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India: Technology Use Shouldn’t Undermine Free, Fair Elections
(New York) – Voters in India will cast their ballots in a six-week general election beginning April 19, 2024, amid concerns that Indian authorities exert considerable control over the digital ecosystem that can make for an uneven playing field, Human Rights Watch said in a question-and-answer document released today. The party or coalition of parties that wins a majority of 543 seats in the lower house of Parliament will nominate a candidate for prime minister and form a government.
April 8, 2024 India’s General Elections, Technology, and Human Rights Questions and AnswersHuman Rights Watch examined potential threats to India’s online environment ahead of the elections. The authorities have increased their control over digital platforms and amassed extensive amounts of personal data, which may affect the campaign environment. Human Rights Watch details the additional steps technology companies should take to meet their human rights responsibilities in this election.
“The risk of misuse of technology in India’s election is significant and could result in further tilting the playing field in favor of the ruling party,” said Deborah Brown, acting associate technology and human rights director at Human Rights Watch. “The Election Commission of India should ensure that all political parties comply with the model code of conduct and that their use of technology in campaigning respects human rights.”
Human Rights Watch reviewed popular companies’ policies and found that all companies could do more to address any aspects of their products, services, and business practices that may cause, contribute, or be linked with undermining free and fair elections.
Indian political parties campaign extensively through digital platforms. Ahead of the upcoming elections, political advertising on Google surged in the first three months of 2024. The governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been the largest advertiser among political parties on both Google and Meta over the past three months, and has built a massive messaging operation through WhatsApp.
In recent years, Indian authorities have applied significant formal and informal pressure on tech companies, both to suppress critical speech and to keep online speech by government-aligned actors that would otherwise violate platforms’ policies. India shuts down the internet more than any other country, with the authorities frequently using internet shutdowns to stem political protests and criticism of the government, violating domestic and international legal standards.
Misuse of personal data, which can contain sensitive and revealing insights about people’s identity, age, religion, caste, location, behavior, associations, activities, and political beliefs, is a major concern in India’s elections. India has developed an extensive digital public infrastructure through which Indians access social-protection programs. The Indian government has collected massive amounts of personal data in the absence of adequate data protection laws to prevent misuse of this data during campaigning and to properly protect privacy rights.
There have already been reports of misuse of personal data in the campaign period, which started on March 16. On March 21, the Election Commission told the government to stop sending messages promoting government policies to voters, as it was a violation of the campaign guidelines. The message and accompanying letter from Prime Minister Narendra Modi to which it referred, had sparked concerns over data privacy as well as abuse of government communications for political purposes.
Social media platforms have come under scrutiny in recent years for failing to adequately invest in and address the use of their platforms to undermine participation in democratic elections. In India, Meta has faced criticism for failing to curb the spread of hate speech and incitement to violence, and for contributing to give the BJP an unfair advantage in political campaigning online during past elections.
The widespread availability of low-cost generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools that require little technical expertise raises new concerns. Generative AI can be used to create deceptive videos, audio recordings, and images impersonating a candidate, official, or media outlets. These are disseminated quickly across social media platforms, potentially undermining the integrity of the election or inciting violence, hatred, or discrimination against religious minorities. In the lead-up to the 2024 elections, several parties are using AI in their campaigns.
Companies should resist threats from the authorities when responding to government requests for data or content removals, Human Rights Watch said. They should treat all parties and candidates equitably, especially when it comes to addressing speech that incites violence or hatred.
Under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, companies have a responsibility to respect human rights and remedy abuses, including by addressing any aspects of their practices that contribute to undermining the right to participate in democratic elections.
“Ahead of India’s elections, tech companies need to demonstrate that their commitment to human rights is more than words,” Brown said. “This means adequately investing in content moderation, carrying out rigorous human rights impact assessments, and meaningfully engaging with civil society.”
Zambian Police Summon Priest After Critical Sermon
On Saturday, Zambian police summoned a Catholic priest, Fr. Andrew Chewe Mukosa, for “interviews” at the Copperbelt Police Headquarters on April 9. The summons, which was posted online, indicated that the priest was being sought for “the purpose of investigations,” but provided no information regarding the subject of the investigation.
Click to expand Image Fr. Andrew Chewe Mukosa. Source: Radio Icengelo/FacebookSeveral media reports suggest the authorities were summoning the priest because of the content of his Good Friday sermon, delivered in his local language, in which he bemoaned the high cost of living, youth unemployment, and persistent power outages affecting Zambia.
The Zambian Observer reported that Fr. Mukosa had confirmed to a local radio station that he was aware of the police summons, but did not indicate whether he intended to honor it.
Despite initial hopes that the election of President Hakainde Hichilema in 2021 might improve human rights in the country, Zambian authorities have continued to crack down heavily on all forms of dissent. Fr. Mukosa joins a long list including journalists, youth activists, and political opposition leaders who have faced harassment for their perceived criticism of the authorities. And the Zambian authorities have increasingly used provisions of the Public Order Act of 1955 to disrupt opposition activities, including by refusing to grant authorization for opposition meetings and rallies.
In 2023, the United Nations Human Rights Committee expressed concern about allegations of “restrictions on peaceful assemblies, such as cancelling assemblies at the last minute, arbitrary arrests, bodily injuries, deaths and property damage, especially during peaceful anti-government protests and political gatherings organized by the opposition.” Leading civil society and human rights groups expressed similar concerns, urging the government to enact laws to safeguard these rights.
Sunday Chanda, an opposition member of parliament, issued a statement condemning the summons for Fr. Mukosa, adding that “Zambia ought to be a thriving democracy, otherwise how many priests or members of the clergy is the Police going summon, and how does that add to our democratic credentials?”
Instead of to undermining and limiting rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association, the Zambian authorities should ensure full enjoyment of these rights, which are cornerstones of a functioning democracy.
UN Rights Council Boosts Scrutiny of North Korea
The North Korean human rights movement won a significant victory on April 4 when the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) adopted a resolution ensuring continued scrutiny of North Korea’s atrocious rights record.
The resolution renews the mandate of the UN special rapporteur on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and asks the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to prepare its first comprehensive report on the North Korean human rights situation since the Commission of Inquiry (COI) published its landmark report in 2014. The new resolution also increases resources for the high commissioner’s office to focus on criminal accountability for North Korea’s rights violations and stresses the link between North Korea’s weapons program, international peace and security, and human rights.
It is the UNHRC’s most ambitious resolution on North Korea since 2016 and carries immense importance for victims of serious abuses in a country that is among the most isolated and repressive in the world. In sharp contrast to Russia’s veto at the UN Security Council on March 28 that disbanded the Panel of Experts on North Korea, this resolution demonstrates the commitment of concerned countries to ensure accountability.
The 2014 COI report was a watershed moment, shedding light on egregious rights abuses in North Korea. The new report mandated by the UNHRC, to be published in September 2025, will build on the COI’s recommendations, provide a platform for North Korean victims, particularly those who have suffered since Kim Jong Un took power in December 2011, and amplify their stories on the international stage. By highlighting the connection between North Korea’s weapons development and human rights, the upcoming report will remind governments that security cannot be tackled in isolation from underlying rights abuses.
The UNHRC resolution is a crucial step, but North Korea’s victims are entitled to greater support from international institutions. The UN General Assembly and Security Council should also increase their scrutiny of North Korea, including by exploring connections between rights abuses and weapons proliferation and the need to hold rights violators accountable.
New Hope for Love for Japanese Children Needing Families
“They don’t love us,” 17-year-old Kenji M. told me in 2012. He was speaking of staff at the childcare institution where he lived in Tokyo. “Many of the staff seem like they take care of us only because it’s their job.”
Kenji had lived in institutions since age 3. He was identifying a problem underpinning Japan’s system for providing care to children whose parents were unable or unwilling to do so: it had become a business opportunity. Government subsidies to privately run childcare institutions entrenched their opposition to reform and created an incentive to prefer more resident children rather than having children being placed with families who would love and nurture them.
But last week, new reforms came into effect in Japan that might begin to change that financial calculation.
The new system, established by a 2022 law, offers private childcare institutions financing to transform their business model into “Foster Care Support Centers” that recruit, train, select, and support foster parents, and assist the independence of children living in foster families.
If a childcare institution becomes a Foster Care Support Center, the government will fund full-time staff members based on the number of foster households they cater to.
This change was brought about through the hard work of a small group of activists and lawmakers, who for more than 10 years have strived to push back on institutions’ strong lobbying efforts.
When I met Kenji, almost 40,000 children were in Japan’s alternative care system, less than 12 percent were living in a foster family, and the vast majority were living in institutions. In 2017, the Japanese government set a target to have 75 percent of infants and toddlers in foster families, and 50 percent of school-aged children in foster families. But as of 2022, only 24 percent of children were being cared for in foster families.
The latest reform is an important step, but further changes are needed, such as the speedy closure of all infant care institutions.
Every child in Japan has a right to family life. If that cannot be with their biological parents, alternative solutions should not include institutions, but close relatives, or adoptive or foster families, where they are genuinely loved.
Senegal: Human Rights Agenda for President Faye
(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.”
Philippines: New ‘Drug War’ Declared in Davao City
(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.”
Saudi Arabia: Global Tennis ‘Sportswashes’ Abuses
(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.”
World Health Day Marked amid Widespread Failures to Invest in Public Health Care
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.
Russia: In Wake of Concert Attack, Central Asians at Risk
(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.
UN Shows Conflicting Approaches to Myanmar Crisis
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.”
Bulgaria: Alleged Beating of Detained Saudi Activist
(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.”
Birthday Behind Bars in Russia
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.
Child Rights Abuses Go Unchallenged due to UN Funding Crisis
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.
Uganda: Court Upholds Anti-Homosexuality Act
(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.”
UN Rights Body Launches Probe to Investigate Abuses in Belarus
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.
UN Body Calls on UK to End Detention of People with Disabilities
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.
United Nations Passes Groundbreaking Intersex Rights Resolution
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.
‘Foreign Agent’ Laws Spread as EU Dithers to Support Civil Society
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.
Ethiopia: Military Executes Dozens in Amhara Region
(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.
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.
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 PrivateA 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.
Gaza: Israeli Strike Killing 106 Civilians an Apparent War Crime
(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.”
Play VideoBetween 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 WatchHuman 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 WatchHuman 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 Gaza103 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. © PrivateBoth 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. © PrivateHuman 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 FacebookResidents 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 PhotoHuman 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 ImagesSatellite 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 WatchHuman 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.