely accepted spending targets in public health care.

Even amid the massive surge in global healthcare spending in 2020-2021, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, 80 percent of the world’s population lived in countries that met neither spending benchmark. Indeed, when adjusted for inflation, 41 countries saw real-term declines in their per capita public healthcare spending between 2019 and 2021, despite the fact that most of them actually experienced an increase in GDP per capita in the same period.

Access to quality public services, including health care, is essential to the realization of human rights. Under international human rights law, governments have an obligation to ensure that healthcare goods and services are available, accessible, acceptable, and of good quality.

Adequate funding is a vital part of a states’ ability to fulfill these obligations, and they have a duty to use the maximum of their available resources towards realizing rights, including the right to health. While funding is far from the sole criteria to determine availability, accessibility, or quality, these data from the WHO make clear that greater government spending on health care generally correlates with more of the population enjoying access to essential healthcare goods and services.

Governments that are falling behind should set concrete steps to reach these spending benchmarks including, where necessary, by implementing ways to raise revenues such as through stemming tax abuses or via progressive taxes. Over the coming months, governments will have several chances to take these steps, including, in particular, at the 77th World Health Assembly in May, at the United Nations Summit of the Future in September, and at the fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in 2025.

The theme of this year’s World Health Day, “my health, my right”, is more than just a catchy slogan. It’s a reminder of governments’ obligation to ensure the highest attainable standard of health for all.

 

Click to expand Image Two work migrants from Central Asia in Moscow, Russia, April 14, 2023. © 2023 Contributor/Getty Images

(Berlin) – Migrants from Central Asia and other people of non-Slavic appearance are facing a notable increase in ethnic harassment and attacks in Russia in the wake of the March 22, 2024 attack on a concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow, Human Rights Watch said today.

Media reports describe an increase in ethnic profiling, xenophobic harassment and violent attacks by private parties and government officials, including arbitrary arrests and prolonged detention after several Tajiks were arrested in connection with the attack. This follows the apparent torture of at least two suspects, both Tajikistan citizens, by law enforcement personnel and escalating anti-migrant rhetoric by Russian authorities.

“Russian authorities should proclaim and enforce a zero tolerance policy for attacks on and harassment of Central Asians,” said Tanya Lokshina, associate Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities should stop their ethnic profiling of Central Asian migrants, arbitrary arrests, and prolonged detention, and instead ensure their safety, thoroughly investigate all xenophobic incidents and hold those responsible to account.”

In the two weeks since the attack, the media have reported cases ranging from refusal of services for migrants from Central Asia, dismissals from jobs, physical intimidation accompanied by anti-migrant slurs and slogans, and xenophobic violence. Reports include destruction of migrant-owned property beatings by groups of people, and attacks with pepper spray and knives.

Tajik migrants in Russia have described to the media the increased hostility towards them and their efforts to conceal their nationality for fear of reprisals. A Tajik migrant living in Moscow, who asked not to be quoted by name for her safety, told Human Rights Watch she feared going outside, having already experienced “suspicious looks” and aggressive calls to “get out of Russia.”

Human rights defenders say they are flooded with calls and requests for assistance from Central Asian migrants.

A prominent Russian human rights research organization has reported a spike in violence by ultra-nationalists against people they identify as non-Slavs and migrants. Telegram channels affiliated with ultra-nationalists feature videos of beatings, property destruction, hooliganism, and acts of harassment tagged as “revenge for Crocus City Hall.” A video posted on March 30 shows two young men catching up with a man peacefully walking next to a residential building and beating him. The video is accompanied by a running commentary describing the man as “Tajik” and claiming that the assailants also eventually hit him with a hammer on the back of his head.

Rather than condemn the xenophobic violence and harassment, Russian authorities have carried out raids and checks against migrants from Central Asia, especially Tajiks. Court cases against migrants for alleged violations of migration regulations appear to have increased by 70 percent above average for 2024 in the week following the attack, Human Rights Watch said based on its analysis of the best available court data.

Russian policymakers are proposing harsher migration-related legislation and policies, and to annul the current visa-free policy for people from Central Asian countries. At a meeting with the Interior Ministry on April 2, President Vladimir Putin said that the Crocus City Hall attack should not be used to justify xenophobia but at the same time, that “illegal migration” to Russia fostered a “fertile ground for extremist activity”.

In 2023, experts had already reported a rise in attacks by ultra-nationalists and noted a rise in xenophobic anti-migrant rhetoric in parliament, the media, and wider society. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) also expressed concern in 2023 about the spread of hate crimes and racist hate speech in Russia, including by government-owned media, politicians, and public figures, and the lack of information on accountability for these statements.

The UN Committee said that the Russian government should “[f]irmly condemn any form of hate speech and distance itself from racist hate speech expressed by politicians and public figures … and ensure that such acts are investigated and adequately punished.” The authorities failed to act on the Committee’s recommendations and following the Crocus City Hall attack, the situation has notably deteriorated, reports indicate.

Governments have an obligation under international human rights law to protect the right to life and security of everyone within their country without discrimination. Key international actors, including the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights of migrants, should urge the Russian authorities to categorically condemn and effectively investigate all xenophobic attacks in the aftermath of the Crocus City Hall attack as well as to ensure that there is zero tolerance for anti-migrant hate speech by public officials.

“Russian authorities should promptly respond to all reports of xenophobic violence against Central Asians, address the broader issue of rising xenophobia, and ensure a normal working climate for labor migrants from Tajikistan and other countries,” Lokshina said.

Click to expand Image The United Nations Security Council’s first open meeting on Myanmar since 2019, New York, April 4, 2024. © 2024 John Sifton/Human Rights Watch

Myanmar’s already abysmal human rights situation is getting worse.

That’s what senior United Nations officials told the UN Security Council on April 4, during a rare open meeting on Myanmar, its first since February 2019.

The council heard of a spiraling human rights and humanitarian catastrophe, with particularly worrisome abuses in Rakhine State. Conflict has “weakened transnational security” and instability has led to a crisis with “global implications,” officials said.

In December 2022, the council adopted Resolution 2669, condemning the Myanmar military’s abuses and attacks on civilians since its February 2021 coup. The resolution called on the military to release political prisoners, restore democratic institutions, and engage in dialogue.

Since then, however, the Security Council has been largely silent on the situation.

Meanwhile, Myanmar’s junta has ramped up attacks on civilians, including airstrikes, and increasingly blocked humanitarian aid. Refugees are fleeing to Bangladesh, China, India, and Thailand. Thousands of Rohingya are making dangerous journeys by sea to find refuge in Indonesia, Malaysia, and elsewhere.

The open meeting occurred the same day as the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva adopted a new resolution on Myanmar, which urged the UN secretary-general and General Assembly to renew attention to Myanmar at the Security Council.

The Security Council should take more meaningful steps to address rights concerns, including instituting an arms embargo, referring the situation to the International Criminal Court, and imposing targeted sanctions on military-owned companies. Regional efforts by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have been utterly inadequate.

The Human Rights Council’s April 4 resolution calls for restricting the Myanmar military’s access to jet fuel, a call echoed by the United States at the Security Council meeting.

But at the Security Council, China and Russia continue to block consideration of an embargo or any other measures, and now oppose even holding debates. At the Security Council meeting, both disputed that the situation in Myanmar was within the council’s mandate.

Almost every other member government raised serious concerns about the crisis, and many bemoaned the body’s inaction.

The Security Council needs to act. Even countries usually not in favor of strong UN action on human rights in Myanmar should recognize the dangers of continued inaction.

As a Japanese delegate put it, the Security Council’s inaction is not what the people of Myanmar “expect from this august body.” 

Click to expand Image Abdulrahman al-Khalidi. © Private

(Beirut) – Bulgarian authorities should immediately investigate allegations that police officers assaulted a Saudi human rights activist in their custody, Human Rights Watch said today.

An informed source told Human Rights Watch that law enforcement officers at the Busmanci Migrant Accommodation Center had allegedly assaulted Abdulrahman al-Khalidi, a Saudi rights activist, on March 31, 2024, choking him and beating him in the face and torso. Al-Khalidi, who has spent a decade exposing Saudi rights abuses, had sought asylum in Bulgaria in October 2021. He is at imminent risk of deportation back to Saudi Arabia, where he would be at serious risk of arbitrary detention, torture, and unfair trial.

“After more than a decade of exposing human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia, Abdulrahman al-Khalidi is now himself facing abuse in Bulgaria,” said Joey Shea, Saudi Arabia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Bulgarian authorities should conduct a prompt and impartial investigation into the officers’ conduct and hold those responsible for abuses to account.”

The informed source said that the police severely beat al-Khalidi after he attempted to provide food to a fasting family in the detention center on the evening of March 31. After officers apparently prevented him from providing the food, an altercation ensued.

Two policemen hit him hard in the face and in the chest, and another policeman grabbed his hand and pinned him from behind, while the other hit and choked him severely, according to the informed source. The beating lasted an hour, said the informed source.

After the assault, al-Khalidi did not receive medical care or a forensic medical examination, despite his requests, the informed source said. On April 3, Human Rights Watch reviewed an urgent request for a medical examination from al-Khalidi to Bulgaria’s public prosecutor.

Bulgarian authorities should investigate the alleged assault, hold those responsible for any unlawful acts to account, and immediately provide al-Khalidi with medical attention, Human Rights Watch said. In 2013, Human Rights Watch documented poor and overcrowded conditions at the Busmanci Center, as well as beatings and highly abusive treatment by police officers.

In October 2021, al-Khalidi crossed by foot into Bulgaria to claim asylum after living in exile for nearly a decade. The Bulgarian State Agency for Refugees initially rejected his asylum application because they did not recognize al-Khalidi’s risk of persecution, contending that Saudi Arabia had “taken measures to democratize society.”

On February 7, the Bulgarian National Security Agency issued a deportation order for al-Khalidi, placing him at imminent risk of deportation. Al-Khalidi has appealed the decision. The Bulgarian judiciary issued an order for his release on January 18, but Bulgaria’s State Agency for National Security overturned the order.

Given the rampant torture and due process violations in Saudi Arabia’s criminal justice system, Bulgaria would violate the principle of nonrefoulement by deporting a highly visible critic of the Saudi government to Saudi Arabia.

From 2011 to 2013, while al-Khalidi was living in Saudi Arabia, he advocated for the rights of prisoners in support of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association, also known as HASM. He participated in multiple demonstrations in support of Saudi detainees in Riyadh. In March 2013, al-Khalidi fled Saudi Arabia out of concern for his safety, first to Egypt, then Qatar, and finally Turkey.

In exile, he continued his activism and worked as an opposition journalist. He was also active in an online Saudi movement established by the late journalist Jamal Khashoggi called the Electronic Bees, which sought to counter pro-Saudi government propaganda campaigns and online troll armies.

In the aftermath of Khashoggi’s murder in 2018 in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, al-Khalidi feared for his safety. He did not renew his identity documents, which may have required him to appear in the same consulate where Khashoggi was murdered. On October 23, 2021, he fled yet again and crossed into Bulgaria to claim asylum.

Human Rights Watch has repeatedly criticized rampant abuses in Saudi Arabia’s criminal justice system. These violations of defendants’ rights are so fundamental and systemic that it is hard to reconcile Saudi Arabia’s criminal justice system with the basic principles of the rule of law and international human rights standards.

Saudi Arabia applies its uncodified interpretation of Islamic law as its national law. In the absence of a written penal code or narrowly worded regulations, judges and prosecutors can convict people on a wide range of offenses under broad charges such as “breaking allegiance with the ruler” or “trying to distort the reputation of the kingdom.”

Deporting al-Khalidi may violate Bulgaria’s international obligations, including article 3 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which states that “no State Party shall expel, return (“refouler”) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”

It also may violate article 33 of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which prohibits the “return of a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers or territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” Bulgaria is a signatory to both conventions.

“Saudi Arabia’s human rights record remains abysmal, despite the billions of dollars that Mohammed bin Salman, its effective leader, has poured into whitewashing his abuses,” Shea said. “Al-Khalidi is in grave danger of arbitrary detention and torture if Bulgaria forcibly returns him.”

Click to expand Image  The co-chair of the Nobel Peace Prize winning Memorial Human Rights Centre Oleg Orlov attends a court session for a new trial on charges of repeatedly discrediting the Russian military,  Moscow, Russia, February 26, 2024. © 2024 Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Photo

Today, leading Russian human rights defender Oleg Orlov turned 71. He spent his birthday behind bars, his health deteriorating not least due to exhausting daily transport from jail to court and back.

A Moscow court sentenced Orlov to 2 years and 6 months in prison on outlandish charges of “discrediting” Russia’s armed forces. Orlov, who had staunchly criticized Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, filed a preliminary appeal against his conviction on March 12. In his filing, Orlov explained that to finalize the appeal, he needs access to his full case file and to be able to listen to the recording of the trial. The authorities’ response, apparently attempting to accelerate the appeals process, was to transport him back and forth to the courthouse daily under harsh conditions. He is picked up early morning before breakfast, held for hours in a cold prisoner transport vehicle, and returned to his cell late at night, long after dinner.

On occasion, Orlov would spend the entire day in the prisoner transport room without getting access to his case file. The daily trips to court also served to restrict Orlov’s communications with his lawyer, as the guards gave them no opportunity to speak confidentially.

Exhausted from being shuttled back and forth, freezing in the convoy transport, deprived of daily exercise, subsiding on cold rations, and unable to shower, Orlov developed a bad cold, which went untreated. The imposed routine leaves him no time to see a doctor or get any rest.

Orlov’s lawyer complained to the authorities that “the daily transfers … until he examines all the case materials, result in inhuman and degrading treatment and could only be regarded as unlawful pressure on Orlov … to hinder the defense’s preparations for the appeals hearing.” 

In her statement today, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Russia, Mariana Katsarova, expressed concern that the court “appears to be deliberately rushing the process, in order to issue a final verdict on his appeal, raising concerns about the presumption of innocence and the overall fairness of the legal proceedings.” Katsarova described Orlov’s treatment by the authorities as “blatant politicisation of law enforcement and judicial processes to suppress the realisation of civil and political rights in Russia.”

Her conclusion is absolutely accurate. Orlov should be immediately released and all charges against him dropped. 

Click to expand Image Children look at books in an elementary school in the village of Bisober, Tigray on December 9, 2020. The school was occupied by Tigray Special Forces and also damaged after fighting broke out between Ethiopian and Tigray forces in November 2020. © 2020 Eduardo Soteras for Agence France Press via Getty Images

In an unprecedented move, the United Nations committee of independent child rights experts has cancelled an upcoming series of meetings due to lack of funds.

The shortfall was caused by the failure of some countries to pay their membership dues.

This is the latest example of the UN’s human rights monitoring role being undermined by a lack of budgeted funds, and comes on the heels of vacancy freezes at the global organization, and a forced reduction of field investigations conducted by its rights experts.

At the now-cancelled session of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the experts were expected to meet – in a safe and confidential manner – with children, civil society organizations, and UN agencies to discuss the child rights records of eight countries.

The cancellation means less scrutiny of developments in Ecuador, where escalating violence and organized crime activity is having a dire impact on children’s rights, particularly girls who have a right to study in safety.

It also means the situation in Ethiopia may further fly under the radar, even as children are killed, injured, and sexually assaulted; and schools attacked and used by military forces, in the conflicts in the country’s north.

The experts will no longer have the opportunity to learn about girls from Indonesia who may have been forced to leave school or withdraw under pressure, due to their decision not to follow local mandatory hijab regulations.

It will now be more difficult for the committee to learn about the ill treatment of children in government-run detention centers in Iraq, or the government’s failure to prohibit corporal punishment against children.

And the voices of girls unable to exercise their right to education in Pakistan will continue to be silenced.

If the committee cannot learn about these problems, they also cannot make recommendations for change.

Deadbeat governments that haven’t paid their assessed contributions should pay their fair share of the UN’s budget. Otherwise, they are only helping child rights abusers evade being held to account.

Click to expand Image Gay Ugandan refugees who fled from their country to neighboring Kenya, return after shopping for food in Nairobi, Kenya, June 11, 2020. © 2020 Brian Inganga/AP Photo

(Nairobi) – Uganda’s Constitutional Court on April 3, 2024, upheld the abusive and radical provisions of the 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act, Human Rights Watch said today. The ruling further entrenches discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, and makes them prone to more violence.

The court did strike down sections that restricted healthcare access for LGBT people, criminalized renting premises to LGBT people, and created an obligation to report alleged acts of homosexuality. 

“In upholding most provisions of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, including the death penalty in certain circumstances, Uganda’s Constitutional Court has come down on the side of hate, violence, and discrimination instead of standing up for fundamental rights for all,” said Larissa Kojoué, researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The ruling will have a detrimental impact on all Ugandans, including LGBT people, families, and communities who continue to suffer the stigma that the Anti-Homosexuality Act enshrined into law.” 

In defiance of international law, the judges ruled that the act does not violate fundamental rights to equality and nondiscrimination, privacy, freedom of expression, or the right to work for LGBT people.

The judges also ruled that those who had challenged the law had failed to prove the negative financial implications of the law, or that there had been a lack of public participation in the legislative processes, or breaches in parliamentary rules of procedures. They concluded that the law had been “overwhelmingly passed on the basis of those views of the Ugandan people’s parliamentary representatives, who would know the sentiments of the people that they represent on the subject.” 

The Ugandan Parliament had passed the Anti-Homosexuality Act in March 2023, criminalizing consensual same-sex conduct with penalties of up to life imprisonment, attempted homosexual acts with penalties of 10 years in prison, and the death penalty for those convicted of “aggravated homosexuality,” which includes repeated same sex acts and intercourse with a person younger than 18, older than 75, or a person with a disability. Parliament passed a similar anti-LGBT law in 2013, which the Constitutional Court had declared void on the grounds that it was not passed according to correct parliamentary procedure. 

Even before the introduction of the 2023 act, LGBT Ugandans had frequently faced discrimination, harassment, and physical attacks. The Ugandan authorities have banned LGBT organizations, and accused some of “promoting homosexuality” and luring children into homosexuality through “forced recruitment.” Human Rights Watch found that none of these accusations were based on facts.

After the law came into force in May 2023, local groups reported that LGBT people in Uganda were experiencing increased attacks and discrimination by both officials and other people. These included beatings, sexual and psychological violence, evictions, blackmail, loss of employment, online harassment, and denial of health care based on their perceived or real sexual orientation or gender identity. 

In December 2023, Ugandan activists began legal proceedings to challenge the constitutionality of the law, one of the world’s harshest curtailing the rights of LGBT people. The petitioners said that the law violates fundamental rights guaranteed in Uganda’s constitution and international human rights law, including the rights to nondiscrimination and privacy, as well as freedom of thought, conscious, and belief. They also said that the law was passed without meaningful and adequate public participation. 

The judges upheld provisions in the law that discriminate against LGBT people, including people with disabilities, and provisions for a penalty of up to 20 years in prison for the “promotion of homosexuality.” The provision could apply to anyone advocating for the rights of LGBT people, including representatives of human rights organizations or those providing financial support to such organizations.

The police have failed to investigate a string of break-ins into the offices of nongovernmental organizations providing services to LGBT people. Instead, they have carried out mass arrests at LGBT pride events, at LGBT-friendly bars, and at homeless shelters on spurious grounds. The police have forced some of those detained to undergo anal examinations, a form of cruel, degrading, and inhuman treatment that can constitute torture. 

“We knew we were not in favorable conditions,” one petitioner told Human Rights Watch. “There is so much to challenge in this decision. What we see is that the judges already have their ideas. The future looks so dark. We have to organize and bring the case to the Supreme Court.”  

Parliament should repeal all discriminatory laws and provisions, including the Anti-Homosexuality Act, as well as sections 145 and 148 of the Penal Code, which criminalize consensual same-sex acts, Human Rights Watch said. The authorities should end the harassment of and restrictions on the activities of LGBT rights groups, and ensure immediate investigations into abuses against these groups and LGBT people. The authorities should also ban forced anal examinations and their use as “evidence” in homosexuality prosecutions, and other demeaning treatment of suspects in police custody on the basis of their perceived or real sexual orientation. 

“The Ugandan authorities have legal obligations to urgently halt the cycle of violence that has become so pervasive against LGBT people in Uganda, which leads to people being killed for simply being who they are,” Kojoué said. “The government should take urgent steps to end its crackdown against LGBT people, and expressly condemn violence against all minorities, including LGBT people, and create an environment that prevents discrimination against them.” 

Click to expand Image UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, February 26, 2024.  © 2024 Janine Schmitz/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

Today, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution establishing a new investigative body to advance accountability for international crimes committed by Belarusian authorities. This sends a strong message to perpetrators that their crimes will not go unpunished.

The new body – which was advocated for by Belarusian and international rights groups, including Human Rights Watch – has a mandate to investigate grave ongoing abuses, collect and preserve evidence of international crimes, and identify those responsible, building on the work of the UN Human Rights Office’s own investigation.

The resolution also renewed the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Belarus, a lifeline to civil society in a context where human rights work has effectively been outlawed.

The adoption of today’s resolution, supported by countries from all regions, demonstrates the growing international concern over Belarus’ escalating rights crisis.

Belarusian authorities have continued their “purge” of independent voices. Hundreds remain behind bars on politically motivated charges, facing ill-treatment and incommunicado detention. Rights defenders, including five members of prominent Belarusian rights group Viasna, are serving politically motivated sentences of up to fifteen years. Authorities have also retaliated against human rights lawyers for representing clients in politically motivated cases.

There is currently no meaningful avenue to justice for such abuses within Belarus and very few avenues in international fora. In 2022, Belarusian authorities officially blocked victims of human rights violations from bringing their complaints before the UN’s Human Rights Committee.

Based on its own independent investigations, the UN Human Rights Office has concluded that grave human rights violations committed in Belarus since the crackdown began in 2020 may amount to crimes against humanity, a conclusion that clearly warrants the robust response delivered by today’s resolution.

While the new investigative body will not resolve the rights crisis in Belarus overnight, its work will be vital in efforts to hold those responsible for these crimes accountable. It will also support human rights defenders and survivors of human rights violations who want recognition of and justice for crimes committed. The UN leadership should ensure – despite the current liquidity crisis – that the new mechanism has the support and resources to start its work immediately.

Click to expand Image United Nations European headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, September 11, 2023.  © 2023 Denis Balibouse/Reuters

A United Nations human rights body has criticized the United Kingdom government for “involuntary, compulsory treatment and detention” of people with disabilities inside and outside hospitals and urged UK authorities to guarantee access to community-based services.

The Human Rights Committee, a body of independent experts that monitors implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by states’ parties to the treaty, published its findings last week following review of the UK’s record. The Committee highlighted how authorities continue to detain and involuntarily treat people with disabilities under the UK Mental Health Act, based solely on their actual or perceived disability. The Committee expressed concern that the average length of stay for people with learning disabilities and autism detained under the act is over two years.

UK-based organizations representing people with disabilities and their families have been sounding the alarm about this issue for years, and the UK media has consistently exposed abuse in psychiatric units across the country. In one case reported by the BBC, at least eight members of staff at a hospital were seen picking up a young woman with autism and dragging her to a seclusion room, where she had already spent over two weeks.

The UN expert on torture has noted that “involuntary treatment and other psychiatric interventions in health-care facilities” can be forms of torture and ill-treatment.

An investigation by The Independent and Sky News recently revealed that almost 20,000 sexual abuse incidents were reported in NHS-run hospitals in the last five years. Latest data indicates that over 2,000 people with learning disabilities and autism are still in inpatient units, despite the government’s commitment to reduce the number of inpatient beds by 50% from March 2015 to March 2024 and develop community-based services.

The UK government should heed the Committee’s call and amend the Mental Health Act and Mental Capacity Act to ensure people with disabilities aren’t locked up in institutions against their will. Instead, it should strengthen and develop voluntary, rights-respecting services so everyone has access to adequate support that allows them to live in their own communities with dignity.

Click to expand Image An Intersex flag raised in front of the Berlin Senate Department for Justice, Diversity and Anti-Discrimination.  © 2022 Christophe Gateau/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

The United Nations Human Rights Council has passed its first ever resolution affirming the rights of intersex people, signaling growing international resolve to address rights violations experienced by people born with variations in their sex characteristics.

The resolution was put forward by the governments of Australia, Chile, Finland, and South Africa and is called “Combating discrimination, violence and harmful practices against intersex persons.”

Children born with variations in their sex characteristics – sometimes called intersex traits – are often subjected to “normalizing” surgeries that are irreversible, risky, and medically unnecessary. Approximately 1.7 percent of people have an intersex trait, meaning intersex variations are not uncommon, just often misunderstood.

Since the 1950s, surgeons have conducted medically unnecessary “normalizing” operations on intersex children, such as procedures to reduce the size of the clitoris, which can result in scarring, sterilization, and psychological trauma. Intersex advocacy groups, as well as a range of medical and human rights organizations, have been speaking out for decades. Despite growing consensus that these surgeries should end and global progress on banning [HJH1] medically unnecessary intersex surgeries, some parents continue to face pressure from surgeons to choose these operations for their children who are too young to participate in the decision.

In a 2013 report, the World Health Organization opposed early sterilizing surgeries on intersex children. UN human rights treaty bodies have condemned such operations more than 50 times since 2011 and recommended the prohibition of forced or coerced medical interventions with respect to intersex characteristics, such as nonemergency medical interventions performed without full, free, and informed consent. In late 2023, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a technical note, recommending the prohibition of “forced or coerced medical interventions with respect to intersex characteristics, such as non-emergency medical interventions performed without full, free and informed consent,” drawing on the numerous recommendations from treaty bodies.

The resolution mandates a global report on human rights violations against intersex people and is an opportunity to correct myths and ensure that children born perfectly healthy – just a little different – are free to grow up and make decisions about their own bodies.

 

Click to expand Image On the night before the infamous “foreign agents” law came into force back in 2012, unknown individuals sprayed graffiti reading, “Foreign Agent! ♥ USA” on the buildings hosting the offices of three prominent NGOs in Moscow, including Memorial.  © 2012 Yulia Klimova/Memorial

Georgia’s ruling party plans to reintroduce highly controversial Russia-style “foreign agent” legislation aimed at incapacitating civil society and independent media.

If adopted, the laws, which were withdrawn last year in the face of massive protests, would require foreign-funded nongovernmental organizations and media to register as “agents of foreign influence”. That would make them subject to additional scrutiny and sanctions, including criminal penalties. Authorities claim the laws promote “transparency”, but their statements make it clear the laws will be used to stigmatize and punish critical voices.

Georgia was granted EU candidate status in December 2023 on the understanding it would improve conditions for civil society. This move risks derailing its EU integration even if the EU has until now been willing to move the country forward in the accession process despite limited progress on EU reform priorities.

Georgia’s defiance of the EU on its civil society commitments isn’t so surprising when seen in the regional context.

The day before Georgia’s announcement, Kyrgyzstan’s president signed an abusive “foreign representatives” law. Copied almost entirely from the Russian equivalent, the law would apply the stigmatizing designation of “foreign representative” to any nongovernmental organization that receives foreign funding and engages in vaguely defined “political activity”. The bill had been widely criticized after its initial submission in November 2022, including in a urgency resolution by the European Parliament.

The EU had ample opportunity to press the authorities to reject this bill. Kyrgyzstan benefits from privileged access to the EU internal market tied to respect for international human rights conventions: conventions this law clearly contravenes. The country is poised to sign an enhanced partnership agreement with the EU that centers democracy and fundamental rights. The EU has been silent on whether these deals would be imperiled by the bill’s adoption, despite the fact the European Commission’s own assessment highlighted Kyrgyzstan’s dire environment for civil society and the country’s breach of its obligations.

The latest spate of curbs on civil society comes in the wake of the European Commission’s December 2023 legislative proposal for an EU Directive on “transparency of interest representation” that would create a register of organizations which receive foreign funding. European civil society vehemently opposes the proposal because it risks shrinking space for independent organizations at home and diminishing the EU’s credibility in opposing such laws abroad. Yet the Commission forged ahead. On the same day the proposal was adopted, Hungary’s parliament approved a law that gives a government-controlled body broad powers to target civil society and independent media.

With civil society organizations under threat throughout Europe and Central Asia, we need an EU that in words and actions protects civic space and sets the right standards.

Click to expand Image Ethiopian Orthodox pilgrims rest at a campsite in Lalibela in the Amhara region, two months after the Ethiopian military regained control of the town from Fano militia, January 7, 2024. ©2024 Michele Spatari / AFP via Getty Images Ethiopian armed forces summarily executed scores of civilians in Merawi, a town in the Amhara region in late January and February amid fighting with Fano militia. Since armed conflict broke out in Amhara in August 2023, federal forces have committed numerous abuses with impunity. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights should launch an independent inquiry into abuses in Amhara, and the UN and AU should consider suspending new deployments of Ethiopian forces from peacekeeping operations.

(Nairobi) – The Ethiopian military summarily executed several dozen civilians and committed other war crimes on January 29, 2024, in the town of Merawi in Ethiopia’s northwestern Amhara region, Human Rights Watch said today. The incident was among the deadliest for civilians during the fighting between Ethiopian federal forces and Fano militia since the outbreak of fighting in Amhara in August 2023.

The United Nations and African Union should consider suspending new deployments of Ethiopian federal forces into international peacekeeping operations until commanders responsible for grave abuses are held accountable.

“The Ethiopian armed forces’ brutal killings of civilians in Amhara undercut government claims that it’s trying to bring law and order to the region,” said Laetitia Bader, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Since fighting began between federal forces and the Fano militia, civilians are once again bearing the brunt of an abusive army operating with impunity.”

Early in the morning of January 29, Fano forces attacked a contingent of Ethiopian soldiers in Merawi, about 30 kilometers south of the Amhara regional capital, Bahir Dar. The Fano fighters then withdrew, leaving the town to the Ethiopian federal forces. During a six-hour period, Ethiopian soldiers shot civilians on the streets and during house-to-house searches. Scores were killed, mostly men, but also women. The soldiers also pillaged and destroyed civilian property.

On February 24, Ethiopian armed forces summarily executed up to eight civilians in Merawi following another attack by Fano fighters in the town.

Between February 9 and March 14, Human Rights Watch interviewed 20 people by phone, including victims, their family members, and witnesses. Human Rights Watch also analyzed and verified two videos posted to social media in the aftermath of the January 29 attack, and examined satellite imagery that corroborated witness accounts. On March 5, Human Rights Watch provided a summary of its preliminary findings to the Ethiopian government, but received no response.

On January 29, a 26-year-old woman was at home in Merawi with her husband and infant son when the fighting broke out. Once the battle ended, they peered out their door to see what was going on. “Three soldiers and two police officers came out of nowhere,” she said. “My husband was carrying our 2-month-old child. They told him to let our child go, and after he did, they shot him right outside the house. After they shot him, they did the same thing to the neighbor.”

Residents said soldiers looted homes, hotels, and businesses, and burned at least 12 Bajaj motorized three-wheel vehicles.

Human Rights Watch was unable to determine the total number of civilian deaths in Merawi. Community leaders shared two lists of victims with a total of forty names of people who were identified and buried in Merawi. Three residents estimated that over eighty people were killed, including some buried elsewhere.

Human Rights Watch verified and analyzed a video recorded on January 30 showing at least 22 bodies lining the main road in Merawi. Ethiopian forces refused to allow the community to collect the dead until later that morning.

The nongovernmental organization, the Ethiopian Human Rights Council, found that 89 civilians had been killed in Merawi. Initial findings by the national Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, a federal state body, concluded that Ethiopian forces killed 45 residents.

Under international humanitarian law applicable to the armed conflict in Amhara, the deliberate killing or mistreatment of civilians, and looting and pillage of civilian property are prohibited and may be prosecuted as war crimes.

An Ethiopian government spokesman told the media that Fano fighters attacked an army base in Merawi but maintained that the military only acted in “self-defense,” including when searching houses, and did not target civilians. Residents said that Ethiopian soldiers called a meeting on February 12 and only acknowledged that four civilians had been killed and that they burned one Bajaj.

Ethiopia’s international partners, including the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom, issued statements condemning the massacre of civilians and calling for an independent investigation. Since the end of the UN-mandated inquiry on Ethiopia in October 2023, there has been little international monitoring of the human rights situation in the country.

Concerned governments should press for resumed scrutiny of human rights in Ethiopia at the UN Human Rights Council, and call on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to urgently investigate and publicly report on abuses in Amhara, including in Merawi, and other conflict-affected areas, Human Rights Watch said. The EU should clarify that reengagement with Ethiopia is intended to result in concrete measures by Ethiopian authorities to prevent further abuses against civilians, including by allowing independent investigations into the Merawi killings, and holding those responsible for abuses to account.

In June 2023, the US government determined that Ethiopia was “no longer engaging in a pattern of gross human rights violations.” Given reports of grave abuses by Ethiopian government forces, the US in its engagement with the Ethiopian government should prioritize protecting civilians and addressing justice and accountability issues.

The UN Department of Peace Operations and the AU Peace and Security Council should consider suspending any new deployment of Ethiopian soldiers from peacekeeping missions, Human Rights Watch said. Ethiopia has been one of the continent’s largest contributors to peacekeeping forces. The UN requires governments, alongside the UN, to ensure their nationals serving with UN peacekeeping missions have not committed past abuses, although such screening is usually left to national bodies. The AU is also putting a screening process in place.

The Ethiopian government’s failure to ensure meaningful accountability for abuses by federal and regional forces contributes to ongoing cycles of violence and impunity.

“The deliberate mass killings of civilians by Ethiopian government forces have sadly become a feature of daily life for countless Ethiopians in conflict areas,” Bader said. “Ethiopia’s partners, the African Union, and the UN should take concrete steps to end the impunity that abusive Ethiopian commanders have long enjoyed.”

For background information and further accounts of the conflict in Amhara, see below.

Armed Conflict in Amhara

In April 2023, after the government announced plans to dismantle regional special forces in the country and formally integrate them into the military, police, or regional police forces, Fano militias and the Ethiopian military clashed in towns throughout the region. The fighting intensified, and in August 2023, Fano attacked and captured major cities in Amhara. In response, the federal government declared a six-month state of emergency and placed the Amhara region under a military command post accountable to the prime minister. On February 2, 2024, Ethiopia’s parliament extended the state of emergency for another four months.

The United Nations, human rights groups and the media have reported on security forces abuses’ in Amhara, including the summary killings of civilians, unlawful drone strikes, and mass arrests without due process. Human Rights Watch received reports that armed groups have looted homes, imposed “taxes” on civilians, and abducted people they suspect of supporting the government. Ethiopian authorities have accused Fano of assassinating senior regional security officials.

In September, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission reported that government security forces carried out abuses in Merawi, a town of 35,000 people in North Gojjam Zone, Amhara. It is along the A3 road, 30 kilometers southwest of Bahir Dar, the regional capital. “This town is bigger than the villages around it, so many people come here for work, to do business, and visit family,” a Merawi businessman said. Other residents said that farmers and daily laborers also go to Merawi for work.

Click to expand Image Overview map of Merawi town, Ethiopia. © 2024 Human Rights Watch

Since August, control of Merawi has shifted multiple times between Fano and the Ethiopian military. One resident said: “Merawi used to be a comfortable place to live … everyone could work freely. Now, people’s lives are in danger, our lives are valued less than chickens. … We hear gunshots every day. You don’t know whether you will be killed or wake up the next day.”

Fighting in Merawi

Early in the morning of January 29, Fano fighters entered Merawi and attacked Ethiopian soldiers who had deployed in the town’s administrative office. The office, in the Kebele 02 neighborhood, lies just off the main road that cuts through the town, and is near homes, businesses, and banks. A Bajaj stand is 175 meters northeast of the office.

Sounds of gunfire erupted in Kebele 02 at about 6:30 a.m., with Ethiopian forces returning fire. One business owner awoke to the sounds of shooting: “Fano encircled the admin building.… They were trying to get on top of Hibret Bank, which was under construction.… When the Fano would shoot, the soldiers would fire back … it was raining bullets.”

Residents sheltered in their homes, waiting for the clashes to end. The fighting lasted for hours, until around 11:30 a.m., at which point Fano forces withdrew from the town. Residents later said Ethiopian soldiers suffered heavy losses, and that at least two Fano fighters were also killed in the clashes.

Click to expand Image On the left, the Merawi administration building in Kebele 02, located off the main road in town. Ethiopian soldiers set up a base at the building. On the right, Enat Bank, located on the main road, about 45 meters from the town's administrative office. Six bodies are visible in a video shared on social media in the aftermath of the Fano attack on the administration building. © 2024 Private

Summary Execution of Civilians

From about noon until 6 p.m., the Ethiopian armed forces went on a killing spree against residents of Merawi.

After Fano forces withdrew, government reinforcements entered the town shortly after 11:30 a.m. from the direction of Dangla town, east of Merawi, two residents said.

“It got quiet after that,” said a nurse. “But after a while, I started hearing gunshots [again]. We noticed the shootings were only coming from one side, they weren’t returned. We then realized they [the soldiers] were going around shooting people.”

After the gunfire stopped, some residents tried to see what happened. Others, accustomed to repeated clashes in the town, tried to go to work. “After the Fano left, people went to the tela bet [a house serving home-brewed beer] to pack their lunch and go to work,” said a Bajaj driver who had been hiding in a tela bet in Kebele 02 since the fighting started. “But soldiers came in.… They accused the people of being Fano, saying, ‘You are just pretending to be civilians by mixing with the people.’ That is when they took several people.” The following day, the driver said he saw the bodies of at least 17 people lying on the street, including those who had been in the tela bet with him.

Residents described the horror of seeing soldiers moving through town and executing people. “I peeked through the window and saw soldiers going around on the main road to different places,” said a man who watched from his home off the main road. “I saw them drag someone out from their home and shoot them. My two kids were with me. I was worried they would eventually come too.… so, we went to hide.”

Five soldiers went to the house of a priest. “They told me to come out of my house,” said the priest. “I told them I didn’t know anything, that I only served the church. One of the soldiers finally said, ‘We are here to kill the enemy, not someone like him.’ So, they left for other houses.”

The priest later called to check on a relative, a 52-year-old father of five: “A soldier picked up instead and said, ‘He is here; you can come take the body.’ They hung up. The next time I called, the phone was off.” His relative had been killed.

The 26-year-old woman who witnessed soldiers shoot her husband and her neighbor said that the soldiers also prevented her from mourning her loss. They interrogated her and the other female residents in the compound for an hour. She said:

They asked ‘Who are the Fano? Where are they?’ We kept telling them we didn’t know. My 2-month-old was crying, because he fell on the floor when my husband let him go. While he was questioning me, I was trying to calm the baby down. The soldier turned to the baby and asked me if it was a boy. I said yes. He then pointed the gun at the baby. I was begging and crying, asking him to leave us and spare the baby. He finally left us alone. I wanted to pick the bodies up, but the soldiers refused and said we shouldn’t cry.

She said that the soldiers remained for one hour, leaving the bodies in the sun:

[My husband] was such a good man. Seeing him lying there, I hated being alive. When they aimed the gun at my child. I couldn’t believe it. How could you consider a child, one so small, the enemy?

One resident saw soldiers drag a priest, Qes Yitayih, and two other men, Misganaw Amare, a tailor, and Habtam Embyale, a university student, from their homes. He later saw their bodies on the street: “It seemed they were targeting men that day.” Another resident witnessed soldiers pull out Qes Yitayih and three other residents, including a day laborer named Tesfa Endalew, from a compound and execute them. He said:

Five soldiers went to the compound, a lot more were outside and on guard. I didn’t recognize them, I just know they were part of the military. They pulled four men out, including Qes Yitayih, made them kneel down, and shot them in their foreheads. Once I saw that, I left and went to hide.

Human Rights Watch verified a 39-second video that appeared on social media platforms in early February. The video, made up of two clips filmed from inside a vehicle traveling slowly during daylight at an undetermined time, shows about 200 meters of the main road in Merawi. Human Rights Watch counted at least 22 bodies, 15 of them clearly male. None of the bodies that Human Rights Watch can clearly distinguish appear to be wearing uniforms or shoes typical of Fano militia, and no weapons are visible. Many are without shoes. Blood marks the road next to at least 10 bodies from wounds near the heads, indicating that they were shot in the head, and possibly executed in the same location. Some of the heads have been covered with clothing. At least four bodies lie next to each other on the roadside.

Most of those killed appeared to be men, but some of the victims were women. One man said he received a phone call from a resident urging him to check on his relative who lived in Kebele 01. He said:

She lived along the road, selling vegetables, a few houses away from us. When we got there, she was lying on the floor, dead, with her child on top of her crying. When we tried to take her, we saw soldiers, and were scared, so we took the child, and left her. After a while, we went back, avoiding the main road, to take her body to her father’s house.

Looting and Destruction of Property

The soldiers carrying out killings also looted and damaged homes and businesses leaving a terrible impact on daily life.

One woman said the soldiers pillaged the bodies of those executed as well as people’s homes:

The [soldiers] locked us in one room. By the time we were let out, everything was a mess. They went through our houses. They took valuable items, money, from my neighbor’s house. They even emptied cash and phones from the pockets of my dead neighbors.

One resident said he saw soldiers repeatedly entering the Tinsae Hotel, on the main road in Kebele 02, to steal food, beer, and equipment:

They would cut up meat and fill up plastic bags, maybe two to three kilograms of meat each, take six beers, and leave. Then another group would come and do the same. They were doing this in turns, for hours.... They tried to open the beer draft machine, but couldn’t, so they shot it up… They took the Wi-Fi equipment; the generator was gone. Everything was gone.

Several residents said soldiers burned 12 Bajaj three-wheelers in the aftermath of the fighting. Human Rights Watch received an additional 2:06 minute video from a journalist, Zecharias Zelalem, which was reportedly filmed on February 16. The video, made up of at least eight clips, shows at least six destroyed Bajajs and damage to the windows of the administrative building.

Click to expand Image Seven burned Bajajs (motorized three-wheel vehicles) are visible in a video taken in Merawi in the aftermath of the January 29, 2024 violence and shared with Human Rights Watch. © 2024 Private

A driver, whose Bajaj was burned by soldiers, said: “Today is the 17th day I am just sitting in the house. I no longer have a job , because they [the soldiers] burned my Bajaj. I don’t have an income anymore. I have no purpose anymore. If I can’t work, what options do I have? The men can’t live in peace.”

Burials, January 30

The following day was an Orthodox religious holiday, the commemoration of the death of Mary. Residents who ventured out of their homes early that morning to go to church found bodies lying in the town’s main road.

Several residents said that soldiers remaining in the town refused to allow the community to collect and bury the dead.

A teacher said: “The next day up to 9:30 a.m., they were not allowing people to take bodies. You would see mothers and wives of people killed staring at their loved ones, unable to do anything. Sad, but they weren’t allowed to cry or mourn.”

One man learned of the loss of his friend, Tamerat, who was killed outside his butcher shop. Two residents said that soldiers ate meat from Tamerat’s shop after killing him.

Another resident said that when he attempted to recover the body of his brother, soldiers fired at him: “The soldiers said, ‘Are you trying to take the Fano body? You are the family of Fano.’ I said no, he is not Fano, he is a civilian, can’t you see what he is wearing? You can tell he is a civilian. They said that we kept giving excuses and shot in our direction.”

A priest leading prayers at the Mariam church said that a group of elders were sent to negotiate with the military, who finally allowed the residents to collect the dead after 9 a.m. One resident said that soldiers separated the bodies of those they believed were two Fano fighters based on their uniforms, but allowed residents to pick up the other bodies.

Relatives and community members rushed to collect and bury the bodies. “We contributed money to help pick up and cover them,” said one Bajaj driver. “So, whoever lost their loved ones, would come and identify their person and take them.”

A priest said that the soldiers compelled people to bury the victims quickly, in mass graves, inconsistent with Orthodox funeral rites:

You are supposed to clean the body, pray for them.… But we were not allowed to do that for these people. People were buried with their bloodied clothes. We couldn’t cover the whole body with fabric. People mourning didn’t put up the tent afterwards [at their homes to receive mourners], no one could come grieve. The soldiers said if you put up a tent, we will kill you. The families were forced to mourn behind closed doors.

Victims were buried in at least three mass graves in the church compound, taken to rural areas, or to their ancestral homes. The bodies of three Muslims were buried in the Muslim graveyard on the outskirts of town.

Satellite imagery recorded on February 8 shows new possible graves on the southern part of the church compound.

Ongoing Abuses

Residents who could afford to leave Merawi fled to Bahir Dar, Addis Ababa, or other cities. “Everyone has left the town, including me,” said a Merawi resident in late February. “I was there yesterday, but it is so empty. Almost everyone has left. The ones that are still there are moving with no hope. You can see it. You feel something in the air. People have given up. They have seen what these soldiers can do. They are just waiting for their day.”

Residents who remained behind spoke of continued fear and abuses as Ethiopian forces remained in control of Merawi town in the aftermath of the massacre. Several residents said that on February 12, the military called a town meeting. One participant said soldiers forced residents to attend:

All the [soldiers] did was deny everything. They denied what people saw with their own eyes. The [soldiers] said people killed were part of the war. They admitted to only killing four civilians and damaging one Bajaj. They claimed they would compensate for this. They urged people start working again, and that if the people want Fano to lead, they can change the war to one using jet airplanes instead of foot soldiers.

Residents said that on February 24, Fano fighters again attacked Ethiopian forces in the town, bringing further reprisals by government forces. A man whose house is near the outskirts of town heard gunfire until around 3 p.m., when he saw Fano fighters leaving.

Human Rights Watch confirmed that government soldiers killed at least two civilians that day and possibly as many as eight.

A 49-year-old resident said that he found the body of his son in Bahre Timket field, alongside the bodies of seven other people, outside their home that evening:

My son and a neighbor’s kid wanted to go to the field outside our home. I warned him not to go, because of what happened last [month]. But he said the shooting was done and [he] needed some air. It was just 10 meters away, so I thought to let him go. Shortly after, I heard gunshots, and a neighbor told me he’d been shot. I didn’t know what to do, so I called his phone. A man picked up.… I think it was the soldier that killed him. He said hello, hello, twice and hung up. My son wasn’t armed, he was wearing flip flops. They could tell my son wasn’t involved in this, but he was shot. He was 23, he was leaving for university the next day. I wish I didn’t let him go to the field so he would live another day.

A 55-year-old resident said that government soldiers began beating people they came across on the road in Kebele 01. Later that evening, he found his son’s body in the field outside their home:

After the Ethiopian military left, we waited until 8 p.m. to check on them and collect the bodies. Some were missing phones, shoes. One of the victims was my son. I only have one child – my son – no one else.

Click to expand Image In the rubble of the Engineers’ Building, Karam al-Sharif, an UNRWA employee, holds one of his 18-month-old twin boys killed in the October 31 Israeli airstrike on the building that killed at least 106 civilians, including 5 of his children and 5 other relatives. © 2023 Mohammed Dahman/AP Photo Israeli forces unlawfully attacked a residential building in Gaza on October 31, 2023, absent any apparent military target, killing at least 106 civilians, including 54 children. Scores of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza since October 7 have caused thousands of civilian casualties, underscoring the greater risk of unlawful attacks from explosive weapons in populated areas. Governments should suspend arms transfers to Israel, support the International Criminal Court investigation in Palestine, and impose targeted sanctions on officials responsible for laws-of-war violations.

(Jerusalem, April 4, 2024) – An Israeli airstrike on a six-story apartment building sheltering hundreds of people in central Gaza on October 31, 2023, is an apparent war crime, Human Rights Watch said today. The attack, which killed at least 106 civilians, including 54 children, is among the deadliest single incidents for civilians since the Israeli government’s bombardment and ground incursion into Gaza following the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7.

Human Rights Watch found no evidence of a military target in the vicinity of the building at the time of the Israeli attack, making the strike unlawfully indiscriminate under the laws of war. Israeli authorities have provided no justification for the attack. The Israeli military’s long track record of failing to credibly investigate alleged war crimes underscores the importance of the International Criminal Court (ICC)’s inquiry into serious crimes committed by all parties to the conflict.

“Israel’s unlawful airstrike on an apartment building on October 31 killed at least 106 people, including children playing football, residents charging phones in the ground-floor grocery store, and displaced families seeking safety,” said Gerry Simpson, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch. “This strike inflicted massive civilian casualties without an apparent military target – one of scores of attacks causing overwhelming carnage, and highlighting the urgency of the ICC probe.”

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Between January and March 2024, Human Rights Watch spoke by phone with 16 people about the October 31 attack on the residential Engineers’ Building, and the death of their relatives and others. Human Rights Watch analyzed satellite imagery, 35 photographs, and 45 videos of the attack’s aftermath, as well as other relevant photographs and videos on social media. Human Rights Watch was unable to visit the site because Israeli authorities have blocked virtually all entry into Gaza at its crossings since October 7. Israel has repeatedly denied Human Rights Watch requests to enter Gaza over the last 16 years.

Witnesses said that on October 31, 350 or more people were staying at the Engineers’ Building, just south of the Nuseirat refugee camp. At least 150 were seeking shelter after fleeing their homes elsewhere in Gaza.

Without warning, at about 2:30 p.m., four aerial munitions struck the building within about 10 seconds. The building was completely demolished.

Two brothers said that they rushed out of their nearby homes to look for their two children and their nephew, whom they knew were outside playing football. One of the men said he found his 11-year-old son lying under concrete bars in the rubble: “The back of his head was cracked open, one of his legs seemed barely connected to his body and part of his face was burned, but he seemed to be alive. We freed him in seconds, but he died in the ambulance. We buried him the same day.” All three boys died in the attack.

None of the witnesses interviewed said they had received or heard about any warning from Israeli authorities to evacuate the building before the strike.

Human Rights Watch confirmed the identities of 106 people killed through interviews with relatives of some of the victims, including 34 women, 18 men, and 54 children. The total number of dead is most likely higher. Airwars, a nongovernmental organization that investigates civilian harm in conflict zones, identified in open-source materials 112 names of people killed, including 96 identified by both organizations, as well as 19 other people not by name but through their relationship to other victims in their family.

Human Rights Watch interviewed two people involved in the recovery of bodies from the rubble of the building, who said that on the afternoon of the attack they worked together with others and helped recover about 60 bodies, and that over the next four days, they together recovered about 80 more bodies. A third person said that he helped recover bodies from the rubble for 12 days after the attack. It is possible that other bodies remain under the rubble.

The Israeli authorities have not publicly provided any information about the attack, including the intended target and any precautions to minimize harm to civilians. They have also not responded to a March 13 Human Rights Watch letter summarizing the findings and requesting specific information.

The laws of war prohibit attacks that target civilians and civilian objects, that do not discriminate between civilians and combatants, or that are expected to cause harm to civilians or civilian objects that is disproportionate to any anticipated military advantage. Indiscriminate attacks include attacks that are not directed at a specific military target or use a method or means of combat whose effects cannot be limited as required. Warring parties must take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians, including by providing effective advance warnings of attacks unless circumstances do not permit, and by sparing civilians under their control from the effects of attacks. Serious violations of the laws of war committed by individuals with criminal intent – that is, deliberately or recklessly – are war crimes.

The absence of a military objective would render the attack on the Engineers’ Building unlawfully deliberate or indiscriminate, Human Rights Watch said. The fact that the building was hit four times strongly suggests that the munitions were intended to hit the building and that the strike was not the result of a malfunction or misdirection. Even the presence of a valid military target would raise issues about the attack being disproportionate, given the visible and expected presence of large numbers of civilians in and around the building.

The strike is one of hundreds of attacks that the Israeli military has carried out in Gaza that have killed or injured Palestinian civilians since the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7 that resulted in the killing of more than 1,100 people and resulted in about 240 others taken hostage. Airwars has credibly reported that 195 likely attacks by the Israeli military killed from 1 to 9 civilians, 107 attacks killed between 10 and 59, and 4 killed between 60 and 139. As of April 1, Airwars had also collected preliminary information about civilian casualties in another 3,358 attacks most likely involving Israeli airstrikes.

These attacks underscore the devastating harm to civilians and the increased likelihood of unlawful attacks when explosive weapons with wide-area effects are used in densely populated areas. All governments should support the November 2022 Political Declaration that seeks to curb the use of such weapons in populated cities and towns.

The Gaza Health Ministry has reported that from October 7 to March 31, more than 32,000 people have been killed in Gaza, including more than 13,000 children and 9,000 women, and 75,000 injured. This includes the killing of at least 2,400 people in March alone. The statistics do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

Haaretz newspaper reported in February that the Israeli military was investigating “dozens of cases” in which its forces may have violated the laws of war. It is not clear whether the attack on the Engineers’ Building on October 31 is one of those cases.

Israel’s allies should suspend military assistance and arms sales to Israel so long as its forces commit systematic and widespread laws-of-war violations against Palestinian civilians with impunity. Governments that continue to provide arms to the Israeli government risk complicity in war crimes. They should also use their leverage, including through targeted sanctions, to press Israeli authorities to cease committing grave abuses.

“The staggering number of Palestinian deaths, mostly women and children, shows deadly disregard for civilian life and points to many more possible war crimes that need to be investigated,” Simpson said. “Other governments should press the Israeli government to end unlawful attacks, and immediately halt arms transfers to Israel to save civilian lives and avoid complicity in war crimes.”

For more details on the attack on the Engineers’ Building and other Israeli airstrikes, please see below.

Hostilities between Israel and Palestinian Armed Groups

On the morning of October 7, 2023, Hamas-led fighters breached the fences separating Israel and Gaza, and entered southern Israel. They attacked at least 19 kibbutzim, 3 moshavim (collective communities), 2 cities, a music festival, and a beach party, where they deliberately killed civilians, and also attacked military bases. At least 1,100 people were killed, the majority of them civilians, according to Israeli officials.

The attackers took about 240 people hostage, including children, people with disabilities, and older people. Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in Gaza have also since October 7 launched thousands of rockets at Israeli towns, violating the prohibition against indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian objects. The deliberate killing of civilians and captured combatants, taking of hostages, and indiscriminate rocket attacks are serious violations of the laws of war that are war crimes.

The hostilities that began on October 7, like the fighting in 2008, 2012, 2014, 2018, 2019, and 2021, took place amid Israel’s sweeping, unlawful closure of the Gaza Strip, which began in 2007. Human Rights Watch determined in 2021 that the Israeli government’s repressive rule over Palestinians amounts to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.

During previous hostilities, Israeli forces repeatedly carried out indiscriminate airstrikes that killed and injured numerous civilians – wiping out entire families – with no evident military targets in the vicinity. Strikes have targeted and destroyed high-rise towers in Gaza full of residences and businesses.

Since October 7, the Israeli authorities have cut off essential services, including water and electricity, to Gaza, which constitutes collective punishment, and blocked the entry and distribution of life-saving assistance, including food, water, and medicine, which are war crimes. The World Health Organization (WHO) warned on January 31 that the population of Gaza is “starving to death.” Human Rights Watch has documented that the Israeli government is using starvation as a weapon of war, a war crime.

The Israeli military has reported that between October 7 and February 20, it carried out 31,000 airstrikes in Gaza. Israeli airstrikes have hit large residential buildings, food aid distribution centers, medical facilities, humanitarian worker residential compounds, schools, shelters, universities, water infrastructure and wells, and reduced large parts of neighborhoods to rubble, including in attacks that were apparently unlawful and should be investigated as possible war crimes. Israeli forces have also unlawfully used white phosphorous in Gaza. Amnesty International has also documented airstrikes killing civilians.

The primary United Nations aid agency for Palestinian refugees, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), estimated that as of mid-March, about 1.7 million people in Gaza had been displaced from their homes: about 75 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million. Israeli military authorities have ordered the majority of Gaza’s population to evacuate their homes, risking the war crime of forced displacement.

On October 10, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry stated that there was “clear evidence” of war crimes in Israel and Gaza and that it would share information with relevant judicial authorities, including the International Criminal Court.

Israeli Airstrike on the Engineers’ Building

At about 2:30 p.m. on October 31, an Israeli airstrike involving four munitions struck and destroyed the six-story Mohandiseen (Engineers’) Building, also known as the Engineers’ Tower, according to witnesses. The building was in a residential area, about 400 meters from the southern limits of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. The Human Rights Watch investigation found no indication of a military objective in or near the building on October 31.

Click to expand Image Location of the Engineers’ Building in central Gaza. Data © OpenStreetMap. Image © 2024 Airbus, Google Earth. Analysis and graphics © 2024 Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch spoke by phone with 16 people who had knowledge of the attack. Seven described what they saw during and immediately afterward, including one survivor who was in the building, three who were in their homes nearby at the time of the attack and who lost relatives, two who lost relatives and who lived in the building but had left just before the attack, and one who lived nearby who didn’t lose any relatives in the attack. Human Rights Watch also spoke with five relatives of people killed who live outside Gaza. Four other people who lived near the building but who did not see the aftermath, including one who lost relatives in the attack, also gave researchers the names of people whom they learned had been killed.

Click to expand Image Location of the Engineers’ Building in central Gaza. Data © OpenStreetMap. Image © 2024 Airbus, Google Earth. Analysis and graphics © 2024 Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch confirmed the identities of 106 people killed in the attack, and 2 of those injured, through interviews with their relatives. The dead include 34 women, 18 men and 54 children. The injured include a 17-year-old girl and a woman.

Identities of People Killed in the Israeli Airstrike on the Engineers’ Building in Gaza

103 of the dead were from 14 families that were staying in the building. The other three, from two other families, were the boys who lived about 60 meters away and had been playing football in the street.

Airwars reviewed social media and other open sources for information about the attack, and found mentions of the names of 112 people killed, as well as mentions of 19 other people identified only through their relationship to other victims in their family. These include 42 women, 22 men, 62 children, and 5 people whose ages are unknown. Airwars also found in open sources the names of 6 people who were injured. The dead are from 22 families.

Click to expand Image Hisham Jweifel with his daughter Elham, 15, who was killed in the October 31 Israeli airstrike on the Engineers’ Building. © Private

Both organizations identified 96 of those killed by name, while Airwars alone identified an additional 15 by name, and Human Rights Watch alone identified an additional 9 by name.

The two organizations between them identified 136 people killed in the attack: 44 women, 22 men, 65 children, and 5 people whose age is unknown. They were from 24 families: Abu Daqqa, Abdeljawad, Abdelrahman, Abdo, Abu Jazar, Abu Jiyab, Abu Saeed, Agha, Ali, Dabaki, Farkh, Hanafi, Ijla, Jweifel, Kuhail, Mabhouh, Mubasher, Quqa, Sadoudi, Saleha, Shaheen, Sharif, Thawabta and Younis.

Click to expand Image Members of the Jweifel family. (Top left to right) Nada, Wafa', Wala', Sama. (Bottom left to right) Farah, Yousef, Hisham, Khadra, Ola, Salma. The October 31 Israeli airstrike on the Engineers’ Building killed Wafa’, Wala’, Sama, Farah, Yousef, Khadra and Salma. © Private

Human Rights Watch was unable to establish how many of the bodies were recovered and how many remain under the rubble. It is possible, though unlikely, that people whose bodies were not recovered survived and relocated elsewhere in Gaza without their families’ knowledge.

The Engineers’ Building: Sheltering, Serving Hundreds

Verified photographs of the Engineers’ Building posted online prior to the attack show a six-story building, 25 by 25 meters, and about 20 meters high.

Click to expand Image The Engineers’ Building prior to the October 31, 2023, Israeli airstrike. © 2021 User via Facebook

Residents and others familiar with the building said it had 20 apartments of about 150 square meters on five floors, which were full of people during the hostilities. In the early afternoon, the small ground-floor grocery store was usually thronged with people wanting to charge their phones there amid Israel’s electricity cuts. The store could offer this service because the building was partially powered by 16 solar panels on its roof. The ground floor also had a gym, a poultry shop, and a video games arcade.

While the origin of the building’s name is unclear, no accounts suggested that the building was being used for engineering purposes. One resident said that the building got its name from the engineers’ union that built it for its members. Another said the building was owned by an engineering consultancy office. A third person said that many of the engineers and their families who had originally lived in the building had since moved out, leaving three known engineering families, and that over time other people had moved in.

Based on interviews and other sources, Human Rights Watch estimates that as of October 31, at least 350 people were staying in the building, including about 125 people known to have been crammed into just 5 apartments. The total includes at least 200 residents and at least 150 displaced Gaza residents, including dozens sheltering in the gym. Some of the displaced people sheltering in the building had followed the Israeli military’s October 13 directive to residents of northern Gaza to move south of Wadi Gaza, a coastal wetland that cuts across Gaza from west to east. They included at least 23 members of an extended family who fled Gaza City and who were all killed in the attack: Eman Khaled Abu Said, her husband, their two children, and her parents, as well as five of her siblings and 11 other relatives. Human Rights Watch obtained from Eman Abu Said’s sister, Israa Abu Said, the names of 23 members of the extended family who were killed in the attack.

It is unclear how many people were in the building, including at the grocery store, at the time of the attack.

Streets Filled with Children Playing at Time of Attack

Neighbors said that streets near the Engineers’ Building were bustling with local residents just before the attack.

Rami Abdo, who lived about 60 meters away, said that about half an hour before the attack, one of his sons, Mohammed Rami Abdo, 11, and two of his nephews, Mohammed Hatem Abdo, 13, and Mohammed Nidal al-Mabhouh, 8, had gone outside to play football with dozens of other children just outside one of the entrances to the building. All three boys died in the attack.

A local resident said that just before the attack, the building was the only place in the area that had electricity and that she saw many people charging their phones in the grocery store.

The Attack and Its Immediate Aftermath

Ameera Shaheen, her husband, daughter and parents had fled their home in al-Moghraqa village in central Gaza the day before the attack after the Israeli military told residents to evacuate the area. They moved into a third-floor apartment in the Engineers’ Building where her aunt, Wafa’ Shaheen, her family of four and about 15 other relatives were staying. She said:

There was nothing worrying at all before the attack. Almost all of us were sitting in two rooms, one for men and one for women. Some of us were laughing. We had just baked bread. There were no signs or warning or any feeling of danger. We felt safe because it was an apartment building full of civilians.

Suddenly, there was an explosion and we started screaming. I remember thinking it hadn’t destroyed the building. And then I was falling, and then I lost consciousness. I woke up later that day in the al-Aqsa Martyr’s Hospital. I only had bruises. I don’t remember anything about waking up, but my relatives told me that I started screaming and calling for my daughter, asking them to go and rescue her although she was sitting there next to me, on my hospital bed.

Shaheen said that the attack killed 20 of her relatives, including 6 women, 7 men, and 7 children.

Hatem Abdo, who lived about 60 meters from the building, said the last time he saw his 13-year-old son, Mohammed, was an hour or so before the attack when he left the house:

Mohammed always used to play football in the street close by with his cousins and other children. At about 2:30 p.m. I was napping at home. Suddenly there were four explosions, with about two or three seconds between each blast. After the first explosion, I woke up and looked out of the window.

I saw about 50 children and some young men in the street, near the southern side of the Engineers’ building. I saw that the northern side of the building had been hit. Immediately, the second bomb hit the southern side, which I could see clearly from my home. I saw debris from the building falling and trapping about 20 of the children, as well as some of the adults.

Then the third bomb hit the top of the building, right in the middle, and the entire building came down, causing a huge black cloud of smoke and dust. It smelled like gunpowder. Then, the fourth one hit, which I didn’t see because of all the dust and smoke.

His brother, Rami Abdo, who lived with his family in the apartment below, was also at home at the time of the attack and said his son was playing football with his cousins and other children outside. He said he heard four explosions “which happened almost at the same time” and that the glass and debris from their building injured two of his daughters in the living room.

Another woman who lived about 30 meters away said she heard “three or four loud bombs explode.”

Both Rami and Hatem Abdo ran out of their building moments after the attack to find the young boys from their families. When they reached the street in front of the destroyed building, Rami said he saw “about 20 burned bodies” in the street, including the bodies of 3 children he recognized from the Abu Rahma family, who he said lived in the building. Hatem said he saw “dozens of bodies in the street,” some near and partially under the rubble of the building next to where it had stood, while others were dozens of meters away.

Both men then found their sister’s son, Mohammed Nidal al-Mabhouh, 8, who was still alive but badly burned, and they took him to an ambulance, which transported him to al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah. He died about eight weeks later. They then found Rami’s son, Mohammed Rami Abdo, 11, under concrete bars in the rubble of the building. Although the men said they quickly freed Mohammed, he died in an ambulance shortly afterward.

Both men then searched for Hatem’s son, Mohammed Hatem Abdo, 13, but could not find him. While looking for him, they helped carry the dead to waiting ambulances. Hatem estimated he helped carry about 60 bodies, mostly children and women, most found on the southern side of the building, including some recovered from rubble on the street. Medics later informed Hatem that his son had been found dead in the street, about 100 meters from the building.

Naheed Mahmoud lived close to the Engineers’ Building after fleeing her home. She lost six of her nieces, a nephew, and her sister’s mother-in-law in the attack. Her sister, Ola Mahmoud Jweifel, 39, and Ola’s only surviving daughter, Nada Hisham Jweifel, 17, who had moved into an apartment on the fourth floor of the Engineers’ Building in July 2023, were injured, with Nada requiring over 10 surgeries to one of her legs. As soon as the third or fourth explosion had happened and it was clear that the attack was over, Naheed ran to the building to find her sister and her sister’s children:

I was screaming and yelling and so was everyone else. The area was immediately filled with people, journalists, and civil defense [body providing emergency services and rescue], so we couldn’t reach the building. The situation was terrible. People were trying to free those trapped under the rubble using anything they could.

After some time, someone told me they found my sister Ola under the rubble. It took until about four hours after the attack to free her. She had a broken pelvis, a broken spine, a broken clavicle bone, and her whole body was black and blue from [being bruised by] the rubble. Then they said they had found her daughter, my niece, Nada. Her upper body was visible, but her lower body was crushed under the rubble. One of her legs was split open from top to bottom. Her blood was everywhere. She was in severe pain, yelling and screaming, and the other leg started to get bigger and bigger. It took until about 11 p.m. that night to free her.

Click to expand Image People try to rescue 17-year-old Nada Hisham Jweifel, stuck under the rubble of the Engineers’ Building, on October 31, 2023. She was injured, but survived the attack. © 2023 Mohammed Dahman/AP Photo

Human Rights Watch spoke with Karam al-Sharif, an UNRWA employee, who lost five of his children and five other relatives in the attack. Three photographs taken by an Associated Press photographer on October 31 at the destroyed Engineers’ Building show al-Sharif standing in the rubble on October 31, holding one of his 18-month-old twin boys who were killed. The Associated Press also reported on the deaths of four of the five children who were killed.

Thirty-five photographs and 45 videos posted on social media and by media outlets and verified by Human Rights Watch show many victims and survivors and the Engineers’ Building reduced to rubble, with significant debris on the northeast, southeast and southwest sides of the building. Human Rights Watch matched the nearby buildings, trees, and roads visible in the footage with satellite imagery to confirm they showed the attacked building. Human Rights Watch also verified an aerial video that showed the building completely flattened. A photograph posted to Facebook on October 31, taken from the Salah al-Din Road approximately 225 meters southeast of the building, shows two large, dark columns of smoke rising from the location of the Engineers’ Building.

Click to expand Image An aerial view of Gaza civil defense teams and residents launching a search-and-rescue operation after the Israeli strike on the Engineers’ Building on October 31, 2023.  © 2023 Mohammed Fayq/Anadolu via Getty Images

Satellite imagery taken at 10:23 a.m. local time on October 31 shows no signs of damage. Imagery taken at 10:18 a.m. local time on November 1 shows that the building is destroyed.

Click to expand Image Satellite imagery from November 1, 2023, shows a large pile of rubble where the Engineers’ Building previously stood, as well as damage to nearby buildings. Image © 2024 Planet Labs PBC; Analysis and graphics © 2024 Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch determined that the building most likely sustained direct hits from four air-launched munitions. Human Rights Watch found no evidence of remnants at the scene that might have helped identify the weapon. However, the blast damage and the resulting demolition of the building is consistent with the explosive payload of large air-delivered munitions. Witnesses described four munitions striking the building in quick succession, demolishing it. This is consistent with the Israeli military’s past targeting and destruction of buildings through the use of large, air-dropped munitions.

No Known Military Target

Everyone Human Rights Watch interviewed who knew the building well said they were not aware of Palestinian fighters or military equipment in or near the building at the time of the attack. The Human Rights Watch analysis of 80 photographs and videos, as well as satellite imagery of the building and surrounding area, also provided no indication of any Palestinian armed groups’ presence or of military equipment in or near the building at the time of the attack.

All those interviewed said they were unaware of any victims or survivors of the attack who were associated with any armed group. Human Rights Watch found no evidence that any of the victims were combatants. Human Rights Watch reviewed the Telegram channels and associated social media channels of both Hamas’ armed wing, Izz a-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and Islamic Jihad’s armed wing, al-Quds Brigade, two of the main groups involved in the October 7 attacks in Israel. Neither of them mentioned the October 31 strike.

The Israeli military has presented no information that would demonstrate the existence of a military target or other military objective within or near the building. The military has also not said why circumstances did not permit providing an effective advance warning to the residents of the building, and nearby buildings, to evacuate before the attack.

On February 6, Haaretz reported that the Israeli military had begun investigating “dozens of cases” in which its forces may have violated the laws of war. They include an airstrike at around 3:30 p.m. on October 31, about an hour after the Engineers’ Building attack, which the Israeli military said targeted Ibrahim Biari, commander of Hamas’ Jabalia Brigade. The attack in the Jabalia refugee camp, about 14 kilometers northeast of the Engineers’ Building, killed Biari and at least 126 civilians, including 69 children, and injured 280, according to Airwars.

Recovery and Burial of Bodies

Human Rights Watch interviewed three people involved in recovering bodies from the rubble of the Engineers’ building.

Hatem Abdo and Rami Abdo said that they helped recover between 60 and 70 bodies on the afternoon of October 31, and that they recovered about 80 more bodies over the next 4 days. Hatem Abdo said that many were laid out in the street in front of his home until they were taken away. He said relatives of the missing and others collected money to buy diesel fuel so that an excavator, which arrived on November 1, could work for between three and four hours each day to remove rubble.

Hatem said that when the excavator stopped its work, he heard from other people that 56 people were still missing. “They just vanished,” he said.

Majdi Salha fled his nearby home in mid-October, after an attack almost hit his building, and he moved with his family into his brother-in-law’s apartment in the Engineers’ Building. He left the building a few minutes before the attack, which killed 16 of his relatives: his wife and 5 of their daughters; his wife’s brother, his wife’s brother’s wife, and 5 of their children; and his wife’s sister and 2 of her children. He said:

Before I left the apartment to buy bread, I gave my youngest daughter, Lana, who was 10 years old, some money to go after lunch to buy some things in the grocery store on the ground floor of the building. Someone later told me she had gone to the store just before the attack happened.

For 12 days, I helped recover bodies from the rubble. I contributed my own money for fuel to power the excavator. We found almost all the bodies of my family members on days five, six, and seven after the attack happened. But we only found Lana’s body under the rubble on day 10. I think other bodies remained under the rubble after the excavator stopped doing its work.

Another person said he had heard that the people recovering bodies could not retrieve the bodies of the people who had been on the lower levels of the building, so the building “became a graveyard.”

Satellite imagery shows that the removal of rubble stopped between November 7 and 11. The same amount of rubble visible in imagery from November 11 appears in imagery taken on March 12, 2024.

Some people interviewed said they took bodies to or found relatives’ bodies in al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, about four kilometers southwest of the building. One of the men who recovered bodies said that all the bodies recovered from or near the Engineers’ Building were taken to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital for identification and registration before burial. Human Rights Watch was unable to obtain a list of people killed in the attack who were registered at that hospital.

Television news reported from al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital on October 31 that “ambulances are still recovering the injured and moving them to [the] hospital” and that the initial group of ambulances had brought 45 victims to the hospital.

A man said he had been told that very badly injured victims were taken to the European Hospital in Khan Younis. Five people said their relatives were buried variously in al-Nuseirat refugee camp, al-Buriej refugee camp, the town of Zawaydeh, and in al-Maghazi cemetery. Majdi Salha said that between November 1 and 13, he went to the burials of 100 people who were killed during the attack on the Engineers’ Building in al-Maghazi cemetery.

Human Rights Watch verified 12 videos and a photograph posted on social media platforms that show the removal of six bodies, including two children and an older woman, from the rubble of the Engineers’ Building; five bodies on stretchers being removed from the building; and two bodies of children taken to the hospital after the attack. They also show an older woman who is either dead or unconscious being carried on a stretcher.

Another video, filmed by the journalist Motaz Azaiza and posted to Instagram on October 31, shows what appears to be a small, burned body wrapped in a sheet. Azaiza narrates that the body of a child was being removed from the second floor of a building next to the Engineers’ Building. The camera pans to a bedroom in that building and shows a child’s race-car-shaped bed partially covered by rubble.

Human Rights Watch verified three videos and a photograph that show the result of a caesarean section performed at al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital on one of the deceased victims in an unsuccessful attempt to save her baby. Human Rights Watch also verified eight videos that show seven injured people, including four children and one woman, being rescued from the Engineers’ Building.

Accountability Initiatives

On May 27, 2021, the UN Human Rights Council established a Commission of Inquiry to address violations and abuses in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel. On October 10, 2023, the commission announced that it was “investigating possible international crimes and violations of international human rights law committed in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 7 October 2023” and that it would “continue sharing information collected with the relevant judicial authorities, especially with the International Criminal Court.”

The ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, confirmed that his office has, since March 2021, been conducting an investigation into alleged atrocity crimes committed in Gaza and the West Bank since 2014, and that his office has jurisdiction over crimes in the current hostilities between Israel and Palestinian armed groups that covers unlawful conduct by all parties. He visited Israel and Palestine in December.

Governments should publicly express their support for the ICC in delivering impartial justice, including in its investigation of the situation of Palestine, and commit to ensuring that the ICC has the political, diplomatic and financial support it needs to carry out its global mandate.

Separately, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on January 26 and on March 28 issued provisional measures as part of a case brought by South Africa alleging that Israel is violating the Genocide Convention. The court adopted measures that include requiring Israel to prevent genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, enable the provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance, and prevent and punish incitement to commit genocide. Human Rights Watch has found that Israel is not complying with at least one of the court’s binding orders by continuing to obstruct the provision of basic services and the entry and distribution within Gaza of fuel and lifesaving aid.

National judicial authorities should also investigate and prosecute those implicated in serious crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel under the principle of universal jurisdiction and in accordance with national laws. Governments should impose individual sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, against officials and individuals credibly implicated in the commission of grave abuses.

The UN Secretary-General should also include Israel in the list of those responsible for grave violations against children, annexed to his 2024 annual report to the Security Council on children and armed conflict, for violations including killing and maiming.

Arms Transfers

Numerous UN special rapporteurs, independent experts and working groups issued a statement on February 23 that the transfer of weapons or ammunition to Israel that would be used in Gaza would most likely violate international humanitarian law and needed to cease immediately. Providing arms that knowingly and significantly would contribute to unlawful attacks can make those providing them complicit in war crimes.

The Dutch Court of Appeal ordered the Netherlands on February 11 to halt its export of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel, given the clear risk they might be used in committing serious violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza. The Dutch government is appealing this decision. Canada’s foreign minister said on March 20 that Canada will continue to freeze new arms export permits to Israel, following the passage of a nonbinding House of Commons resolution calling for “ceasing the further authorization and transfer of arms exports to Israel to ensure compliance with Canada’s arms export regime.”

The Biden administration issued a National Security Memo in February that establishes that the United States Departments of State and Defense will receive written assurances from countries that receive US military assistance that they use US-origin “defense articles” in compliance with international law and that they have not arbitrarily impeded or delayed US-funded or supported humanitarian assistance during 2023. Based on their observations and investigations in Gaza, however, Human Rights Watch along with Oxfam have concluded that any assurances made by Israeli officials to use US weapons in compliance with international and US law are not credible.

On February 13, the State Department said it was using established procedures relating to the use of US-supplied weapons to investigate civilian harm caused by several Israeli attacks in Gaza but that it could not comment on specific cases under review.

The US, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Denmark and other countries have continued to provide Israel with unconditional arms transfers and other security assistance. By granting export licenses to Israel, including for weapons identified as most likely to be used by the Israeli military in violation of the laws of war, these governments are ignoring the mounting evidence of serious violations, including the strike on the Engineers’ Building.

Click to expand Image Former Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen after voting for the Senate election at Takhmau polling station in Kandal province, Cambodia, February 25, 2024. © 2024 AP Photo/Heng Sinith

(Bangkok) – Cambodian opposition politicians have reported intimidation and threats plus bribes and other unlawful inducements from government officials to withhold their support from opposition candidates in the recent Senate elections, Human Rights Watch said today. On April 3, 2024, the Cambodian Senate voted to approve former longtime Prime Minister Hun Sen of the ruling Cambodia People’s Party (CPP) to be Senate president.

Cambodia’s donors should call on the Cambodian government of Prime Minister Hun Manet to seriously and transparently investigate all interference related to the February 25 elections and the targeting of opposition councilors and activists.

“The allegations by opposition commune councilors and party activists raise serious concerns that Cambodia’s Senate elections were neither free nor fair,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Concerned governments should press Phnom Penh for accountability and reject this subversion of Cambodia’s remaining remnants of democracy.”

The official election results provided the CPP with 55 of the 58 elected Senate seats, while the Khmer Will Party (KWP) won three seats. Another 2 Senate seats appointed by King Norodom Sihamoni went to the CPP, and the final two seats, appointed by the CPP-controlled National Assembly, also went to CPP members.

Under Cambodia’s constitution, commune councilors elect most senators. Six elected commune officials and party officers from the opposition Candlelight Party (CLP), KWP, and National Power Party described to Human Rights Watch what appeared to be organized efforts by local and provincial government officials to unlawfully discourage Candlelight commune councilors from voting for candidates for Senate other than those from the longtime ruling CPP. They also said that financial inducements, gifts, and promises of political support were offered to opposition commune councilors willing to miss the Senate elections, or to vote for candidates from the CPP.

In May 2023, the governmental National Election Committee banned the CLP from registering candidates to run in the July 2023 national elections. The ban was also later applied to the February 2024 Senate elections. The election committee said that the CLP had failed to produce their original party registration document issued by the Ministry of Interior.

But the CLP said that the police refused to allow party members access to the shuttered headquarters of the Candlelight Party predecessor, the Cambodian National Rescue Party, where the original CLP registration document is stored. Although the National Election Committee accepted a copy of the registration paper to allow participation in the June 2022 commune councilor elections, it inexplicably refused to allow a copy of the registration paper for the national and Senate elections.

The CPP holds the vast majority of the 11,622 commune councilor seats across the country. The Candlelight Party holds 2,198. Yet, due to the CLP’s exclusion from the Senate elections, many senior and prominent former CLP members seeking election to the Senate moved to two other parties, the Khmer Will Party and the National Power Party.

On February 15, the National Election Committee issued a statement “that one political party not registered for the election threatened its commune/Sangkat councilors, electors, to vote for this or that political party, which results in violation of voting right[s]” and threatened to take legal action against the political party, presumably the Candlelight Party. The election committee did not provide any evidence to substantiate its claims, nor did it mention reported election malfeasance by the CPP.

A CPP spokesperson denied allegations that the party had intimidated voters or bought votes in Kampong Cham province and Phnom Penh, where 25 percent of Candlelight commune councilors voted for the ruling party based on preliminary Senate election results.

Human Rights Watch in February spoke to four Candlelight commune councilors and two opposition party officers. They described harassment and intimidation, including threats against them and their families, as well as promises of advantageous political positions, bribes of up to 12 million Cambodian Riel (US$3,000), mobile phones, and motorbikes – if they agreed to either not vote in the Senate election or if they voted for ruling party candidates.

Human Rights Watch wrote to the National Election Committee on March 27 regarding Human Rights Watch’s election findings but has not received a response.

The opposition councilors interviewed said government officials either offered good positions with the CPP now, or that the councilors could be listed with the CPP as candidates in the 2027 commune elections. The officials also assured them that aligning their vote with the CPP would not result in their losing their current positions as commune councilors for the remainder of their terms.

The councilors also said that government officials promised protection from Candlelight Party attempts to replace them as commune councilors, if they did not vote or voted to support the CPP. These pledges are consistent with a promise then-Prime Minister Hun Sen made in a speech in October 2022 to allow Candlelight commune councilors to leave their party but retain their positions through the protection of the Ministry of Interior.

A commune councilor said “[the government officials] did not say exactly how much money I would receive this time but said that after voting for the CPP, I can get money and be given a good position with the CPP in the future, and that I can keep my position as commune councilor even if the CLP tries to replace me.”

On January 22, Ly Sothearayuth, the CLP secretary general, told VOA News that the party was struggling to replace its commune councilors who had died, resigned, or moved to support the ruling CPP, and that requests to the Ministry of Interior had still not been processed after more than five or six months.

The commune councilors also said they feared that the CPP would take politically motivated legal action against them if they refused to comply with CPP election demands. One opposition councilor said, “I am worried that if there is legal action against me the courts are not independent: there is a 100 percent chance they will side with the ruling party. When the courts go after you, there is a 100 percent chance that you will lose.”

“I have become increasingly concerned for my safety,” said one. “Especially when I travel during nighttime alone.” A third councilor said, “I am afraid I will be attacked in the streets and left bloody like the CLP members who were attacked last year.” And another said all the commune councilors he had spoken to feared for their safety if they did not do as the CPP asked.

In the run-up to the February elections, Cambodian authorities arrested four opposition officials and members between January 15 and 31 for “forgery” crimes and placed them in pretrial detention. Police arrested the Kakab 2 area commune councilor, Khem Chanvannak, who was the acting head of CLP’s Phnom Penh operations, on January 15. The police stated that Chanvannak was being questioned for forgery related to crimes committed on November 7, 2023.

Police also arrested Chhay Chinda, a CLP official who works with the party’s women’s wing, on January 15, on forgery charges dating back to 2022. And on January 31, authorities arrested Ma Chinda, the head of the CLP youth movement in Phnom Penh’s Daun Penh district, and Hak Kosal, an opposition political activist, for forgery-related crimes. These arrests resemble politically motivated forgery arrests reported on by Human Rights Watch ahead of the May 2023 national assembly election.

“Cambodian government and ruling party targeting of opposition officials and activists to compel them not to vote shows an outrageous contempt for democracy,” Pearson said. “Cambodia’s partners should publicly condemn these politically motivated harassment and threats, and make it clear to the government that future engagement depends on the opening of democratic space in the country.”

For additional details and accounts by opposition members, please see below.

Accounts from Opposition Politicians

Human Rights Watch conducted in-person and phone interviews between February 9 and 27 with six opposition politicians from three opposition political parties, the Candlelight Party (CLP), the Khmer Will Party, and the National Power Party. Among the six opposition politicians were four commune councilors from different districts. Human Rights Watch used pseudonyms and removed location specific information to protect their security.

Direct Attempts by Authorities at Vote Interference or Buying

All four commune councilors interviewed said that they repeatedly received direct or implied offers of money, “gifts,” or other rewards to either vote for the CPP, or not vote at all.

“Sophal,” CLP commune councilor, said:

During the first meeting, a district officer … said that all I had to do was to not vote, I could keep my position as commune councilor. He assured me that even if the CLP tries to replace me in my position, the government will not allow this to happen. He also told me that in the next commune elections in 2027 I can be listed as a CPP candidate and would surely win. He told me there would be other benefits but did not specify what they would be. In the fifth and final meeting, a former member of the Candlelight Party who had defected to the CPP and a high-level ministry adviser told me that I did not have to join the CPP, but that if I either did not vote or if I voted for the CPP, I would later have the possibility of becoming a ministry advisor like he was.

“Vathanak,” CLP commune councilor, said:

In mid-January, I met three people in the commune council hall. Present on their side was a district officer, the provincial governor, and a commune chief. I was told that I would receive benefits and rewards for not voting, or for voting for either the CPP or for the government-aligned [royalist] FUNCINPEC Party, but that if I voted for the CPP I would receive a greater reward. I was told that if I voted for the CPP or for FUNCINPEC, I would be able to keep my position as commune councilor, even if the CLP tried to replace me and that I could be listed as a CPP candidate in 2027.

“Pheakdey,” CLP commune councilor, said:

I received a request to meet authorities to discuss the Senate elections at a coffee shop. The first meeting was on January 27. Present on their side was one CPP party officer from my province, one district governor chief, one district deputy, one commune chief, and two other district officials. I was told that I have the option to vote for the CPP or not vote at all, both options are okay. If I vote for the CPP or just not vote at all, I will receive 4 million Riel (US$1,000) from either option. The difference is, if I vote for the CPP, the CPP would ensure that I keep the same position during the rest of my term as commune councilor and when the next commune elections are contested in 2027, I can be listed as a CPP candidate.

“Vanna,” CLP commune councilor, said:

I was asked to meet authorities multiple times in January and February. During these meetings they said they could offer me US$1,000 if I did not vote and up to $3,000 if I voted for the CPP. During my second meeting they threatened me that if I do not join and vote for the CPP I might get a court complaint against me, they did not specify what type of complaint it would be. The next two meetings happened in early February at the commune hall where I worked. In both meetings, they tried to offer me money and a mobile phone if I joined the CPP and voted for the CPP in the Senate elections, but I refused their offer.

Reports of Attempts by Authorities to Influence Commune Councilors

“Sophal” said that the authorities tried to influence other councilors:

I know there are well over 100 commune councilors in my province, I have met 35 of those commune councilors. These commune councilors are people I know and have spoken to in person about authorities asking for commune councilors to either not vote or to vote for the CPP. Every single one of the 35 commune councilors shared with me that they had similar meetings and requests from authorities. In my case I was not offered money for my vote, or to not vote, but among the 35 other councilors I spoke to, I heard about offers they received from 4 million Riel ($1,000) to 20 million Riel ($5,000) for voting for the CPP. As an administration officer with the CLP, I am involved with a lot of internal communications within the party. From what has been reported from CLP commune councilors across the country, I have heard that 95 to 99 percent of commune councilors have received offers of bribes or “gifts as rewards” for either not voting at all or voting for the CPP. All of these reports I heard occurred similar to my timeline of meetings with authorities, in January and February 2024.

Other CLP councilors interviewed said they too had spoken to other opposition councilors in their districts and that almost all of them had experienced similar pressures and inducements to join the CPP.

“Pisey,” a party officer for the National Power Party said:

Based on my knowledge, the threats and bribes for commune councilors to not vote or to vote for the CPP have occurred since late last year and continued in January and February this year. There is usually an offer or promise of money or future positions in 2027 if they vote for the CPP or even not vote at all in the upcoming Senate elections. For what our activists report back to us, over 95 percent of commune councilors we work with have received threats or offers of rewards based on how they vote in the upcoming elections.

“Davuth,” a party officer for the Khmer Will Party, said:

In provinces around Phnom Penh, in the remote provinces such as Ratanakiri, Mondulkiri, and Preah Vihear, and all the provinces around the Tonle Sap Lake, which are generally much poorer than the capital, the ruling party uses different methods to convince CLP councilors to sell their votes by offering them money, new phones, or even motorbikes. From what has been reported to me as a party organizer, the total amount of these gifts ranges up to $3,000 per vote. The arrests, intimidation, the vote buying attempts are happening at a scale that we have never seen before.

Concerns for Safety and Reports of Intimidation

Opposition commune councilors and party officials also expressed fears for their own safety.

“Vathanak” said:

I just want to share that I feel very concerned for my safety because I have never been previously contacted by the authorities [in this way]. Now that I have been called in to betray my party and officially support the CPP, I feel like I will be targeted by the government if I do not follow their requests. I am concerned about my safety all the time now. I’m afraid I will be attacked in the streets and left bloody like the CLP members who were attacked last year. I am also afraid of being targeted by the government through politically motivated legal means and placed in jail as has happened to so many opposition members.

“Pheakdey” said:

Personally, while traveling, I know that I must be careful. I am worried about attacks while in traffic because opposition members have been attacked before and the perpetrators were never caught. I am worried that if there is legal action against me the courts are not independent: there is a 100 percent chance they will side with the ruling party. When the courts go after you, there is a 100 percent chance that you will lose, you have zero chance of winning a case in Cambodia if the ruling party wants you to suffer.

“Pisey,” the National Power Party officer, said:

We also experience harassment whenever we organize a meeting. Local police come to almost every single meeting we organize, whether it is just an NPP meeting or a meeting with the CLP. Usually, three to five people from the local police come and take pictures of us and ask for a list of participants’ names. We feel like they do this because they want us to be worried and threatened, and so that they can keep track of us to find us later if they feel they need to. I always fear that my party or I will face consequences any time the opposition is successful, and we will face consequences for our actions if we go against the government.

Cambodian Election Law

Various Cambodian laws ostensibly provide protection to political parties, candidates, and party officials – which in practice have not been adequately enforced. The Law on the Election of Commune/Sangkat Councils, in article 39, establishes that political parties should be in charge of their own party candidate lists.

The Law on Administrative Management of Communes/Sangkats, in article 14, states that a valid councilor must fulfill the qualifications as stated in the law covering elections, including being on the candidate list, which the political parties oversee.

The Ministry of Interior’s failure to process requests by political parties to change commune councilor electors subverts the legal process for managing commune councilor lists based on the rights established in Cambodian law.

Article 71 of the Law on the Election of Members of the National Assembly is applicable to the National Election Committee for the Senate Elections on February 15, 2024. The article provides that all political parties and candidates need to avoid using threats, intimidation, or violence against citizens, other political parties, or candidates. The law prohibits parties and candidates from inciting their supporters or voters to commit abuses, threats, violence, or intimidation against individuals or other political parties.

But the law also broadly and problematically bans direct or indirect verbal remarks or written statements by parties and candidates that are immoral and insult any candidates, their supporters, or anyone else.

With respect to the concerns raised by the opposition councilors to Human Rights Watch, the law prohibits all political parties, candidates, or supporters from threatening, intimidating, or enticing anyone to pledge their vote for any political party. In addition, political parties, candidates, or representatives must not make donations in cash or through any kind of incentives to institutions, organizations, or any person to buy votes.

International Human Rights Standards

Cambodia has been a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) since 1992. Article 25(b) of the ICCPR guarantees “the right to vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections … guaranteeing the free expression of the will of the electors.”

The United Nations Human Rights Committee, an international expert body that monitors state compliance with the ICCPR, has stated in General Comment No. 25 related to article 25, that “[p]ersons entitled to vote must be free to vote for any candidate for election… without undue influence or coercion of any kind which may distort or inhibit the free expression of the elector’s will.”
 

 

Click to expand Image Migrants sit under a sign marking the Panama-Colombia border during their trek across the Darién Gap, May 9, 2023. Hundreds of people making the journey through the jungle have experienced robbery and serious abuse, including sexual violence. © 2023 AP Photo/Ivan Valencia, File Colombia and Panama are failing to effectively protect and assist hundreds of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers in the Darién Gap and to investigate abuses there. Over half a million people, including 113,000 children, crossed the Darién Gap in 2023. Panamanian authorities estimate that the number of people crossing is likely to be even higher in 2024. Over 1,500 have reported sexual violence since 2021. Colombian and Panamanian authorities should prevent exploitation by criminal groups and bandits, conduct criminal investigations, and ensure access to food, water, and basic healthcare services.

(Bogota, April 3, 2024) – Colombia and Panama are failing to effectively protect and assist hundreds of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers transiting through the Darién Gap, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

April 3, 2024 Neglected in the Jungle

Inadequate Protection and Assistance for Migrants and Asylum Seekers Crossing the Darién Gap

Download the full report in English

The 110-page report, “Neglected in the Jungle: Inadequate Protection and Assistance for Migrants and Asylum Seekers Crossing the Darién Gap,” is the second in a series of Human Rights Watch reports on migration via the Darién Gap. Human Rights Watch identified specific shortcomings in Colombia’s and Panamana’s efforts to protect and assist people – including those at higher risk, such as unaccompanied children – as well as to investigate abuses against them.

“Whatever the reason for their journey, migrants and asylum seekers crossing the Darién Gap are entitled to basic safety and respect for their human rights along the way,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Colombian and Panamanian authorities can and should do more to ensure the rights of migrants and asylum seekers crossing their countries, as well as of local communities that have experienced years of neglect.”

Human Rights Watch visited the Darién Gap four times between April 2022 and June 2023 and interviewed almost 300 people, including migrants and asylum seekers, victims of serious abuses, aid workers, and Colombian and Panamanian authorities. Between January 2022 and March 2024, researchers also conducted phone and virtual interviews. Human Rights Watch also reviewed data and reports by the Colombian, Panamanian, and United States governments; United Nations agencies; international, regional, and local human rights and humanitarian organizations; and local legal clinics, and repeatedly sent information requests to Colombian and Panamanian authorities, who in most cases responded. 

Human Rights Watch found that on both sides of the border, the authorities are failing to effectively protect the right to life and physical integrity of transiting migrants and asylum seekers, and to investigate violations effectively, promptly, and thoroughly. Efforts to guarantee access to food, water, and essential healthcare services have proven inadequate, affecting the basic rights of both migrants and local communities that have experienced longstanding marginalization, high poverty rates, and a lack of opportunities.

Crimes against migrants and asylum seekers in the Darién Gap, including pervasive cases of sexual violence, go largely uninvestigated and unpunished on both sides of the border. Accountability for these abuses is rare due to a combination of limited resources and personnel, a lack of a criminal investigation strategy for these cases, and poor coordination between Colombian and Panamanian authorities.

On March 4, 2024, the Panamanian government suspended the work of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders or MSF) in the country, saying that its agreement with the humanitarian group had ended in December. MSF says that they have been seeking a renewal since October. The organization played a leading role in assisting migrants and asylum seekers, including hundreds of survivors of sexual violence.

“Restricting MSF’s work is exactly the opposite of what is needed to address the situation in the Darién Gap,” Goebertus said. “Panamanian authorities should urgently review this decision to ensure the rights of migrants and asylum seekers, including victims of sexual violence.”

Over half a million people crossed the Darién Gap in 2023, including 113,000 children. Based on the large number of people who crossed in January and February, Panamanian authorities estimate that the number of people crossing is likely to be even higher in 2024.

Click to expand Image

During their journey through this difficult terrain, Venezuelans, Haitians, and Ecuadorians, as well as people from Asia and Africa, have experienced serious abuses, including sexual violence. Since 2021, over 1,500 people have reported sexual violence to MSF, but the numbers are likely to be higher. However, between January 2021 and December 2023 the Attorney General’s Office in Panama reported only 285 victims of sexual abuse.

Dozens, if not hundreds, have lost their lives trying to cross or are missing. While the International Organization for Migration reported that 245 have disappeared between 2021 and March 2023, the real figure is likely to be much higher.

In one case documented by Human Rights Watch, in October 2022, a Venezuelan couple embarked on the journey with their 6-year-old son and two other children through the Darién jungle. Amid the arduous trek, a stranger offered to carry their son to expedite the journey, but that group soon outpaced them, the parents said. As they caught up with the group the next morning, the man told them that their child had drowned while crossing the river. It took the authorities eight days to begin a search, and Interpol issued a notice to help locate the child over a month later. He remains missing.

Researchers found that in Colombia, the government lacks a clear strategy to safeguard the rights of migrants and asylum seekers crossing the Darién Gap. The limited government presence in the region effectively leaves them unprotected from the Gulf Clan, an armed group involved in drug trafficking that controls the flow of migrants and asylum seekers and profits from their desperation and vulnerability.

The Panamanian government implements a strategy of “controlled flow” or “humanitarian flow.” The policy appears focused on restricting the free movement of migrants and asylum seekers within Panama and seeking their swift exit to Costa Rica, rather than on addressing their needs or ensuring that they can exercise their right to seek asylum, Human Rights Watch found.

Both Colombia and Panama should appoint a special adviser or senior official to coordinate their response to the increased migration flow across the Darién Gap and bolster cooperation among the two governments and with the UN and other humanitarian agencies.

Both governments should work with humanitarian organizations and local communities to establish a joint system to rescue people reported missing in the Darién Gap and to identify and recover bodies. They should also strengthen efforts to prevent, investigate, and punish sexual violence against migrants and asylum seekers. They should increase forensic capacity in the region, prioritize investigations into these cases, and address obstacles that make it harder for victims to report crimes. Working with humanitarian organizations, governments should bolster medical, including psychological, assistance for victims.

Addressing the situation in the Darién Gap will require broader efforts across the region. Latin American governments and the US should reverse measures that are preventing access to asylum and forcing people into dangerous crossings like the Darién Gap. They should honor the 40th anniversary of the 1984 Cartagena Declaration, a landmark international instrument on refugees’ rights in Latin America, by adopting rights-respecting policies.

“Colombia and Panama should not be left alone to respond to the challenges in the Darién Gap,” Goebertus said. “Foreign governments should support meaningful efforts to assist and protect migrants and asylum seekers – and all governments should provide options to ensure that people are not forced to risk their lives in the jungle.”

Click to expand Image One of many houses marked with the word "Tutsi" stands in a deserted village in eastern Rwanda, just a few kilometers from a church at Nyarubuye in which more than 1,000 people were massacred by Hutu militiamen. © 1994 Corinne Dufka

(Nairobi) – Human Rights Watch announced today that it is releasing a series of archives highlighting the extraordinary efforts of human rights defenders in Rwanda and abroad, to warn about the planned 1994 genocide and attempt to stop the killings. The documents painfully illustrate leading international actors’ refusal to acknowledge the slaughter of more than half a million people and act to end it.

A significant number of individuals responsible for the genocide, including former high-level government officials and other key figures behind the massacres, have since been brought to justice, and more than a dozen prosecutions of genocide suspects are being conducted in domestic courts across Europe under the principle of universal jurisdiction. And yet, in recent years, several high-level alleged genocide masterminds have died, or, in the case of one alleged planner, been declared unfit to stand trial, highlighting the urgent need to continue the quest to deliver justice.

“The genocide in Rwanda remains a stain on our collective conscience and, 30 years later, lessons can still be drawn from the actions – or lack thereof – of world leaders in the face of ongoing atrocities,” said Tirana Hassan, executive director at Human Rights Watch. “There is an urgent need to expedite the pursuit of justice to ensure that the remaining architects of the genocide are held to account before it is too late.”

On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down over the Rwandan capital, Kigali. The crash marked the beginning of three months of ethnic killings across Rwanda on an unprecedented scale.

Hutu political and military extremists orchestrated the killing of approximately three quarters of Rwanda’s Tutsi population, leaving more than half a million people dead. Many Hutu who attempted to hide or protect Tutsi, as well as those who opposed the genocide, were also killed.

In mid-July 1994, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a predominantly Tutsi rebel group based in Uganda that had been fighting to overthrow the Rwandan government since 1990, took over the country and ended the genocide. Its troops killed thousands of predominantly Hutu civilians, though the scale and nature of these killings were not comparable to the genocide.

Human Rights Watch documented the genocide and the RPF’s 1994 crimes in detail. Alison Des Forges, senior adviser to the Africa division at Human Rights Watch for almost two decades, published the authoritative account of the Rwandan genocide, “Leave None to Tell the Story,” and documented the international community’s indifference and failure to act.

Despite repeated warnings by Rwandan and international human rights organizations, diplomats, United Nations staff, and others that a genocide was being planned in the period leading up to April 1994, governments and intergovernmental bodies, including the UN and the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union), failed to act to prevent the genocide as it unfolded. The UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda withdrew most of its troops at the height of the massacres, leaving the Rwandan civilian population defenseless.

Thirty years later, Human Rights Watch is releasing part of its archives from March 1993 to December 1994. The documents and a chronology of actions during this period illustrate the organization and its allies’ extensive advocacy efforts, led by Alison Des Forges, first to try to prevent, and then to stop, the killings. The chronology does not purport to be a comprehensive compilation of all actions undertaken by civil society organizations and others in 1993 and 1994. The contents are rather some of what remained in Human Rights Watch’s possession from a pre-internet period after the unexpected death of Des Forges in 2009 in a plane crash in the US, and which the organization considers to be of public interest.

Stopping the leaders and the killers in Rwanda would have required military force, but in the early stages, a relatively small one. A rapid and efficient international intervention could have succeeded in halting the genocide and preventing some of the worst killings. The archives illustrate how international leaders not only rejected this course, but also declined for weeks to use their political and moral authority to challenge the legitimacy of the genocidal government. Strategy documents, statements, and letters show that international leaders at the time refused to declare that a government that was exterminating its citizens would never receive international assistance and did nothing to silence radio programs that incited Rwandans to slaughter. Such simple measures could have sapped the strength of the authorities bent on mass murder and encouraged Rwandan resistance to the extermination campaign.

On May 10, 1994, Des Forges wrote a letter to then-UN High Commissioner for Human Rights José Ayala Lasso, informing him that the regime committing genocide was cognizant of how it was perceived internationally and that, the day before his planned visit to Rwanda, “the national committee of the Interahamwe militia […] broadcast a communique calling on their members to stop killing Tutsi and members of the political opposition. They also asked them to help stop killings by those who were not members of their groups.”

The documents shed light on the vital role played by human rights defenders in preventing atrocities. From the outset, Human Rights Watch and several others expressed alarm at the targeting of human rights activists in Rwanda.

In the months and years that followed, as the horror of the genocide sank in, “never again” became a common refrain. A number of world leaders acknowledged, and some apologized for, their failure to halt the genocide. It was also one of the triggers of the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine, which governments adopted in 2005 to protect people facing mass atrocities.

Overwhelming guilt at their individual and collective failure to stop the genocide has been a defining factor in many governments’ foreign policy toward Rwanda since that time. It continues to color international perceptions of and reactions to events in Rwanda and in the Great Lakes region, especially in relation to Rwanda’s human rights record in the 30 years since the genocide and its repeated incursions into the Democratic Republic of Congo. Rwanda has supported Congolese armed groups responsible for killings of civilians, rape, and other grave human rights violations.

The majority of genocide related prosecutions have taken place in Rwandan courts. Others have occurred before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) or domestic courts across Europe and North America.

Rwanda's community-based gacaca courts completed their work in 2012; the ICTR formally closed in 2015, handing over a number of functions to a residual mechanism. After years of delays, since 2001, scores of genocide suspects have been investigated, arrested, or prosecuted under the principle of universal jurisdiction in France, Belgium, Germany, the United Kingdom, and other European and North American countries.

The 30th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide provides an opportune and urgent moment to take stock of progress, both at national and international levels, in holding to account suspects who planned, ordered, and carried out these horrific crimes. It is all the more urgent to do so, and to accelerate efforts to prosecute remaining genocide suspects, as several high-profile planners and masterminds of the genocide have already died and one – Félicien Kabuga – was declared unfit to stand trial.

“An enduring lesson from the genocide is the international community’s failure to take heed of the clear signs that preparations for mass atrocities were underway – including warnings from human rights defenders who put their lives on the line to sound the alarm,” Hassan said. “Despite the passage of time, victims deserve to see those responsible for genocide and other crimes arrested and prosecuted in fair and credible trials.”

For an update on justice efforts after the genocide since 2019, please see below.

Justice Since the Genocide

The genocide in Rwanda, together with the wars in the Balkans, marked a turning point in international commitment to including accountability and criminal trials as part of responses to grave crimes under international law. The creation of the ICTR in 1994, and of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) the year before, paved the way for international justice. One important legacy of the genocide in Rwanda is the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998.

The ICC is the first permanent international criminal court whose mandate is not limited to a specific situation, but that has a potential global reach, with jurisdiction over the crime of aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The ICC currently has 124 states parties, and has opened 17 investigations into grave international crimes, spanning all regions of the world. It acts as a court of last resort, stepping in only when national authorities do not carry out genuine investigations and, as appropriate, prosecutions. The court anchors a broader system of justice for serious international crimes rooted in the national courts of its member countries.

International Justice for the Rwandan Genocide (2019-2024)

The United Nations Security Council created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in 1994 in response to the genocide. The tribunal indicted 93 people, convicted and sentenced 62, and acquitted 14. The remaining defendants had their cases transferred to national jurisdictions, while other suspects died before being presented before a judge or remain fugitives. The tribunal made significant contributions to establishing the truth about the organization of the genocide and providing justice to victims. Des Forges appeared as an expert witness in 11 genocide trials at the tribunal.

However, the ICTR ultimately prosecuted only a limited number of cases and was unwilling to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF). The tribunal formally closed on December 31, 2015.

As it wound down its work between 2011 and 2015, the ICTR transferred several genocide cases to Rwandan courts. To provide for the transfer of those cases, as well as extraditions of genocide suspects from other countries, the Rwandan government undertook reforms to the justice system aimed at meeting international fair trial standards. But the technical and formal improvements in laws and administrative structure have not been matched by gains in judicial independence and respect for the right to a fair trial.

Several people convicted by the ICTR have since died or served their sentences. On September 25, 2021, Malian officials announced the death of Théoneste Bagosora, a former Rwandan army colonel convicted of masterminding killings during the 1994 genocide. Bagosora, 80, was serving a 35-year sentence in Mali after the tribunal found him guilty of crimes against humanity. 

When the ICTR closed, the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT), created in 2010, was tasked with arresting and prosecuting the nine remaining tribunal-indicted fugitives. It retained jurisdiction over Augustin Bizimana, Félicien Kabuga, and Protais Mpiranya, while referring the six remaining cases to Rwandan authorities (Fulgence Kayishema, Charles Sikubwabo, Aloys Ndimbati, Charles Ryandikayo, Phénéas Munyarugarama, and Ladislas Ntaganzwa).

In May 2023, Kayishema was arrested in South Africa, after evading justice since 2001. He is alleged to have planned the killings of more than 2,000 men, women, and children on April 15, 1994, at a church in western Rwanda.

Kabuga, an alleged mastermind behind the genocide, was arrested in France in May 2020. His trial started in September 2022 before the IRMCT, but was suspended in March 2023 while judges considered whether he was mentally fit to stand trial. In August 2023, IRMCT Appeals Chamber’s judges ordered the trial indefinitely suspended, confirming in part a June trial chamber decision finding Kabuga unfit to stand trial.

Just days after Kabuga’s arrest in 2020, the Residual Mechanism announced that the remains of Bizimana – the defense minister at the time of the genocide – had been identified in a grave in the Republic of Congo. In May 2022, Mpiranya – the commander of the army’s presidential guard at the time of the genocide – was confirmed dead. Des Forges had documented Mpiranya’s involvement in leading militia members and civilians in carrying out the killings. In May 2022, the IRMCT prosecutor also confirmed the death of another fugitive, Munyarugarama, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in 2002.

As a result of these deaths, survivors have been robbed of their chance to see some of those allegedly responsible for the genocide face the accusations against them in a court of law.

Rwanda’s Public Prosecution Authority was quoted in media reports saying that Kayishema is expected to be transferred first to the Residual Mechanism in Arusha, Tanzania, and then to Rwanda for trial. Kayishema is challenging his transfer to Rwanda in the South African court system, South African judicial authorities told Human Rights Watch.

The prosecution of international crimes such as genocide and crimes against humanity in the country where they were committed, close to the victims and the affected population, can have a number of advantages over prosecutions in international courts, provided fair trials can be guaranteed. However, in Rwanda, the justice system lacks independence, and the government can influence the outcome of trials, especially in politically sensitive cases. This risks undermining the rights of the accused, as well as those of the victims to receive meaningful justice.

Ntaganzwa, whose case was also transferred to the Rwandan authorities, was arrested in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2015 and, in March 2016, was extradited to Rwanda where he faced trial. He was convicted in May 2020 and his conviction and life sentence were upheld on appeal in March 2023. However, fair trial concerns have been raised, including about the length of the trial.

In its monitoring report for November 2018, the IRMCT reported that Ntaganzwa had told the court he was held in solitary confinement for 25 days, and that prison authorities had harassed him, and threatened to beat him up. In a meeting with monitors in December, he said that his defense lawyers had not been allowed to see him during his time in solitary confinement, that the authorities had confiscated his laptop for a day, and that he was concerned that they had gone through his defense documents.

In March 2019, one of Ntaganzwa’s defense lawyers expressed concern that sharing the defense witness list early in the proceedings could lead to witness tampering. Ntaganzwa repeated his concerns regarding the prison authorities’ attempts to monitor his communications and laptop on several occasions.

Trials Under Universal Jurisdiction

Much of the information below draws on TRIAL International’s database on universal jurisdiction, which provides an overview of major criminal cases related to universal jurisdiction worldwide.

Typically, national authorities are only able to investigate a crime if there is a link between their country and the crime. However, under the principle of “universal jurisdiction,” national judicial systems can investigate and prosecute certain of the most serious crimes under international law no matter where they were committed, and regardless of the nationality of the suspects or their victims. Cases brought under this principle are an increasingly important part of international efforts to hold those responsible for atrocities accountable, provide justice to victims who have nowhere else to turn, deter future crimes, and help ensure that countries do not become safe havens for human rights abusers.

Some countries have created specialized war crimes units within their law enforcement and prosecution services focused on addressing grave international crimes committed abroad, including genocide.

In some of these countries, many years elapsed before trials of Rwandan suspects began. But, since 2001, several countries have tried Rwandan genocide suspects, including Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. For some, these were the first cases of genocide tried in their domestic courts. Criminal investigations are still ongoing against other Rwandan genocide suspects in several countries, including France and Belgium.

France

In France, a country to which a number of known genocide suspects had fled after the genocide, judicial authorities have finally redoubled efforts to secure the delivery of justice for the genocide after decades of delays and lengthy judicial processes. It was not until 20 years after the genocide, in February 2014, that France’s newly created war crimes unit tried the first suspect, Pascal Simbikangwa, a former intelligence chief under the Habyarimana government. It was a significant moment, as France had backed the former government of Rwanda and supported and trained some of the forces that carried out the genocide. On March 14, 2014, a Paris court found Simbikangwa guilty of genocide and complicity in crimes against humanity, and sentenced him to 25 years in prison. His conviction was upheld on appeal in May 2018.

In 2021, after decades of tense relations between France and Rwanda, a commission established by President Emmanuel Macron to investigate France’s role in the 1994 genocide published a 1,200-page report concluding that France has responsibilities it characterized as “serious and overwhelming,” including for being blind to the preparation of the genocide and being slow to withdraw support from the government orchestrating it.

During a visit to Rwanda in May 2021, Macron committed to ensuring that nobody suspected of crimes of genocide escapes justice. Since then, the French and Rwandan governments have increased cooperation and efforts to arrest and try genocide suspects in France.

Laurent Bucyibaruta, the Gikongoro prefect at the time of the genocide, fled to France in 1997. He was indicted by the ICTR on June 16, 2005, for incitement to genocide, genocide, and complicity in genocide, as well as crimes against humanity including extermination, murder, and rape. The ICTR referred the case to the French authorities, and he was arrested on September 5, 2007, and placed under judicial surveillance. Over 10 years later, on December 24, 2018, investigative judges referred the case to the Paris Criminal Court for complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity.

On January 21, 2021, the Court of Appeals confirmed the referral and changed the charges from complicity to direct perpetration of genocide for certain criminal facts and added charges that the judge had previously rejected. During his trial, which took place from May 9 to July 1, 2022, Bucyibaruta was acquitted of the charge of directly perpetrating genocide and crimes against humanity, but he was found guilty of complicity in those crimes for abetting several massacres. He was sentenced to 20 years and imprisoned at the end of the trial. Bucyibaruta died on December 6, 2023.

Sosthene Munyemana, a well-known doctor in Butare, was indicted in Paris for genocide and crimes against humanity on December 14, 2011, and placed under judicial supervision. Twelve years later, in December 2023, he was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity, and participation in a group formed for the purpose of preparing for complicity in these crimes, though he was acquitted of complicity, and sentenced to 24 years in prison. He was accused of inciting Hutu to exterminate the Tutsi community of Tumba in a public speech on April 17, 1994; of taking part in several massacres of Tutsi in and around Tumba; of distributing ammunition; of compiling lists of Tutsis to be eliminated; of leading night patrols; and of giving directions for abductions. His defense team announced Munyemana would appeal.

Eugene Rwamucyo, a doctor and the head of the Center of Public Health of the University of Butare at the time of the genocide, was indicted and placed under judicial surveillance in 2013. In April 2020, the prosecution asked to try him on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. In October 2020, the case was referred to the Paris Criminal Court. Rwamucyo appealed and, in September 2022, the Paris Court of Appeals confirmed the referral to the Assize Court. In January 2023, the Court of Cassation rejected his appeal and confirmed the referral of his case for the last time. He is detained and awaiting trial.

Philippe Hategekimana, a former gendarme, was convicted by a French court and sentenced to life in prison in June 2023 for genocide and crimes against humanity. He was found guilty of all charges against him for his participation in mass murders in Nyanza, and the murder of a nun and a mayor. Hategekimana fled to France in 1999, where he obtained refugee status, and later became a French citizen in 2005. After an investigation was opened in France, following a complaint filed by the Collective of Civil Parties for Rwanda (Collectif des parties civiles pour le Rwanda, CPCR), Hategekimana fled to Cameroon in 2017. In 2019, he was extradited to France, indicted, and his trial started on May 10, 2023. He has appealed the conviction.

In February 2014, French authorities rejected an extradition request from Rwandan authorities for Claude Muhayimana, who obtained French citizenship in 2010, but arrested him two months later following a 2013 complaint by the CPCR. In November 2017, a judge referred his case to the Paris Criminal Court for complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity. The trial took place between November and December 2021. Muhayimana was found guilty of complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity for transporting militiamen to killing sites during the genocide and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. On December 21, 2022, the Court of Appeals released Muhayimana pending his appeal.

Other cases are ongoing. Marcel Hitayezu, a former priest in Mubuga parish, is under judicial surveillance in France, charged with genocide and complicity in crimes against humanity in April 2021. Isaac Kamali, a former official of the Ministry of Public Works and Energy, was indicted in September 2021 and placed under judicial surveillance for his alleged involvement in genocide and crimes against humanity, according to TRIAL International. He was first arrested in Paris in June 2007. French authorities denied an extradition request by Rwanda in 2008.

Laurent Serubuga was a high-ranking officer in the Rwandan army, the deputy chief of staff until 1992, and allegedly associated with the Akazu, an informal organization of Hutu extremists. A memo issued by the French intelligence services from September 1994 and leaked to the media in 2019, describes him as one of the key suspects in the April 6, 1994 attack on Habyarimana’s plane. Several nongovernmental groups filed a complaint against him before the investigating judges of the Paris High Court and, in 2002, an investigation was opened against him for genocide and complicity in crimes against humanity. Rwanda issued an arrest warrant and extradition order to France in 2013, and while he was arrested that same year, France denied the extradition request and he was released. In 2017, the investigation was completed. The prosecutor’s office has yet to issue its final submissions stating its position on next steps, according to TRIAL International.

Pierre Kayondo, a former prefect of Kibuye and reportedly a shareholder of Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), which had broadcast incitements to genocide before April 6 and communicated the orders for implementing the killings after that date, was arrested in September 2023, and charged with complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity. The French judiciary had opened an investigation in October 2021 against Kayondo for his involvement in massacres, following a complaint from the CPCR.

Belgium

In Belgium, Pierre Basabose, a retired member of the Rwandan army and shareholder of RTLM, and Seraphin Twahirwa, a relative of Habyarimana accused of leading the Interahamwe, were put on trial for genocide and war crimes in October 2023. Both were first arrested in September 2020 but later released under investigation. In December 2023, Twahirwa was found guilty of participating in or overseeing atrocities; while Basabose was found guilty of funding the militia, but was not sentenced to a prison term due to health reasons. The court also established that Twahirwa had raped or overseen the rape of multiple women, and he was sentenced to life in prison. Both have appealed their conviction, according to TRIAL International.

Ernest Gakwaya and Emmanuel Nkunduwimye were arrested in March 2011 in Brussels. Gakwaya is facing charges for murdering and raping Tutsi and moderate Hutu, and Nkunduwimye allegedly committed murder, attempted murder, and rape. Both are alleged former Interahamwe members. In October 2019, the Belgian judiciary separated their cases from a case against Fabien Neretse. The scheduled hearings were postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemic and no date has yet been set for the opening of their trial, according to TRIAL International.

After Belgian and French authorities issued arrest warrants against him, in 2011, Neretse was arrested in France and eventually handed over to Belgium, where his trial for genocide and the war crime of murder took place in 2019. The Brussels Criminal Court found him guilty of genocide and war crimes, and sentenced him to 25 years in prison. The court based Neretse’s conviction on his role as a founder of an Interahamwe militia, providing them with weapons and money; and on his role planning massacres. He was also found guilty of several murders, including of a Belgian national, Claire Beckers, her Rwandan Tutsi husband, Isaïe Bucyana, and their daughter.

Christophe Ndangali, the Ministry of Education’s chief of staff at the time of the genocide, was charged with genocide and war crimes, and arrested in September 2020 in Belgium for allegedly participating in the exclusion of Tutsi from the school system and calling for their extermination. The investigation is ongoing.

Several other cases are ongoing in Belgium, although trials have been slow to materialize. Across Europe, investigations and prosecutions have continued with a new sense of urgency.

Other Cases in Europe

Pierre-Claver Karangwa, a former Rwandan military official suspected of having played a key role in the genocide, was arrested in the Netherlands in October 2023. His arrest came after the Dutch Supreme Court ruled in June 2023 that he could not be extradited to Rwanda because of the risk of an unfair trial. The Netherlands has extradited several other genocide suspects in the past.

In December 2015, a United Kingdom district judge, after assessing the trials of previously extradited suspects and the updated legal framework in Rwanda, rejected an extradition request for five Rwandan genocide suspects due to risks they would not get a fair trial in Rwanda. Vincent Brown, also known as Vincent Bajinya; Charles Munyaneza; Emmanuel Nteziryayo; Célestin Ugirashebuja; and Célestin Mutabaruka were held in the UK in 2013 after an extradition request from the Rwandan government. The investigation was reopened in 2018 at the request of Rwandan prosecutors, and British police confirmed investigations are ongoing in April 2019.

In January 2024, a 69-year-old Rwandan man was arrested in Gateshead, in the north of England, by police investigating genocide and crimes against humanity. He was released on bail.

In 2017, Theodore Tabaro was charged in Sweden with murder, attempted murder, rape, kidnapping, and of having organized, recruited, incited, and executed killings against Tutsi. In 2018, he was sentenced to life in prison for genocide through murder, attempted murder, and abduction, but was acquitted of rape charges. The Appeals Chamber upheld the verdict and sentence in April 2019.

In Norway, Jean Chrysostome Budengeri was arrested by the National Criminal Investigation Service (known as “Kripos”) in June 2018 on suspicion of participating in killings during the genocide. His defense lawyer requested an independent review of Kripos’ investigation by the attorney-general in May 2019, citing discrepancies in witness interviews and their translations. The attorney-general rejected his request. Budengeri was released from pretrial detention in September 2019 but ordered to report to the police twice a week.

Trials in Rwanda

In Rwanda, the task of delivering justice was made more difficult by the fact that many judges, lawyers, and other judicial staff were killed during the genocide, and much of the country’s infrastructure was destroyed. Despite these challenges, the Rwandan government embarked on an ambitious and unprecedented approach to delivering justice, using both conventional domestic courts and community-based gacaca courts.

The gacaca left a mixed legacy. Its positive achievements included the courts’ swift work in processing a huge number of cases; the participation of local communities; and the opportunity for some genocide survivors to learn what had happened to their relatives. Gacaca might also have helped some survivors find a way of living peacefully alongside perpetrators. However, many gacaca hearings resulted in unfair trials. There were limitations on the ability of the accused to effectively defend themselves; numerous instances of intimidation and corruption of defence witnesses, judges, and other parties; and flawed decision-making due to inadequate training for lay judges who were expected to handle complex cases.

In March 2024, human rights defender François-Xavier Byuma was released from prison after serving a 17-year sentence following a gacaca trial marred by grave procedural errors. The trial judge was known to have a prior conflict with Byuma but had refused to recuse himself, as law required and Byuma requested. Byuma, who was then the head of an association for the defense of childrens' rights, had previously investigated allegations that the judge had raped a minor. The judge also failed to accord Byuma the right to defend himself fully.

Compared with most other countries emerging from mass violence, Rwanda's determination to see justice done and its progress in trying so many alleged perpetrators has been impressive. But the lack of safeguards against abusive prosecutions in a weak judicial system heightened the risk of unfair trials.

Extraditions to Rwanda

Until the first ICTR transfer decision, most countries denied Rwanda’s extradition requests. Under international human rights law, the sending country could be held responsible for foreseeable human rights violations of the suspects in Rwanda.

A European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling in October 2011 that the extradition of Sylvere Ahorugeze, a Rwandan genocide suspect arrested in Sweden, would not violate Sweden’s obligations to protect against torture or inhuman treatment, or to avoid complicity in fair trial violations, emboldened governments seeking to extradite suspects to face trial in Rwanda. Prosecutors and judges in extradition cases in various countries cited the ICTR and ECHR decisions as precedents when arguing for extradition. Although many countries have extradited genocide suspects to face trial in Rwanda, some still refuse to do so.

The Rwandan authorities have improved several aspects of the delivery of justice in the last 30 years, a noteworthy achievement given the challenges faced after the genocide. There have also been significant improvements in the functioning of the justice system and in prison conditions. But while the laws have changed considerably, the underlying politicization of the judiciary remains, hindering the full realization of the reforms, and there is still no guarantee of a fair trial in Rwandan courts, especially in politically-sensitive cases.

Rwanda has passed a number of laws that may have been intended to prevent and punish hate speech of the kind that led to the 1994 genocide, but they have led to serious violations of freedom of expression by imposing strict limits on how people can talk about the genocide and other events in and after 1994. Accusations and charges of genocide ideology have been used to silence prominent critics of the government. The government has also manipulated genocide accusations to discredit and target critics and dissidents.

Some countries have extradited suspects to Rwanda despite these concerns. Since the ICTR first transferred a case to Rwanda in 2011, Canada, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and the United States all have extradited suspects.

Leopold Munyakazi was deported from the US to Rwanda in 2016 on the basis of an international arrest warrant charging him with genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, and genocide denial. Yet, a leaked 2015 Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) report stated that the investigation was “almost certainly” compromised by a Rwandan intelligence agent and cast doubt on the allegations against Munyakazi. A lower court in Rwanda convicted him for direct involvement in the genocide and sentenced him to life in prison in 2017.

Rwanda’s Chamber for International Crimes overturned Munyakazi’s life sentence in July 2018, but upheld a nine-year sentence for genocide denial. On February 18, 2021, the Nyanza High Court Chamber of International and Cross-Border Crimes convicted Munyakazi of new charges of genocide denial, and added another five years to his sentence. The conviction is based on statements he made ahead of the genocide commemorations in April 2017, in Muhanga prison. According to the verdict, Munyakazi said that the genocide was a consequence of the RPF’s attempted invasion of Rwanda in October 1990, and that if President Habyarimana’s plane had not crashed, there would not have been a genocide.

In January 2024, Wenceslas Twagirayezu, a Rwandan with Danish citizenship who was extradited to Rwanda in December 2018, was acquitted of genocide and crimes against humanity during the 1994 genocide. The charges were linked to his suspected role in attacks on Tutsi in the former Gisenyi prefecture in the north. The acquittal of Twagirayezu followed contradictory witness statements and evidence demonstrating he was not in Rwanda at the time of the events he was accused of having been involved in. The prosecution has appealed the acquittal.

In April 2021, Beatrice Munyenyezi was deported to Rwanda by the US after serving a prison term for lying on her naturalization application, and arrested upon arrival in Rwanda. She faces seven charges related to the 1994 genocide, including rape. Her trial is ongoing.

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(Mexico City) – Trans people in the Mexican state of Guanajuato suffer economic, medical, and labor discrimination, as well as other onerous legal impediments, because the state has no process for issuing identity documents consistent with their gender, Human Rights Watch said in a documentary released today. Guanajuato’s authorities should urgently create an administrative procedure to allow trans people to reflect their self-declared gender identity on official documents.

The Keys to My Freedom, produced in collaboration with Amicus DH, is released on the heels of International Transgender Day of Visibility. It follows the stories of two transgender women, Ivanna Tovar and Kassandra Mendoza, who have fought to have their gender and names legally recognized in Guanajuato. Eight additional trans people from the state also share brief experiences of discrimination and messages of hope.

“The documentary powerfully shows how trans people in Guanajuato are disadvantaged in work and education and weighed down with legal proceedings due to authorities’ undue delay in recognizing their gender identity,” said Cristian González Cabrera, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The governor and state congress should urgently establish a legal gender recognition procedure that will contribute to reducing discrimination.” 

Each of Mexico’s 32 states has the authority to determine its laws and policies in civil, family, and registration matters in accordance with the constitution. It is up to the state legislature or state governor to pass a law or issue an administrative decree that enables legal gender recognition through a simple administrative procedure at a state-level civil registry. Twenty-one Mexican states already have such a procedure. Guanajuato does not.

“It has been difficult to find a job,” says Kassandra Mendoza in the documentary regarding her lack of documents reflecting her gender identity. “[Employers] see my documents, then they see me and say, ‘This doesn’t add up.’ I’ve been made fun of, I’ve even been insulted.”

Ivanna Tovar says in the documentary: “Without a gender identity reform, we [trans people] cannot work in a dignified manner because we are violated, because we are not called by the [legal] names that appear in our documents, and [dealing with that] is the state’s responsibility.” She described gender recognition as her “keys to [her] freedom.”

In October 2021, a state lawmaker, Dessire Ángel Rocha, introduced a legal gender recognition bill, but the bill has not advanced in the current legislature. Previous gender recognition bills presented in February 2019, October 2019, and April 2021 also did not advance.

Until last month, the state congress was unwilling to consider bills relating to the rights of LGBT people. In February 2024, the state passed the Law for Persons of Sexual and Gender Diversity. It aims to establish coordination mechanisms between various authorities, as well as guiding principles, “to promote, protect and progressively guarantee” the rights of LGBT people. However, this reform did not address gender recognition for trans people.

Human Rights Watch and Amicus DH, together with the Trans Youth Network and Colmena 41, interviewed 31 trans people from Guanajuato state in April 2022 in the cities of León, Irapuato, and Guanajuato city, as well as remotely, to understand and document the harm related to a lack of legal gender recognition in the state. They found that the absence of a legal gender recognition procedure in Guanajuato leads to serious economic, legal, health, and other ramifications for trans people.

In states like Guanajuato without procedures for legal gender recognition, transgender people have to initiate an onerous legal proceeding to enjoin the state to recognize their gender identity on the basis of the Supreme Court rulings and international law. Federal judges generally grant the injunction, but it can be a lengthy and expensive process which requires hiring an experienced lawyer.

In a successful case, the judge orders the civil registry to permanently seal a trans person’s original birth certificate, meaning it is no longer readily accessible in its information systems, and to issue a corrected certificate. This new state birth certificate is necessary to request new nationally valid identification documents like a voter registration card, a tax number, or a passport.

In 2017, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued an advisory opinion saying that states must establish simple and efficient legal gender recognition procedures based on self-identification, without invasive and pathologizing requirements. The ruling is an authoritative interpretation of the American Convention on Human Rights, which Mexico has ratified.  

In 2019, the Mexican Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling with clear guidelines on legal gender recognition. The court said that this must be an administrative process that “meets the standards of privacy, simplicity, expeditiousness, and adequate protection of gender identity” set by the Inter-American Court.

The Supreme Court ruling binds all lower federal courts. The court said that in order to comply with the constitution, state authorities should ensure that trans people can update their legal documents through an administrative process. In 2022, the court expanded the right to legal gender recognition to include adolescents and other children.

“The trans people who shared their stories in the documentary are just a few of the many trans people who are suffering under the state’s inaction on gender recognition,” González said. “Guanajuato should heed activists’ calls and Mexican law and join the majority of Mexican states that uphold the rights of their gender minorities by creating an administrative gender recognition procedure.”