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Click to expand Image A picture taken on April 9, 2026 shows the aftermath of the previous day's Israeli airstrike that struck Qasmieh bridge, located on a main highway linking villages in the Tyre district of Lebanon with others farther north.  © 2026 Kawnat HAJU / AFP via Getty Images

(Beirut) – More than 100 Israeli strikes across Lebanon on April 8, 2026, including in densely populated neighborhoods in Beirut, killed over 300 people and damaged the last main bridge linking southern Lebanon with the rest of the country, Human Rights Watch said today. Israeli strikes making bridge crossings over the Litani River unusable threaten to sever tens of thousands of people in southern Lebanon from access to humanitarian aid, food, and health care. 

“For the last two years, the Israeli military’s deplorable violations and war crimes in Lebanon and Gaza have wreaked havoc on civilians, as the continued flow of arms to Israel and the silence of other countries has only emboldened the Israeli military’s atrocities,” said Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Cutting off southern Lebanon from the rest of the country would lead to a humanitarian catastrophe and cause grave harm for the tens of thousands of people who remain there.”

On March 31, Human Rights Watch researchers visited the southern Lebanese city of Tyre and interviewed eight people, including four municipality officials; members of the Lebanese Civil Defense and the Islamic Health Committee, a civil defense and ambulance organization affiliated with Hezbollah; and an official at Jabal Amel Hospital, one of the main hospitals in Tyre.  

“If they strike the bridge, where will we go? There is nowhere to go,” said Hassan Hamieh, a displaced resident who had fled to Tyre from the southern town of Beit Leif.

The Israeli military said on April 8 that it had launched over 100 strikes “within ten minutes and across multiple areas [in Lebanon] simultaneously,” including in densely populated areas in Beirut, killing at least 303 people and injuring over 1150 according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. It was the deadliest day in Lebanon since the escalation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah on March 2. 

Later that day, the Lebanese Armed Forces reported that they evacuated the Qasmieh bridge near Tyre, the last main crossing point into the area south of the Litani River.

Photographs and videos taken by journalists at the scene and verified by Human Rights Watch show that Israeli strikes destroyed a footbridge near the bridge, with a large, mangled section of the footbridge landing on the main bridge, temporarily cutting off access on one side of the road. On April 9, the Israeli military said that they had “struck two key crossings” over the Litani River, accusing Hezbollah of using the crossings to transfer combatants and weapons.  

Israeli attacks have killed more than 1,888 people in Lebanon since March 2, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. This includes more than 130 children, 102 women, and 57 medical workers, as of April 7. Hezbollah attacks have killed at least two people in Israel, Reuters reported.

Between March 12 and April 8, Israeli forces systematically destroyed or severely damaged all main bridges connecting areas south of the Litani River to the rest of the country, making the Qasmieh bridge the sole main remaining operational crossing. These attacks include strikes on nine bridges over the Litani River and its tributary, some of which were struck repeatedly, in addition to the main road leading to Al-Khardali bridge.

Human Rights Watch analyzed videos posted online showing the moment three of the bridges were struck, as well as photographs and videos of the aftermath from the strikes on the nine bridges and the road leading to Al-Khardali bridge. Many videos were geolocated by Sky News journalist Ben van der Merwe and corroborated by Human Rights Watch researchers. 

These strikes had significantly limited the ability of civilians to move safely and of state institutions, humanitarian organizations, hospitals, and healthcare facilities to deliver aid and provide medical care. Despite some damage to the Qasmieh bridge and the destruction of the footbridge that runs parallel to it, the bridge remains operable and serves as the only lifeline for the tens of thousands of residents who remain south of the Litani River. 

Other countries should press Israel not to cut off residents in southern Lebanon from the rest of the country and ensure they have sustainable and predictable access to humanitarian aid and are not being denied access to items essential for their survival, such as water, food, and medicine. They should further ensure safe passage for those who choose to leave. 

Israel’s allies, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and other European Union states should suspend all arms sales, arms transit, and military assistance to Israel and impose targeted sanctions on officials credibly implicated in ongoing grave crimes. The EU should immediately suspend the trade pillar of its Association Agreement with Israel as long as Israel’s atrocity crimes persist, Human Rights Watch said.

The Israeli military stated that the strikes on the bridges were “to prevent the movement of reinforcements and means of combat” into southern Lebanon, accusing Hezbollah of using the bridges for military purposes. 

Even if bridge crossings become military objectives—that is, if they are making an effective contribution to military action—attacks on them are still subject to the rules of proportionality. Disproportionate attacks include those that may be expected to cause excessive damage to civilians and civilian objects in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from the attack. These attacks are prohibited under the laws of war. 

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) stated on March 23 that the destruction of key bridges has “significantly [disrupted] movement and humanitarian access,” with strikes “severing connectivity” between Tyre and Nabatieh, and “[restricting] movement between south Lebanon and West Bekaa, including Marjayoun and Hasbaya.”

“The destruction of key bridges has cut off districts, isolating over 150,000 people and severely limiting humanitarian access,” OCHA said, adding that the damage to key transport routes is also “impeding the delivery of essential supplies, and limiting the ability of civilians to move safely” 

Mortada Mohanna, director of the Disaster Risk Reduction and Unit Management at the Union of Tyre Municipalities, which consists of at least 55 municipalities, said that about 71,000 people remained in Tyre and surrounding towns and villages, as of April 8.

“Those who have stayed in southern Lebanon now face heightened isolation and growing obstacles to access humanitarian aid as Israeli airstrikes have destroyed bridges linking the south to the rest of the country,” said Thameen al-Kheetan, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, on March 17.

Local authorities in Tyre told Human Rights Watch that food supplies would last a week if the last remaining bridge was attacked and rendered inoperable. “By sea, by air, nothing can come in,” said Alwan Charafeddine, Tyre’s vice mayor. “That bridge is a lifeline. Our food stock is almost empty because everything we get, we are giving out.” 

Charafeddine said that “the five major supermarkets in the city and the areas around it all closed,” with only five bakeries still operating in the city, and that pharmacies in the city have also shut down, with medicine now being provided by local authorities and nongovernmental organizations.

OCHA said that “markets south of the Litani River appear to have largely ceased operations, with many monitored shops closed or evacuated and supply deliveries significantly reduced.”

Access to medical treatment, medicine, and medical supplies has also been severely hampered due to the bombing of bridges, said a medical worker and a hospital official in Tyre. 

An official at the Jabal Amel Hospital in Tyre said that all doctors and staff still working at the hospital are living there because travel to and from the hospital has become risky. Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders or MSF) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reported that hospital staff in the southern cities of Nabatieh and Marjayoun are doing the same.

Dialysis patients have also had to move into Jabal Amel Hospital, the official said, because they cannot travel easily or risk being cut off from the hospital all together. He also said that some doctors have even had to conduct surgeries that typically require medical tools, such as orthopedic drills used in brain surgeries, with hand-operated drills because staff are unable to replace these tools or send them for repair easily.  

“To get medical supplies we have to take a hospital car, go to Sidon [more than 30 kilometers north], get the medical supplies and come back,” the official at Jabal Amel Hospital said. “But this is risky because sometimes we have to go late at night […] if the [last] bridge is struck, we’d be completely isolated.” At least six hospitals in Lebanon have had to shut down since March 2, the World Health Organization said, including three south of the Litani river.

Since March 4, the Israeli military has repeatedly issued displacement orders for the entire population of Lebanon south of the Litani River, which includes the district of Tyre. Since March 12, it has expanded the areas subject to displacement orders, ordering residents to move north of the Zahrani River, 15 kilometers north of the Litani River and 40 kilometers north of Lebanon’s southern border with Israel. 

Under international humanitarian law, all parties to the conflict are obligated to allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian aid to civilians in need. They must respect and protect aid workers, warehouses, and other objects used for relief operations.

Civilians who do not evacuate following warnings are still fully protected by international humanitarian law. Forced displacement is prohibited under the laws of war, except in cases in which the protection of the civilians concerned is involved or for imperative military reasons. A person who commits serious violations of the laws of war with criminal intent—that is, intentionally or recklessly—may be prosecuted for war crimes. Individuals may also be held criminally liable for assisting in, facilitating, aiding, or abetting a war crime.

Israeli forces have committed numerous violations of the laws of war in Lebanon with total impunity since October 2023, including apparently deliberate or indiscriminate attacks on journalists, civilians, medics, financial institutions, reconstruction-related facilities, and peacekeepers. 

Human Rights Watch has also found that Israel has flouted orders from the International Court of Justice requiring Israel to enable the provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, on charges including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in relation to Israel’s intentional and systematic deprivation of “the civilian population in all parts of Gaza of objects indispensable to human survival,” including by obstruction of aid and attacks on and killing of aid workers. 

Lebanon’s judicial authorities should initiate domestic investigations of serious international crimes, and the government should accede to the ICC’s Rome Statute and submit a declaration accepting the court’s jurisdiction prior to the date of accession, including since at least October 7, 2023.  

“To prevent a humanitarian catastrophe, the international community should act immediately to demand that civilians across Lebanon are protected and that the last working bridge connecting the area south of the Litani River to the rest of Lebanon remains functional,” Kaiss said. “Civilians are paying the price of the international community’s silence and unwillingness to hold Israeli officials to account.” 

Click to expand Image A girl climbs a hilltop against the backdrop of smoke rising from the Gath shelter, that houses displaced Palestinians, after an Israeli air strike in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza Strip on January 31, 2026.  © 2026 Bashar Taleb / AFP via Getty Images

Since its establishment in 1991, one of the most reliable messengers about life for Palestinian children under Israeli occupation had been a group called Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP).

But on April 7 the group ended its operations due to what it said were “challenges resulting from Israel’s targeted criminalization of Palestinian human rights organizations.”

It’s a testament to the dedication of its staff that DCIP persevered so long.

The Israeli military outlawed DCIP and five other Palestinian human rights and civil society groups in 2021, declaring them “terrorist organizations.” The military’s charges were bogus—as international human rights groups, the United Nations, and governments that investigated them found—but they were hard to fight because, as is often the case in Israeli military prosecutions, they were based on “secret evidence.”

European states suspended their funding to the group, took more than a year to investigate the Israeli accusations, and finally concluded they were baseless. A month after the EU concluded its investigation, Israeli forces raided DCIP’s offices in Ramallah, confiscated equipment and clients’ files, and welded the doors shut. As DCIP noted, the United States remained silent.

It’s not hard to see why DCIP was a target. Day in, day out, for decades, DCIP has documented Israeli military abuses against children, from arbitrary arrests, torture, coerced confessions, and unfair trials, to the needless use of lethal force.

The group’s work informed a 2013 UNICEF report that found “ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized.”

DCIP reports have played a critical role in shining a spotlight on Israeli abuses of children and many have garnered global attention and outrage. One such case is that of Mohammed Bani Odeh, 5, his brother Othman, 6, and their parents Wa’ad and Ali, who were returning home from a holiday shopping trip last month when Israeli forces riddled their car with bullets, killing them all. As DCIP noted, two other brothers, 8-year-old Mustafa and Khaled, 11, were wounded but survived. When they staggered from the car, Israeli forces beat them.

In scores and scores of cases, were it not for DCIP’s invaluable documentation and reporting, abuses against Palestinian children, of lives cut short and bodies withheld from their families, might never have come to light.

The rate of children being forcibly displaced, arbitrarily jailed, and killed by Israeli forces in both Gaza and the West Bank is at extraordinary high levels. Other criminalized and targeted Palestinian rights groups are, somehow, still hanging on. These vital messengers, like DCIP, are needed now more than ever.

Click to expand Image People place flowers on a fence outside Krome Detention Center in Miami, Florida, during a vigil to recognize people who have died in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody as well as those affected by mass deportations, May 24, 2025. © 2025 AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell

Emboldened by President Donald Trump’s abusive mass deportation agenda and Congress recently approving a supersized budget for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has begun purchasing warehouses across the country to detain people in its custody.

One of the most alarming developments of this initiative is unfolding in Surprise, Arizona, where ICE has awarded a $313 million contract to GardaWorld Federal, the private contractor running “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida, to convert and operate an immigration prison with the capacity to detain up to 1,500 people. The planned Surprise facility spans 400,000 square feet, roughly the size of seven football fields, and was originally built for industrial use. It is expected to open by September 2026.

The US government’s expansion of immigration detention, particularly through the purchase of warehouses not designed to house people at all, let alone humanely, raises grave human rights concerns.

The United States has a terrible record of endangering the lives of immigrants in its custody by holding them in facilities where disease, medical neglect, and physical abuse are rampant, including tent camps at military bases and notorious detention centers across the country. This is particularly concerning as a shocking number of people are dying in immigration detention. Last year, at least 32 people died in ICE custody, and 2026 is already on track to be even worse, with 14 deaths reported since the beginning of the year. Given this dismal track record, it is extremely difficult to believe that the Surprise warehouse will be converted into a humane facility whose conditions are safe and compatible with US human rights obligations.

The Surprise City Council, and any city where ICE has bought warehouse space, should do everything in their power to block these developments absent convincing, ironclad guarantees that the facilities will meet the basic standards of humane treatment ICE has habitually flouted.

Click to expand Image Hathairat Phaholtap, editor-in-chief of the Isaan Record, Thailand, March 21, 2026. © 2026 The Isaan Record

(Bangkok) – A senior cabinet minister in Thailand has brought criminal defamation lawsuits against two prominent journalists who reported about a bribery case, raising serious concerns for media freedom, Human Rights Watch said today. The trial court can dismiss the case if it lacks legal merit or is without basis.

On February 27, 2026, the Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, Suchart Chomklin, filed a lawsuit against Hathairat Phaholtap, editor-in-chief of the Isaan Record. The summons related to Hathairat’s Facebook posts citing the Isaan Record’s report that Thai politicians were involved in trafficking Thai berry pickers and took bribes from brokers supplying Thai workers to a berry company in Finland. Suchart later filed a separate criminal defamation case against Kowit Phothisan, another editor at the Isaan Record, for sharing Hathairat’s posts. 

“The criminal defamation suits against the journalists Hathairat and Kowit highlight the danger of cases filed in retaliation for reporting on human rights abuses,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The courts need to ensure that such cases fully respect media freedom.”

In the criminal defamation case against Hathairat, Suchart alleged that her posts made readers believe that she was referring to him. The minister seeks THB50 million (US$1.6 million) in damages from Hathairat. Suchart is also seeking THB1 million (US$31,000) in damages in the separate case against Kowit.

On January 24, Suchart filed a malfeasance complaint with the Central Criminal Court for Corruption and Misconduct Cases against the director-general of the Justice Ministry’s Department of Special Investigation and other officials for media comments implying that Suchart was involved in a bribery scheme linked to Thai berry pickers sent to Finland during 2020 and 2023. The National Anti-Corruption Commission is currently reviewing the department’s investigation implicating Suchart and several senior Labor Ministry officials for allegedly taking bribes from berry picker brokerage companies.

On April 1, the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand issued a statement raising concerns about the growing use of strategic litigation to silence public participation (known as SLAPP) and calling for the enactment of an anti‑SLAPP law to protect human rights defenders, the public, and journalists who report on issues in the public interest. The human rights commission cited the criminal defamation cases filed by Suchart against Isaan Record journalists.

During its 2021 Universal Periodic Review of its human rights status at the United Nations Human Rights Council, Thailand supported multiple recommendations regarding freedom of expression, including issues related to the abuse of SLAPP lawsuits, but has not carried them out.

Thai authorities have not protected activists and whistleblowers from harassment or retaliatory lawsuits by state agencies and private companies, despite the adoption of the National Action Plans on Business and Human Rights in 2019 and 2023, Human Rights Watch said. The absence of effective anti-SLAPP protections impedes media freedom and public scrutiny of government officials and companies.

The apparent aim of such lawsuits is to intimidate and discourage members of the public, human rights defenders, and the media from scrutinizing corruption and human rights violations, ultimately silencing reporting in the public interest. Such practices seriously undermine the right to freedom of expression under the Thai constitution and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Thailand is a party. The Human Rights Council will next review Thailand’s right record in November.

“The United Nations and concerned governments should urge Thailand to strengthen anti-SLAPP protections,” Pearson said. “The Thai government should curtail the use of such retaliatory lawsuits as its promises on business and human rights will ring hollow without forceful action.” 

Click to expand Image Two people working on a sunken boat in the Langue de Barbarie, Saint-Louis, Senegal, March 7, 2023. © 2023 Raquel Maria Carbonell Pagola/LightRocket via Getty Images

(Dakar) – Senegalese families remain in limbo in a site called Khar Yalla, a decade after coastal floods destroyed their homes, Human Rights Watch said today. Despite recent progress, the government has not yet provided displaced families with a permanent, durable solution.

The approximately 1,000 people who lost their homes to tidal surges in 2015 and 2016 lived in historic fishing communities on the Langue de Barbarie peninsula of the northern city of Saint-Louis. After the families lived in tents for months, local authorities moved them to Khar Yalla in late 2016, providing them with temporary occupation permits pending a permanent solution. Local and national authorities noted that because the site floods and lacks essential services, it is not fit for permanent habitation. Yet, nearly 10 years on and with the next flood season coming in September, the families have not been provided with an alternative and continue to face violations of their right to permanent, adequate housing. 

“A decade of living in uncertainty is an unacceptable reality for families already traumatized by climate displacement,” said Erica Bower, climate displacement researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Senegalese government should provide families with the bare minimum for Khar Yalla to feel like home again: permanent permits to regularize their tenure.”

During a March 24-26, 2026 visit, Human Rights Watch found that some progress has been made since the publication of its August 2025 report about the situation. Around a dozen out of 68 households now have electricity, though the installation costs are prohibitive for many. Local and regional authorities are investigating the situation and have visited the Khar Yalla families for the first time in years.  

While these developments are encouraging, the Senegalese government should remedy the situation by providing families in Khar Yalla with permanent permits, paving a path towards a truly durable solution. Permanent permits would allow families to expand their overcrowded homes, complete their women’s center, build a wall to prevent floods, and pursue more dignified futures. 

Khar Yalla families are not alone. Hundreds of other families have been internally displaced across Senegal by coastal tidal surges. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, over 57,000 people were displaced by floods in Senegal in 2024 alone. As climate change accelerates, the number of people who are displaced by disasters and require a durable solution is likely to increase. 

Senegal has already invested more than many countries to support climate-displaced communities, but the authorities left the families in Khar Yalla out of those efforts. Khar Yalla’s experiences offer lessons about the process of planned relocation that should be considered in subsequent efforts. Such lessons include conducting a comprehensive census to identify those displaced the longest, selecting sites that are not flood prone, and providing families with permanent rather than temporary permits. 

Ad hoc, temporary, and reactive measures should not become the norm. To prevent poorly planned relocations from becoming protracted displacement, Senegal should plan ahead. This means systematically documenting lessons from existing cases and adopting legal frameworks to ensure that planned relocations are rights-respecting. 

Planned relocation for people displaced by climate change comes with serious risks and should be a last resort, while priority should be given to adaptation solutions that enable them to stay in their communities. Planning should respect human rights principles such as informed consent, meaningful participation, and nondiscrimination. A national policy framework on planned relocation should provide guidance on how to carry out these principles in practice, take comprehensive censuses of displaced peoples, and create criteria to ensure the sites selected fulfill beneficiaries’ rights.

Some governments, such as the Solomon Islands in the Pacific, have developed such standalone policies, and others such as Panama are in the process of developing national protocols. No country in Africa has yet taken this step. Senegal is uniquely positioned to set the standard for rights-respecting adaptation across Africa, Human Rights Watch said.

Given the recent announcement that the government is holding consultations about a possible climate change law, Senegal has an opportunity to create the legal foundation for a national decree on climate displacement and planned relocation. “Members of displaced communities like Khar Yalla should have a seat at the table as any laws and policies about their lived experiences are developed,” said Fatoumata Kine Mbodji from Lumière Synergie pour le Développement, a nongovernmental organization that works closely with fishing families in Saint-Louis.

The Senegalese government is obligated under national, regional, and international law to respect and fulfill people’s economic, social, and cultural rights and to protect them from reasonably foreseeable risks to their rights, including climate change impacts such as sea-level rise. Climate adaptation should be carried out in a manner that does not violate their rights. 

“The protracted crisis in Khar Yalla demonstrates that without a national policy, ad hoc relocations perpetuate precarity rather than provide durable solutions,” Bower said. “But with political will, Senegal can become a regional and global leader on this critical climate justice issue.”

Click to expand Image A class at Wampewo Ntakke Secondary School in Kawempe tula village, Kampala, Uganda, November 4, 2024.  © 2024 AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda

A new United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report delivers a sobering message: the number of children out of school has risen for the seventh consecutive year, reaching 273 million worldwide.

While nearly 90 percent of children globally complete primary school, the greatest gaps are in early learning and secondary education. Most out-of-school children—194 million—are of secondary school age, and roughly one-third of young people worldwide do not complete secondary school. At current rates, UNESCO estimates the world will not achieve 95 percent upper secondary completion until 2105.

Children are also missing out on early childhood education. Only 60 percent of primary school students have had at least one year of pre-primary education; a critical stage when children’s brains are developing most rapidly. In sub-Saharan Africa, fewer than one in four children of pre-primary age are enrolled.

For many of these children, cost remains the primary barrier to schooling. While primary education is nearly universally free, in line with international law, families are often required to pay for preschool and secondary schooling. In Uganda, for example, where there is no publicly funded preschool system, Human Rights Watch and the Initiative for Social and Economic Rights found that a majority of children miss out, because private preschool fees are prohibitively expensive for most families.

These findings underscore the need for a new international treaty to guarantee free pre-primary and secondary education for all children. Under current international law, free education is explicitly guaranteed only at the primary level.

Formal consideration of such a treaty, an optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, began at the UN last year and more than 60 countries have already expressed support.

A treaty will not bring every child into school overnight. But one that clearly guarantees free education can serve as a powerful catalyst for change, pressing governments to ensure that every child can attend school, regardless of their family’s ability to pay.

When states reconvene in Geneva this August, they should seize the opportunity to close a longstanding gap in international law and open the door to a better future for millions of children.

Click to expand Image Supporters of Planned Parenthood rally in front of the Supreme Court in Washington DC, as the Justices will be hearing the case of Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, April 2, 2025. © 2025 Sipa via AP Images

The Trump administration is using a US federal funding provision to make abortion care less accessible, threatening states with devastating federal funding cuts for protecting the right to abortion. 

The provision, known as the Weldon Amendment and attached to federal spending bills since 2005, is meant to prevent states from treating differently under state law health care providers, practitioners, and insurance plans who refuse to provide abortion care.

Although the Weldon Amendment’s emphasis on the prerogatives of such providers has always been misguided, the administration’s aggressive use of the provision is a new and dangerous turn. 

In January, the Trump administration threatened the US state of Illinois with funding cuts over its policies requiring healthcare providers who refuse abortion care due to conscientious objection to refer patients to providers who can. An additional 13 states are under investigation for policies that aim to secure wider access to abortion care, which could result in devastating consequences including perhaps even the loss of all their federal health funding. This puts women’s health care and the millions of Americans who rely on federally funded health centers at risk. 

Human Rights Watch has documented in Argentina and Romania how weakly regulated and inconsistently applied conscientious objection provisions can prevent women and girls from finding safe and timely health care and how women from marginalized groups have fewer resources to access alternative care in a timely manner.

Since the US Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022, 13 states now enforce total abortion bans, while others impose harsh limits on when a pregnancy can be ended. Dangerous delays and restrictions on abortion have led to women dying from preventable deaths after being denied timely care. 

The Weldon Amendment is not only a threat to women’s health, it is also inconsistent with international human rights standards on conscientious objection. Under these standards, only individual providers should be able to exercise conscientious objections, not institutions – which is not the case under Weldon. Secondly, states should ensure conscientious objection does not become a barrier to health care access, guaranteeing that a provider who refuses care must also make referrals in a timely manner.

Everyone has the right to health, which requires access to the best possible quality health care, and access to abortion is an essential component of this right. The US Congress should repeal the Weldon Amendment, ensuring it can no longer be weaponized to restrict the right to health. 

Click to expand Image Inmates walk free from La Lima prison in Havana on April 3, 2026. © 2026 YAMIL LAGE / AFP via Getty Images

On April 2, the Cuban government announced the release of 2,010 prisoners, framing it as a “humanitarian gesture.” While the announcement raised hopes among many political prisoners’ families, neither Human Rights Watch nor other civil society groups, including Prisoners Defenders and Justicia 11J, have identified any political prisoners among those released.

In its announcement, the Cuban government said it would exclude, among others, people sentenced for “crimes against authority.” Under Cuban law, these include crimes such as “contempt,” “propaganda,” and “assault” that the government has used for decades to target and arbitrarily prosecute critics.

Over 700 political prisoners remain behind bars in Cuba, according to groups like Justicia 11J and Prisoners Defenders, and hundreds more face house arrest and other restrictions. Among them is Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, an artist who was sentenced to five years in prison for “insulting national symbols,” among other crimes, after wearing a Cuban flag on his shoulders in protest of a new law on the use of national symbols. He was detained after posting a video saying he would join the landmark July 2021 protests.

In March 2026, Leonard Richard González Alfonso, also an artist, was sentenced to seven years for “propaganda against the constitutional order” after painting “How long? They are killing us” on a wall.

Former detainees released after Vatican-led negotiations in January 2025 reported abuse in Cuban prisons, including beatings, solitary confinement, unsanitary conditions, and lack of access to food and clean water. Many of those released told Human Rights Watch they remain under constant surveillance and restrictive conditions, and fear being arrested again. At least seven political prisoners have since been sent back to prison for actions such as posting critical content online or failing to appear before the authorities.

Cuba should immediately and unconditionally release all political prisoners. Cubans should be able to express themselves freely, without fear. The US embargo and its brutal oil blockade are no excuse to keep critics in jail.

Click to expand Image Soldiers of the Sudanese Armed Forces walk on the Shambat Bridge in Khartoum, April 27, 2025. © 2025 Photo by Giles Clarke/Avaaz via Getty Images Forces affiliated with the Sudanese Armed Forces have arbitrarily detained, tortured, and otherwise ill-treated civilians in areas under their control, and denied them due process rights.The military has led a campaign of fear and retaliation against people they label collaborators, because of their ethnic identity, humanitarian work, or political affiliation or for having lived under the Rapid Support Forces’ control.The authorities should take steps to end arbitrary detention, torture, and ill-treatment, and provide redress to detainees and their families. International and regional actors should make clear to the military leadership that they will be held to account.

(Nairobi) – Security and military forces affiliated with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have arbitrarily detained, tortured, and otherwise ill-treated civilians in areas under their control, and denied them due process rights, Human Rights Watch said today.

Security and army forces have detained civilians for allegedly collaborating with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), in conflict with the military, particularly in areas over which the military has regained control, and often based merely on their ethnic identity, real or perceived political affiliation, or humanitarian work. Unlawful deprivation of liberty, ill-treatment, and torture of civilians may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“The Sudanese Armed Forces and its allies have led a campaign of fear and retaliation against people they label collaborators, because of their identity, humanitarian work, or political activity or simply for having lived under the Rapid Support Forces’ control,” said Mohamed Osman, Sudan researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Accounts by former detainees, their relatives, and lawyers paint a grim picture of arbitrary abuses emboldened by a climate of impunity.”

The Sudanese military and affiliated forces have held detainees incommunicado, leaving families with limited information about, or access to, their loved ones, and in some cases forcibly disappeared people, Human Rights Watch found. Prosecutorial and judicial oversight is inadequate, and detainees have no or limited access to legal counsel. Human Rights Watch was told about at least two deaths from torture and ill-treatment in custody. The authorities are presumed responsible for deaths in custody, creating an obligation to conduct prompt, impartial, and effective investigations.

Human Rights Watch interviewed 28 people, including 7 former detainees, 9 relatives of detainees, 11 lawyers and activists, and a member of the security forces, between June 2025 and February 2026. They described abuses against men and women detained by the SAF and its affiliates in areas controlled by the army or that the army retook from the RSF since 2024, including Khartoum, Gezira, Gedaref, Red Sea, and Northern states.

Click to expand Image Graphic © 2026 Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch wrote to the office of the chairperson of the Transitional Sovereignty Council, and the Office of the Attorney General on March 18, 2026, about its findings. Both offices responded on April 2. In her response, the attorney general rejected the allegations of arbitrary arrests and custodial deaths with the exception of one case in which she acknowledged that criminal proceedings are ongoing but did not provide details on those accused.

While reports suggest that some of the abuse has been reduced, abusive detention persists with weak prosecutorial or judicial oversight.

Those interviewed said that multiple forces organized into so-called security cells have been involved in unlawful detentions. The security cells include the General Intelligence Service, Military Intelligence, and on occasion a military-affiliated militia, the al-Baraa Ibn Malik battalion.

A police officer who had been integrated into a security cell in Omdurman, part of Greater Khartoum, the capital, said that in April 2025, he saw his fellow cell members ill-treat a woman, accusing her of collaborating with the RSF: “We rode in three vehicles [to her house]. Two men from al-Baraa Ibn Malik battalion barged into her house, armed, and soon brought her out half naked, beating her, slapping [her] on the face, before throwing her in the back of one of our pick-up trucks.”

Rights groups have also documented the detention of hundreds of women on charges of collaborating with the RSF based on their ethnicity or residence, with at least 25 sentenced to death. In January 2026, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the military leader, visited Omdurman’s women’s prison and ordered the release of 400 women, including some accused of collaboration, and instructed officials to review the status of detainees’ case in prisons. However, lawyers and monitors said that many women remain in detention in Omdurman and other prisons without due process.

A 35-year-old woman and her two brothers fled to Port Sudan from Gezira state, which in late February 2024 was controlled by the RSF. Security cell officers in Port Sudan detained them, accusing them of being collaborators. “I was beaten everywhere, despite pleading that I have diabetes,” the woman said. “They kept beating and slapping me with their hands and sticks and whips and insulting me. I felt so degraded, as if I was not a human anymore. They beat me until I involuntarily defecated on myself.” The woman was released after a week, without charge, and fled the country.

Former detainees and lawyers said that security cells, as well as Military Intelligence acting alone, have unlawfully held people in military facilities, including military bases, as well as in homes converted into detention sites. The attorney general in her response denied both allegations, saying detainees are only held in police custody or prisons and subject to regular visits by public prosecutors to assess detention conditions in accordance with the law. 

Among those recently arbitrarily detained is a 25-year-old man who was arrested by armed men, some in military uniform, at his home in early February 2026 and then forcibly disappeared: “They came into the house and started beating him badly, accusing him of being a collaborator,” said his 40-year-old brother. “We asked where they are taking him, but they refused to say. One said: ‘You better move on; your brother is not coming back.’” He said he believed his brother was detained because he took part in protests during the military coup in 2021. The last time the family saw the 25-year-old was in custody of the local security cell as they took him away, and as of March 9, despite multiple efforts to establish his situation and whereabouts, he remained forcibly disappeared.

The evidence indicates that the military has targeted individuals based on their identity, focusing on people from Darfur, western Sudan, whom they profile as collaborators since the RSF originates from Darfur. One detained man told Human Rights Watch that he and other Darfuris sheltering in Khartoum were beaten and detained by security cell members, who said: “You Darfuris are troublemakers; you brought the war to us here.”

The military and affiliates have also appear to have targeted civil society members, including local aid responders, accusing them of collaboration. A responder working in east Khartoum said after the military regained control of the area in March 2025, security cell forces interrogated members of his volunteer group and forcefully evicted displaced civilians from their shelter. He said that in April, they detained him for 17 days, interrogating him about the soup kitchens the group ran and their funding sources. The attorney general denies such targeting.

The Office of the Attorney General, working with the judiciary, should immediately release all unlawfully detained people and grant independent monitors and investigators access to formal and informal detention sites. With April 15 marking three years since the conflict’s outbreak, it is past time that authorities granted full and unfettered access to the country for the United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan and the Joint Fact-Finding Mission on the Human Rights Situation in Sudan mandated by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The attorney general has reasserted the position that there is no need for the Fact-Finding Mission as the office and local authorities are carrying out investigations and there is no need for any international investigative mechanisms.

International and regional actors and entities should publicly call on the military leadership and affiliated authorities to end their discriminatory targeting of communities and categories of people, including local volunteers, ensure that any legal proceedings are based on credible evidence, and strictly follow due process.

In late February, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Norway, Germany, and the Netherlands formed a Sudan atrocity prevention coalition. This body should take concrete steps to address the abusive detention practices, including ongoing arrests on the basis of ethnicity, humanitarian work, or political activism. They should support ongoing investigations and press for independent access to detention facilities, and support efforts to expand the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court to cover the whole of Sudan.

“The authorities should end arbitrary detentions and provide redress to detainees and their families,” Osman said. “International and regional actors should make clear to the Sudanese Armed Forces leadership that they will be held to account for these abuses.”

For more information on the Sudanese Armed Forces abuses against detainees, please see below.

History of Abusive Detention, Impunity

Sudan’s security forces have a long history of abusing detainees, especially those detained for their actual or perceived political affiliation, because of their association with pro-democracy and protest movements, or because they are from Darfur and perceived to be affiliated with Darfuri armed groups.

In 2008, Human Rights Watch documented fair trial violations connected to ethnic targeting of Darfuris in Khartoum following a rebel group attack. In 2018, at the start of the protests that ended Omar al-Bashir’s presidency, security forces rounded up over 30 Darfuri students in Sennar state, accusing them of affiliation with armed opposition groups and reportedly tortured them.

Reports of abusive detention by both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have circulated throughout the three-year-long conflict. Human Rights Watch previously found that both warring parties have summarily executed detainees in areas under their control.

Between January and June 2025, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights “confirmedv at least 10 deaths in custody of individuals detained by both RSF and SAF during the reporting period, including a well-known Sudanese football player, volunteer medics, and local humanitarian volunteers.”

The UN Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Sudan reported in September 2025 that military arrests “were mainly based on suspicion of collaboration with the Rapid Support Forces.”

‘Security Cells’

Since the conflict began, and especially as the army began to regain control of territory in 2024, state governors in military-controlled areas have established “security cells,” consisting of members of the police, the General Intelligence Services, Military Intelligence, and in some cases, al-Baraa Ibn Malik Brigade. 

In May 2024, the Khartoum governor declared a state of emergency in the capital and announced the formation of a security cell to gather information, conduct raids, and detain people suspected of posing a security threat. The announcement did not clarify the legal basis on which the cells would operate, or any legal constraints such as compliance with human rights law including due process. The attorney general replied to Human Rights Watch that security cells are formed by state governors based on emergency laws.

In most cases documented, those arrested by security cells and other forces were unlawfully held in housing used as ad hoc detention facilities, although some were held in official military sites. The attorney general, citing the law and claiming bias against the military, has denied housing is used as detention facilities or that civilians are held on military sites. Interviewees said that authorities transferred detainees between premises controlled by different security forces, making it harder for families and lawyers to track their whereabouts.

Abuse

The abuses documented occurred in areas that have been under army control throughout the conflict – including parts of Omdurman, River Nile state, Northern state, Gedaref state, and Red Sea state – and areas previously under RSF control, including Gezira state and the south of Khartoum, after the military and allies retook them in January 2025, and Khartoum itself, where the military regained control in March 2025.

Custodial Death, Torture, and Ill-treatment

Human Rights Watch documented five cases of torture, inhumane, cruel, and degrading treatment by security forces affiliated with the military and two reported deaths in custody.

A 39-year-old man said that soldiers stopped him at a checkpoint in the western part of Omdurman, one of Khartoum’s three sister cities, in December 2025. They accused him of moving supplies to RSF controlled areas, detained him, and beat him as they took him to an unofficial detention site.

“They took me to a room and three SAF forces interrogated me, saying that as I work as a trader, I must be smuggling food to Kordofan [region, currently one of the conflict’s main front lines]. One of them kept punching me in the chest really hard. Another accused me of being a spy and a traitor and said I will never see the sun again. I was kept there for around 12 hours with no food then was released after they took my money – I had US$200 on me.”

A local responder in Gedaref state, which has been under army control throughout the conflict, was detained for 55 days. He said armed men in civilian clothes arrested him on April 9, 2024, and took him to the town’s security cell premises. There, officers from both General Intelligence Services and Military Intelligence interrogated him about his activism and tortured him:

In the corner of the office, there was a pit of sand; they dragged me there, tied my hands behind my back and covered my eyes with my shirt, and started beating me. Two were pulling my legs down and one was pushing my head down with his shoe and the other was beating me on my back. Every few minutes when I started to pass out, they would throw cold water on me. I was beaten so badly I started vomiting and bleeding. This continued for more than 30 to 40 minutes.

He received no medical care during his detention.

A humanitarian volunteer said that military forces stopped him at a checkpoint in October 2024 in a part of Omdurman then under army control. They drove him to a house where people who said they were from Military Intelligence interrogated him:

Two men came to me, one with an iron rod and one with a hammer. The one with the iron rod asked me to raise my feet up and started beating me on my bare feet. The other man started to beat me with the hammer all over my body. He also hit me on the head with a wooden plank. They kept beating me until I lost consciousness.

He said he was detained for five days and as of October 7, 2025, when he was interviewed, he continued to need medical treatment because of the torture.

Salah al-Tayeb, a lawyer and opposition party member, reportedly died in Military Intelligence custody in May 2024. Intelligence services in al-Azazi village in Gezira state in central Sudan detained him on April 17, 2024, and held him at a school in the village. A former detainee who had been held in the same cell said he saw intelligence officers beat al-Tayeb and question him about his political activism: “I saw [him] being beaten for a long time, then he was taken to a separate room. [Officers] beat him from 10 p.m. to midnight. I heard him screaming. His screams stopped after midnight.” Al-Tayeb’s family was later told he died in custody on May 5, 2024, based on media and rights groups reports.

The attorney general rejected allegations of custodial deaths resulting from ill-treatment and torture however said that in the case of the death of al-Tayeb, immunity of the perpetrators had been lifted and that a trial is ongoing.

Security cell members detained a resident of East Nile district in Khartoum in April 2025, shortly after the military regained control of the area. He said he saw a detainee being severely beaten in a military intelligence facility in eastern Khartoum:

Military Intelligence brought in someone who was already badly beaten … he was unconscious. He was bleeding from his back and his head. That day, a major or high-ranking officer visited. The soldiers and officers locked the detained man in the bathroom and ordered him not make any noise until the visit was completed. When they opened the bathroom a few hours later, he was in bad condition. He died in the morning.

At least three former detainees said they were also denied access to adequate food, toilet facilities, or medical care. A 28-year-old man who fled the fighting in Khartoum to Gedaref state said he was detained for 15 days by military personnel. During this time, he said, “…[We] were given only one meal a day, consisting of lentils. We were denied access to the bathroom for 48 hours, so I avoided eating to prevent the need to use the bathroom.”

Targeting Based on Assumptions about Ethnicity

Security forces have targeted people based on their ethnicity or for their real or perceived political activism, accusing them of collaborating with the RSF. They include rights defenders and local aid responders as well as political activists. The Attorney-General denied any targeting on such grounds, without specifically addressing allegations and findings shared by Human Rights Watch.

A 44-year-old man originally from Darfur was in a house with other Darfuris in Omdurman, having escaped an area of Khartoum controlled by the RSF. He said armed men, who later identified themselves as security cell members, broke into the house in May 2025:

One fighter said, ‘You Darfuris are troublemakers; you brought the war to us here.’ I said, ‘It is the [RSF] who killed my people in the past…. We have nothing to do with them.’ They started slapping us and hitting us with the butts of their guns. We were thrown like animals into the back of the trucks.

Individuals taken from the house were held for over a week in a private house that the security cell had turned into a detention site, where they were beaten and denied medical care, then released.

A woman from Darfur was on a bus from Northern Sudan to Khartoum in April 2024 when a group of military intelligence officers and local forces pulled her and her husband off the bus. She said that once the officers discovered she and her husband were Massalit [a non-Arab community from West Darfur], they “called a car, covered our eyes and took us to the 19th military division.” She was released the same day and left for Egypt shortly afterward. Her husband remained in detention. When she returned in April 2025, soldiers at the military base told her that her husband had died in detention.

In April 2025, the African Center for Justice and Peace Studies reported an uptick in unlawful detention and torture by the military which they attributed mainly to Military Intelligence targeting women human rights defenders, aid workers, and displaced people from Darfur, in Sinjah town, following the army’s retaking of Sennar state in November 2024.

The attorney general told Human Rights Watch that there is no targeting based on ethnicity, or affiliation with specific states.

Targeting Based on Humanitarian Work, Political Activism

Three former detainees said that forces detained them because they were local responders or associated with pro-democracy groups. Since the outbreak of the conflict, humanitarian volunteers, many organized in Emergency Response Rooms, have faced attacks and reprisals from both warring parties.

The local volunteer from Gedaref said: “The officers [his interrogators] said to me, ‘You are from the [Emergency Response Rooms], we know you send the reports and spy for the RSF, you are political supporters of the RSF.”

The man detained in Omdurman in 2024, said he was targeted based on his activism. “A military intelligence officer took my phone and forced me to unlock it, he saw pictures from the June 3, 2019, sit-in [ in Khartoum] and pictures of protests the following years. He shouted at me: ‘You belong to the [political opposition]. Sit down.’ And he started to beat me with a machete.”

The attorney general told Human Rights Watch that there is no targeting of humanitarian volunteers.

Incommunicado Detention and Enforced Disappearances

Four former detainees and a detainee’s relative said the military has held detainees incommunicado, meaning that they are not allowed any contact with the outside, with lawyers, family, or friends. Two people whose relatives had been detained by security or intelligence forces said that the authorities refused to acknowledge the detention or provide any information on the detainees’ whereabouts or situation, constituting an enforced disappearance.

One man said that in January 2025, he was unable to locate his 27-year-old brother who had fled to Atbara, River Nile state, from Khartoum. After days of searching, the family heard from officers that he had been arrested at a checkpoint controlled by Military Intelligence, and accused of being an RSF spy:

The Military Intelligence told us my brother was with them and would soon be transferred to the police. Days after, the Military Intelligence denied having him. We have not heard anything further. We are fearing the worst.

As of January 2026, the brother is still apparently detained, but the authorities have neither confirmed it nor provided information on his whereabouts or fate to his family or lawyer.

Another man said in July 2025 that his family had informed him that army and security forces detained his father on January 14, 2025, in Wad Madani, the capital of Gezira state, central Sudan.

For two months, the family had no information about the father’s whereabouts. Eventually, they received information from contacts in the security forces that the father had been detained by a security cell, had been seen in the General Intelligence Services office in a nearby town, and was then moved to a hospital as his health deteriorated. The family heard that he had developed a kidney infection due to detention conditions. The family said they heard that he was transferred to another detention facility in Madani on May 26. However, when interviewed in July 2025, they still had no confirmed information on his detention, his whereabouts or fate.

Death Penalty Cases Involving Due Process Violations

Lawyers and human rights defenders said that the authorities have sentenced civilians to death following detention and trials that violated multiple due process and fair trial guarantees, including little or no access to legal counsel. The military and affiliated authorities have charged people with collaboration using two offenses from the 1991 Sudanese Penal Code, both punishable by death: article 50, undermining the constitutional system, and article 51, waging war against the state.

Khadm Allah Musa, a 23-year-old woman, was sentenced to death by a court in Khartoum on August 18, 2025, for collaborating with the Rapid Support Forces. A lawyer who worked on her defense team said the authorities “interrogated her throughout without being allowed legal counsel.”

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reported in June 2025 that Sudanese courts handed down at least 108 death sentences between January and late June 2025, predominantly for alleged collaboration with the Rapid Support Forces. It also raised concerns that people from Darfur and Kordofan were disproportionately prosecuted and sentenced, particularly on allegations of affiliation with the Rapid Support Forces.

Click to expand Image Ben Roberts-Smith arrives at the Federal Court in Sydney, Australia, on June 9, 2021. © 2021 AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File

On April 7, Australian police arrested Ben Roberts-Smith, a decorated Australian soldier who stands accused of committing five counts of war crimes in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012. 

Many of the details of Roberts-Smith’s alleged crimes were made public when he sued media outlets that had first reported on the allegations. He lost the defamation case. 

For victims of abuses in Afghanistan, this is a long-awaited but significant step toward accountability.  

Almost six years have passed since the release of the Independent Afghanistan Inquiry (known as the Brereton Report), which detailed alleged war crimes committed by Australian Special Forces in Afghanistan spanning 2005 to 2016. So far no one has stood trial for these crimes, and no victims or their families are known to have been compensated.

In March 2023, Australian police made their first arrest of a soldier for war crimes in Afghanistan. Oliver Schulz is accused of murdering an Afghan civilian in 2012; however, his trial, which has been plagued by delays, will not begin until 2027.

In addition to identifying some of the alleged war crimes that led to Schulz and Roberts-Smith’s arrests, the Brereton Report recommended the Australian government pay compensation to survivors and families of victims unlawfully killed without waiting for the establishment of individual criminal liability. 

After many years of advocacy by victims and rights groups, in October 2024 the Department of Defence laid out a compensation scheme for victims and family members of victims of incidents identified in the report. However, the scheme falls short, lacking due process safeguards, clear criteria on compensation, and a requirement to inform and consult with victims. There is currently no publicly available information indicating that any compensation has been paid.

Despite the sluggish pace of justice for Afghan victims, Roberts-Smith’s arrest sends a powerful message to Australia’s armed forces that even those deemed “war heroes” are not above the law. It also sets a striking example for other countries about the importance of adhering to international law and pressing for accountability, no matter how long it takes. This latest arrest should be backed by continuing efforts to identify and hold accountable all those responsible for war crimes in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and to ensure victims receive their rightful compensation. 

Click to expand Image Zhanar Sekerbayeva, feminist activist from Kazakhstan. © Private

(Berlin, April 6, 2026) – Kazakhstan’s prosecuting authorities have filed criminal charges for battery against a feminist activist who was aggressively accosted at a café in Astana, the capital, while meeting with feminist and queer colleagues and friends, Human Rights Watch said today.

The charges, brought on March 26, 2026, follow an investigation into Zhanar Sekerbayeva, which appears to have been in retaliation for her activism for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights. The first hearing in the case is expected to be on April 7.

“The Kazakh authorities should drop the charges against Sekerbayeva and put an end to the manufactured case against her,” said Mihra Rittmann, Central Asia adviser at Human Rights Watch. “No one in Kazakhstan should fear criminal retaliation for being lesbian or for peacefully advocating for the rights of LGBT people.”

Sekerbayeva is co-founder of the feminist initiative Feminita and a prominent advocate for the rights of women and LGBT people. In recent years, she has repeatedly faced harassment, threats, and arbitrary detention in retaliation for her peaceful activism.

Police detained Sekerbayeva and a fellow activist, Temirlan Baimash, after a group of people showed up at a café in Astana on November 22, 2025, and accosted Sekerbayeva, Baimash, and others. They shouted anti-LGBT slurs, filmed attendees without consent, and behaved very aggressively toward some of the activists, including Sekerbayeva. One of the women involved in causing the disruption, Ziuar Zhumanova, filed a complaint with the police. So did both Sekerbayeva and Baimash.

In the months since, police appear to have carried out a one-sided investigation based solely on Zhumanova’s complaint. The authorities do not appear to have taken any action in response to Sekerbayeva’s and Baimash’s complaints or to hold accountable any of the people who accosted them at the café that day.

On February 12, Sekerbayeva filed a second complaint with the police, asking them to pursue administrative sanctions against Zhumanova for causing the disturbance, blocking and pushing Sekerbayeva, and injuring her arm. Sekerbayeva has publicly alleged that police have committed procedural violations in handling her complaint, including failing to consider her evidence, and said that the case against her is fabricated, politically motivated, and in retaliation for her peaceful activism for the rights of LGBT people.

Baimash, co-founder of the youth-led initiative QUEER KZ, told Human Rights Watch that the police similarly ignored his complaints that he and his friends and colleagues at the café were the victims of the attack, and instead detained and interrogated him in a hostile manner. The authorities do not appear to have made Baimash a target of their investigation, but as a witness, he is still vulnerable to pressure and intimidation by police.

The environment for LGBT rights activism in Kazakhstan has become increasingly hostile in recent months. Legislation banning so-called propaganda of nontraditional sexual orientation was adopted in December 2025 and took effect in March 2026, putting LGBT rights advocates, and others working on nondiscrimination, at increased risk of harassment and prosecution.

Kazakhstan is bound under international law, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which it is a party, to guarantee the rights to freedom of expression, association, and due process. It is also bound to safeguard the rights of human rights defenders and not to discriminate based on sexual orientation or gender identity. 

“The so-called LGBT-propaganda law is blatantly discriminatory, violates freedom of expression, and has no place in a rights-respecting country,” Rittmann said. “The authorities have a responsibility to ensure that LGBT people in Kazakhstan and people advocating for their rights can live free from discrimination, harassment, and politically motivated prosecution.”

Click to expand Image Zhanar Sekerbayeva, feminist activist from Kazakhstan. © Private

(Berlin, April 6, 2026) – Kazakhstan’s prosecuting authorities have filed criminal charges for battery against a feminist activist who was aggressively accosted at a café in Astana, the capital, while meeting with feminist and queer colleagues and friends, Human Rights Watch said today.

The charges, brought on March 26, 2026, follow an investigation into Zhanar Sekerbayeva, which appears to have been in retaliation for her activism for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights. The first hearing in the case is expected to be on April 7.

“The Kazakh authorities should drop the charges against Sekerbayeva and put an end to the manufactured case against her,” said Mihra Rittmann, Central Asia adviser at Human Rights Watch. “No one in Kazakhstan should fear criminal retaliation for being lesbian or for peacefully advocating for the rights of LGBT people.”

Sekerbayeva is co-founder of the feminist initiative Feminita and a prominent advocate for the rights of women and LGBT people. In recent years, she has repeatedly faced harassment, threats, and arbitrary detention in retaliation for her peaceful activism.

Police detained Sekerbayeva and a fellow activist, Temirlan Baimash, after a group of people showed up at a café in Astana on November 22, 2025, and accosted Sekerbayeva, Baimash, and others. They shouted anti-LGBT slurs, filmed attendees without consent, and behaved very aggressively toward some of the activists, including Sekerbayeva. One of the women involved in causing the disruption, Ziuar Zhumanova, filed a complaint with the police. So did both Sekerbayeva and Baimash.

In the months since, police appear to have carried out a one-sided investigation based solely on Zhumanova’s complaint. The authorities do not appear to have taken any action in response to Sekerbayeva’s and Baimash’s complaints or to hold accountable any of the people who accosted them at the café that day.

On February 12, Sekerbayeva filed a second complaint with the police, asking them to pursue administrative sanctions against Zhumanova for causing the disturbance, blocking and pushing Sekerbayeva, and injuring her arm. Sekerbayeva has publicly alleged that police have committed procedural violations in handling her complaint, including failing to consider her evidence, and said that the case against her is fabricated, politically motivated, and in retaliation for her peaceful activism for the rights of LGBT people.

Baimash, co-founder of the youth-led initiative QUEER KZ, told Human Rights Watch that the police similarly ignored his complaints that he and his friends and colleagues at the café were the victims of the attack, and instead detained and interrogated him in a hostile manner. The authorities do not appear to have made Baimash a target of their investigation, but as a witness, he is still vulnerable to pressure and intimidation by police.

The environment for LGBT rights activism in Kazakhstan has become increasingly hostile in recent months. Legislation banning so-called propaganda of nontraditional sexual orientation was adopted in December 2025 and took effect in March 2026, putting LGBT rights advocates, and others working on nondiscrimination, at increased risk of harassment and prosecution.

Kazakhstan is bound under international law, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which it is a party, to guarantee the rights to freedom of expression, association, and due process. It is also bound to safeguard the rights of human rights defenders and not to discriminate based on sexual orientation or gender identity. 

“The so-called LGBT-propaganda law is blatantly discriminatory, violates freedom of expression, and has no place in a rights-respecting country,” Rittmann said. “The authorities have a responsibility to ensure that LGBT people in Kazakhstan and people advocating for their rights can live free from discrimination, harassment, and politically motivated prosecution.”

Click to expand Image Human rights activist Jolovan Wham arrives at the State Court in Singapore, February 21, 2019. © 2019 REUTERS/Edgar Su

(London) – The Singaporean government should immediately drop all charges against a human rights activist, Jolovan Wham, for organizing and participating in peaceful gatherings, Human Rights Watch, Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA), Amnesty International, and CIVICUS said today.

Wham is scheduled to stand trial at Singapore’s State Court on April 6, 2026, facing three charges under the Public Order Act for his alleged participation in candlelight vigils commemorating death row prisoners between 2022 and 2025 that were held without a police permit. 

Singaporean authorities frequently use overly broad and restrictive laws—including the Public Order Act—to restrict individuals’ rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and expression, and to silence criticism of the government, particularly regarding its use of the death penalty. The persistent legal harassment of Wham and other human rights defenders and anti-death penalty activists is part of a wider crackdown on dissent that has stifled informed public debate on capital punishment in Singapore.

Under the Public Order Act, any “cause-related” assembly requires a police permit—even for an individual acting alone—if it is held in a public place or in a private venue if members of the public are invited. The law also grants the police commissioner broad discretion to reject applications for an assembly “directed towards a political end,” particularly when a foreign national is involved. 

Human rights groups have long documented the pattern of judicial harassment of Wham for his activism. 

In February 2017, Wham was fined S$8,000 (approximately US$5,900) for organizing a silent protest on a train during the 30th anniversary of Operation Spectrum, a government crackdown on political dissent in 1987, when scores of activists were arrested for allegedly being part of a “Marxist conspiracy” to undermine the government.

In October 2018, the High Court of Singapore found Wham guilty of contempt for a Facebook post in April 2018 in which he questioned the independence of Singapore’s judiciary. He served seven days in jail, instead of paying a S$5,000 (US$3,700) fine.

In January 2019, Wham was convicted for organizing an indoor event called Civil Disobedience and Social Movements. He served 10 days in jail for violating the Public Order Act by not having a permit for a foreigner to speak at the event. At the same time, he was also fined S$1,200 (US$900) for refusing to sign the police statement, he contended that the police refused to provide him with a copy.

In November 2020, Wham faced two charges of staging an “illegal assembly” for holding a cardboard sign with a smiley face drawn on it to show his support for climate activists and for a 2018 protest calling on authorities to drop criminal defamation charges against two journalists and human rights defenders, Terry Xu and Daniel De Costa.

In February 2022, Wham was also fined S$3,000 (US$2,200) for holding an “illegal assembly” by displaying a sign outside the State Courts in 2018 during which he took a photo. Wham opted to serve a 15-day jail sentence instead of paying the fine.

On February 3, 2025, Wham was charged with five additional offenses under the Public Order Act for his alleged participation in candlelight vigils between March 2022 and April 2023. Activists who gathered outside the court on the day of his hearing are currently under investigation, believed to be linked to their peaceful assembly. 

The continued criminalization of peaceful assemblies in Singapore directly contravenes international human rights law and standards and is a blatant attempt to silence criticism of the government, including its continued use of capital punishment. 

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is widely considered to be reflective of customary international law, states in article 20 that “[e]veryone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly.” While Singapore has not ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), article 21 guarantees the right of peaceful assembly. 

The statement by the United Nations Human Rights Committee, which interprets the covenant, General Comment No. 37 (2020) states that peaceful assemblies should not be criminalized, and that states must facilitate and protect such gatherings. It also states that “[t]he right of peaceful assembly … [t]ogether with other related rights … constitutes the very foundation of a system of participatory governance based on democracy, human rights, the rule of law, and pluralism.” 

On May 12, Singapore’s human rights record will be reviewed by other countries at the UN Human Rights Council under the Universal Periodic Review. During its previous cycle in 2021, Singapore supported several recommendations on peaceful assembly, including to “ensure that laws and policies on the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association comply with the relevant international human rights standards.” However, Singapore authorities have continued to file cases against Wham and other activists for their peaceful activism under the draconian Public Order Act. 

The Singaporean authorities should immediately drop all charges against Wham and other activists who are being prosecuted solely for exercising their right to peaceful assembly, and cease any further judicial harassment against Wham, Human Rights Watch, FORUM-ASIA, Amnesty International, and CIVICUS said.

The Singaporean government should also ratify the ICCPR and its optional protocols, joining the vast majority of countries worldwide that have already ratified it, and take concrete steps to uphold the right to peaceful assembly.

Click to expand Image Deminers search for landmines near Lasinja, a village 40 kilometers south of Zagreb, Croatia, May 29, 2013. © 2013 Sipa via AP Images

Since the 1990s conflicts in the Balkans, Croatia suffered from the scourge of landmines, with hundreds of civilians killed and thousands of acres of land inaccessible due to contamination. In March, the country celebrated becoming mine-free, following a US$1.38 billion, 30-year clearance campaign.

Croatia’s story underscores the value of the Mine Ban Treaty and should encourage more countries to join and promote its goals. But on this International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action, the treaty faces threats from countries withdrawing and from new use of the weapons.

Croatia’s heavy contamination stems from 1991-1995, when the main parties to the conflict used landmines. More than 20 percent of the country was contaminated, barring communities from returning and resulting in an annual economic loss of at least $230 million.

Interior Minister Davor Božinović said, “This is not just a technical success—it is the fulfillment of a moral obligation to the victims of mines and their families. A mine-free Croatia means safer families, better development of rural areas, more farmland, and stronger tourism.”

These successes, a testament to the dedicated work of deminers and sustained government interest, are exactly what the treaty aims to achieve, and the International Day celebrates.

Yet, rather than learning from the experiences of Croatia and the more than 30 mine-affected states parties to the treaty that have cleared their land, some countries have abandoned the effort.

In the past year, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, and Poland withdrew from the treaty, contending that antipersonnel landmines were necessary to protect themselves from Russian aggression. In July, Ukraine also sought to unlawfully suspend its obligations under the treaty.

New use of antipersonnel landmines in Myanmar, Russia, and Ukraine, as well as along Iran’s borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan, North Korea’s border with South Korea, and the contested Thailand-Cambodia border threatens the norm against these weapons.

The International Day for Mine Action affords an opportunity to reflect on the horrific impact of antipersonnel landmines on civilians, the significant improvement in civilians’ lives the treaty has achieved, and the importance of upholding and bolstering opposition to their use. States not party to the treaty should join. All countries should oppose their use and help fund clearance and assistance for victims.

Click to expand Image Children accompany criminal group members in a march in the Delmas neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, May 10, 2024. © 2024 Pedro Valtierra Anza/Reuters 

The new campaign of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to recruit children as young as 12 for patrols and security checkpoints has been widely condemned. Military recruitment and use of children is a grave violation of children’s rights and a war crime when children are under 15.

The world has come a long way in just a few decades. Today, we have treaties prohibiting the conscription or use of child soldiers in armed conflict and courts to hold those responsible to account. Both the International Criminal Court and the Special Court of Sierra Leone have convicted people, from Congolese warlords to the former Liberian President Charles Taylor, for conscripting and using children under age 15 in war. The Child Soldiers Treaty (an optional protocol under the Convention on the Rights of the Child), ratified by 173 countries, prohibits the conscription of children under age 18 or their use in hostilities. Iran has signed although not ratified it.

Yet more work is needed. Recruiting and using children ages 15-17 is not consistently recognized as a war crime, nor is recruitment outside of situations formally classified as armed conflicts. This excludes situations like Haiti, where criminal groups recruit children to transport weapons, act as lookouts, and participate in kidnapping and fighting. Some 30 to 50 percent of these criminal group members are under 18. Save the Children says children have been recruited for a pair of sneakers.

Countries drafting a new international treaty on crimes against humanity could close that gap. Crimes against humanity are criminal offenses like murder, torture, rape, and slavery committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack on a civilian population. Unlike war crimes, they are crimes during peacetime as well as war.

In May 2025, 38 organizations and child rights experts, including Human Rights Watch, endorsed a set of proposals rooted in law and jurisprudence to ensure that a future convention protects children. This month, a new paper from Princeton University’s Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination argues that recruiting and using children should be among those crimes.

Given global efforts to end the use of child soldiers in war, it shouldn’t be hard to take the next step. Countries have until April 30 to submit proposals to amend the draft treaty. They should use the opportunity to support introducing recruitment and use of children under 18 as a crime against humanity.

Click to expand Image People gather as Nigerian policemen arrive at the scene the morning after gunmen killed multiple people in an overnight attack in Angwan Rukuba, Jos North, Plateau State, Nigeria, March 30, 2026. © 2026 Reuters

On the night of March 29, gunmen attacked the Angwan Rukuba community in Nigeria’s Plateau state, killing over 28 people and injuring many others, according to the state governor. The attack, which targeted a densely populated area, highlights persistent patterns of violence in northern Nigeria, where killings, kidnappings, and limited state protection leave communities extremely vulnerable.

According to news reports, the attackers fired indiscriminately on people as they tried to flee. Authorities described the attack as a criminal act in a conflict-prone area and promised to ensure the perpetrators are found and held to account. They should now follow through and implement effective strategies to identify and respond to threats, protect communities, and ensure justice.

Plateau state, in Nigeria’s Middle Belt, has long experienced recurrent intercommunal violence rooted in tensions over land, political representation, and the contested distinction between “indigene” and “settler” communities. Often framed along ethnic and religious lines, particularly between predominantly Christian farming communities and largely Muslim pastoralist groups, these divisions have fueled ongoing reprisal attacks between the communities. But authorities have failed to break the cycle of violence, refraining from bringing perpetrators of serious crimes in these attacks to justice.

The intercommunal conflict has increasingly overlapped in recent years with bandit-style raids, which are widespread in the North West region and often involve killings and kidnappings for ransom, for which there has been little or no accountability. Armed insurgent groups such as Boko Haram have also carried out horrific attacks in the northern region.

Though circumstances vary by location, the recurring features of these attacks, including indiscriminate killings and weak state responses, demand the authorities’ urgent and comprehensive action. Without stronger protection, genuine accountability, and sustained efforts to address the root causes, countless lives will continue to be lost and cycles of insecurity will persist.

Click to expand Image International Special Prosecutor Toussaint Muntazini (left) and former Central African Republic prime minister Mathieu Simplice Sarandji (right) at the inaugural session of the Special Criminal Court on October 22, 2018 that marked the official launch of the court's judicial activities. Photo courtesy of Special Criminal Court.

The Central African Republic’s Special Criminal Court announced the death of its first Special Prosecutor, Toussaint Muntazini, on March 25 after a long illness. His passing is a profound loss for victims of serious crimes.

Muntazini, a Congolese military judge and former attorney general of the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo, will be remembered as a leader in the fight against impunity in two of the world’s most neglected conflicts. In Congo he was pivotal in advancing the country’s efforts to investigate and prosecute serious crimes through its military courts. As the military’s attorney general at the time, Muntazini was the high-ranking official responsible for overseeing the domestic legal process that facilitated the surrender and transfer of Thomas Lubanga to the International Criminal Court for war crimes committed in Congo’s Ituri province.

In the Central African Republic, Mutanzini was appointed Special Prosecutor to the Special Criminal Court in 2017. Established in 2015 and integrated into the national domestic system with international support, the court was designed to investigate and prosecute serious violations committed in the country since 2003. After arriving in Bangui, Mutanzini crafted the court’s prosecutorial strategy, and his office went on to open preliminary investigations that led to the court’s first trials.

The Special Criminal Court faced enormous challenges in those early days, operating amid ongoing violence, with limited resources and acute insecurity. Muntazini lived under tight protection and rarely left the court’s compound. But his commitment and determination demonstrated that justice was possible even during an active conflict. The Special Criminal Court’s hybrid model, with national and international staff working side by side, offered a chance for local ownership while drawing on much needed global expertise. The Special Criminal Court complements the ongoing work of the International Criminal Court in the Central African Republic and is proof that justice, while slow, is possible.

Muntazini’s determination helped dismantle the country’s long culture of impunity, where cycles of atrocity have driven conflict for decades. His passing leaves a gap at a pivotal moment, as the court’s mandate faces growing funding pressures. The international community should defend Mutanzini’s legacy by pushing for meaningful justice and accountability efforts in his native Congo while ensuring that the Special Criminal Court has the resources it needs to continue its critical work.

Click to expand Image (Clockwise, from top left): Burkina Faso President Capt. Ibrahim Traoré. © 2025 Stanislav Krasilnikov/RIA Novosti via AP; Iyad Ag Ghaly, JNIM supreme leader. © 2012 ROMARIC OLLO HIEN/AFP/Getty Images; JNIM fighters in Barsalogho, Sanmatenga province, Burkina Faso, August 24, 2024. © Private; Burkinabè military forces in Baraboulé, Sahel region, Burkina Faso, during Operation "Tchefari 2," December 2023. © 2024 RTB  The Burkina Faso military with its allied militias and an Al Qaeda-linked armed group have killed more than 1,800 civilians and forcibly displaced tens of thousands since 2023.The junta is committing horrific abuses itself, failing to hold those responsible on all sides to account, and curtailing reporting to obscure the suffering of civilians caught in the violence.Regional bodies and partner governments should work with, and press, Burkina Faso’s authorities to tackle grave abuses by all sides and provide genuine accountability.

(Nairobi, April 2, 2026) – The Burkina Faso military with its allied militias and an Al Qaeda-linked armed group have killed more than 1,800 civilians and forcibly displaced tens of thousands since 2023, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. These atrocities, including the government’s ethnic cleansing of Fulani civilians, amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity for which senior leaders on all sides may be liable. 

The 316-page report, “‘None Can Run Away’: War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity in Burkina Faso by All Sides,” documents the devastating impact on civilians of an armed conflict that has received scant global attention. Researchers documented 57 incidents involving Burkinabè military forces and allied militias known as the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDPs), and the Islamist armed group Jama’at Nusrat al‑Islam wa al‑Muslimin (JNIM) since the current military junta seized power in September 2022. Human Rights Watch issued a question and answer document to explain the legal issues involved. 

Play Video Read a text description of this video

Narrator: There’s a brutal conflict going on in West Africa that many people have never heard of. In Burkina Faso, government forces have been fighting Islamist armed groups for more than a decade. All sides have made attacks on civilians a key part of their strategies, killing thousands. More than 2 million people have been displaced by the fighting. 

 

Soundbite: “That day, 25 people died on the spot. Some were cut up by the impact of the airstrike; others had their heads cut off. Some died from choking on the dust they inhaled after the strike. After the strike, everyone started to flee.” 

 

Narrator: So why haven’t many people heard about this crisis? Burkina Faso’s military government has banned or silenced local and international media and created a climate of fear to deter people from speaking out.  

 

Soundbite: “The VDPs [government-backed militia] surrounded us, they told us to watch what they were going to do. There were people who had been stabbed with iron bars. When they finished stabbing, they slit their throats.” 

Narrator: Human Rights Watch spent a year and a half documenting 57 attacks across Burkina Faso. We spoke with nearly 400 witnesses over the phone or in neighboring countries where they had fled and documented the killing of at least 1,800 civilians between 2023 and 2025. But this may be the tip of the iceberg.  

Narrator: Since President Ibrahim Traoré took power in a military coup in 2022, he has made the fight against Islamist armed groups his main objective.  

Narrator: The military has armed tens of thousands of people in a militia called the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland, commonly known as VDPs. If a community has VDPs, JNIM, one of the main Islamist armed groups, often targets the entire population.  

And government forces have massacred civilians simply for living in areas that JNIM controls.  

 

Narrator: The military and VDPs have especially targeted ethnic Fulani people whom they accuse of supporting JNIM.  

Entire Fulani communities have been attacked and forcibly displaced, and their property looted, acts that amount to ethnic cleansing.  

 

Soundbite: They [VDPs] told us: “It’s [President] Ibrahim Traoré who sent us to kill you.” And they began slitting the throats of people in front of us. They called us “terrorists,” which we are not. 

Narrator: Military abuses have fueled recruitment by JNIM and the cycle of retaliatory attacks has led to widespread violence against civilians. All sides have committed abuses that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. To seek justice for these crimes, we needed to identify who was responsible.  

Narrator: So, we used AI to go through thousands of hours of footage from Burkina Faso’s state-owned news channel and a social media platform used by JNIM. The software we developed identified key information about JNIM, military units, and the names of people involved in specific attacks. This information, along with witness accounts, allowed us to identify members of the Burkinabé armed forces and JNIM who were in a position of command during each attack.  

Narrator: These include: Capt. Ibrahim Traoré, the president of Burkina Faso, and top military commanders. It also includes the leaders of JNIM, such as Iyad Ag Ghaly, Amadou Kouffa, and Jafar Dicko.  

Narrator: None have been held accountable. States should investigate these serious international crimes, and the International Criminal Court should bring perpetrators to justice. Accountability and civilian protection cannot wait.  

“The scale of atrocities taking place in Burkina Faso is mind-boggling, as is the lack of global attention to this crisis,” said Philippe Bolopion, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “The junta is committing horrific abuses itself, failing to hold those responsible on all sides to account, and curtailing reporting to obscure the suffering of civilians caught in the violence.”

Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 450 people in Burkina Faso, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Mali, and by phone about grave abuses between January 2023 and August 2025. Researchers also carried out extensive open-source analysis, examining satellite imagery, thousands of hours of audiovisual footage, and official documents to verify incidents and identify commanders on all sides. 

April 2, 2026 “None Can Run Away”

War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity in Burkina Faso by All Sides

Download the full report in English

Appendices

Under President Ibrahim Traoré, the junta has carried out a broad crackdown on the political opposition, peaceful dissent, and independent media, fostering an atmosphere of terror and severely restricting the flow of information about the conflict and its toll. 

Since 2016, JNIM and other Islamist armed groups have waged an insurgency against successive governments in Burkina Faso as part of a broader offensive across Africa’s Sahel region. JNIM has killed civilians and looted property leading the junta to conduct brutal counterinsurgency campaigns.Murder and other grave abuses against civilians, often from communities accused of supporting the opposing side, have become a key tactic of the junta as well as of JNIM.

In one of the deadliest incidents, the Burkinabè military and allied militias killed more than 400 civilians in December 2023 in about 16 villages near the northern town of Djibo during an operation known as “Operation Tchéfari 2 (Warriors’ Honey in Fulfulde).” “[The militia] opened fire,” said a 35-year-old woman. “My two daughters died on the spot.” Bullets seriously injured her and her 9-month-old son. She heard a militia member say: “Make sure no one is breathing before heading out.” 

The military and militia have targeted Fulani communities because of their alleged support for Islamist armed groups, resulting in the ethnic cleansing of entire communities. 

In November 2023, government-allied militias killed 13 Fulani civilians, including 6 women and 4 children, in the western village of Bassé. “All the bodies, except for that of my son, were grouped together in the courtyard, blindfolded with their torn clothes and their hands tied behind their backs… riddled with bullets,” said a 41-year-old man. “My son …was lying on his stomach. He had been shot in the back of the neck.”

JNIM has used widespread threats and violence to dominate and punish communities as part of efforts to expand territorial control in rural areas. On August 24, 2024, JNIM killed at least 133 civilians, including dozens of children, in the central town of Barsalogho, accusing the whole community of supporting the VDPs. 

“[JNIM fighters] shot continuously, as if they had plenty of ammunition,” said a 39-year-old man. “People were falling like flies. They came to exterminate us. They did not spare anyone.” Five of his family members were killed in the attack.

JNIM has besieged dozens of towns and villages across Burkina Faso, blocking the movement of goods and people, resulting in hunger and illness. The armed group has planted improvised explosive devices on roads, and destroyed bridges, water sources, and communications infrastructure. 

All sides are responsible for the war crimes of willful killing, attacks on civilians and civilian objects, pillage and looting, and forced displacement, Human Rights Watch found. They have also committed murder and forced displacement as part of attacks on a civilian population, amounting to crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said. 

Human Rights Watch found that President Traoré, supreme commander of the armed forces, and six senior Burkinabè military commanders may be liable as a matter of command responsibility for grave abuses and should be investigated. Iyad Ag Ghaly, the JNIM supreme leader who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged crimes in Mali in 2012-2013, and four JNIM commanders may be liable as a matter of command responsibility for abuses by JNIM in Burkina Faso and should also be investigated. 

Members of all warring parties in the country have near-total impunity. Victims and their families said they do not trust national justice institutions or cannot access them. Government officials have either denied or downplayed allegations of abuse, especially by military forces and militias, and failed to conduct credible investigations. 

Governments have taken little action in the face of these atrocity crimes, Human Rights Watch said. Burkina Faso’s international partners—including the United Nations, African Union, European Union and its member states, and the United States—should address Burkina Faso’s longstanding cycles of abuse and impunity. They should promote accountability, including by imposing targeted sanctions against abusive commanders that Human Rights Watch identified. The Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC should open a preliminary examination into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by all parties in Burkina Faso since September 2022. 

“The world needs to recognize the magnitude of the atrocities unfolding in Burkina Faso to bring them to an end,” Bolopion said. “Regional bodies and partner governments should work with, and press, Burkina Faso’s authorities to tackle grave abuses by all sides and provide genuine accountability.”

Click to expand Image An external view of the destruction of buildings in Evin prison's northern premises after the Israeli strikes on June 23, 2025 in Tehran, Iran. Photo taken on July 1, 2025.  © 2025 Majid Saeedi/Getty Images Thousands of detainees in Iran, including political prisoners and children, are at risk of injury and death from US and Israeli strikes, as well as atrocities by Iran’s authorities, including mass, secret, and arbitrary executions. Instead of releasing prisoners unconditionally or on humanitarian grounds, Iran’s authorities continue to carry out the arrests of real and perceived dissidents as well as arbitrary executions of political prisoners. UN member states should press Iran’s authorities to immediately release anyone arbitrarily detained, halt executions, and implement regulations that allow for the release or temporary leave of prisoners on humanitarian grounds. They should urge all parties to the conflict to respect international humanitarian law and prioritize the protection of civilians.  

(Beirut) – Thousands of detainees in Iran, including political prisoners and children, are at risk of injury and death from US and Israelistrikes, as well as atrocities by Iran’s authorities, including mass, arbitrary, and secret executions, Human Rights Watch and Kurdistan Human Rights Network said today. 

For decades, Iran’s authorities have carried out large-scale arbitrary detentions with impunity, detaining both real and perceived dissidents as well as debt prisoners. During the weeks preceding the start of the armed conflict on February 28, 2026, Iran’s authorities had carried out mass arbitrary detentions of tens of thousands of protesters, including children, as well as real and perceived dissidents, human rights defenders, lawyers, and medical workers. Many were held in secret and unofficial detention facilities run by security and intelligence bodies and subjected to enforced disappearances. 

“Prisoners, including thousands of arbitrarily detained people in Iran, are facing dual threats, violence at the hands of authorities who have a track record of prison massacres and US and Israeli bombs,” said Bahar Saba, senior Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Unable to seek safety, detainees, many of whom never should have been detained in the first place, are facing human rights violations, serious injury, and death.”

Human Rights Watch and Kurdistan Human Rights Network spoke with 12 people, including families of prisoners, human rights defenders, and informed sources with knowledge about several prisons, and reviewed reports by other human rights organizations, information shared on social media, official statements, and state media reports.

“We have no options,” said a prisoner whose statement was shared with the organizations. “Here, we can neither protect ourselves from danger nor have [access to] any shelters.”  

Since the start of the conflict, detainees, their families, and human rights organizations have repeatedly called on Iran’s authorities to release prisoners, including on humanitarian grounds. While a number of detainees have been released, including after posting exorbitant bail, the authorities have refused to release all those arbitrarily detained, in particular political prisoners, and to grant other prisoners temporary humanitarian leave. 

Instead, authorities continue to arrest activists, dissidents, members of ethnic and religious minorities, such as Kurds and Baha’is, and other people for allegedly taking footage or photographs of strikes and sending them to the media. On March 24, the police announced that 446 people had been arrested for “disturbing public opinion, creating fear and anxiety in society, undermining mental security, propaganda for the enemy, and inciting and organizing security-disrupting elements online.” 

The authorities have also been carrying out executions, including on politically motivated charges, heightening fears of mass, arbitrary, and secret executions under the shadow of the war. At least eight men were arbitrarily executed on charges such as “espionage,” “armed rebellion against the state through membership in the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran,” and “waging war on God” between March 18 and 31. 

Interviewees, including relatives of prisoners, told researchers about the serious threats those detained face from the US and Israel’s military strikes as well as gross human rights violations by Iran’s authorities.

“Prisoners in Evin have been hearing loud and terrifying explosions,” said the relative of a prisoner in the notorious Evin Prison. “They have felt them to have been very close, but their access is even more limited [than people outside] to know where the strikes are actually happening ... one of the nights when there were terrible explosions … at around 2:00 a.m., they could feel over 20 explosion shock waves in their ward in the span of an hour.” 

Police stations and security facilities run by the Ministry of Intelligence and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) have been among the targets hit by Israel and US forces. Some of these facilities are commonly known to hold detainees, in particular those arrested for politically motivated charges, often held incommunicado and in circumstances that amount to enforced disappearances.

Those detained are also facing deteriorating prison conditions in a system already known for poor conditions and systematic and deliberate denial of medical care to prisoners. Sources told the Kurdistan Human Rights Network and Human Rights Watch that since the start of the armed conflict there had been a drop in both the quantity and quality of food and that prisoners were denied access to medication and medical care outside of prison. 

“The amount of food prisoners receive has dropped and so has its quality,” a source said. “Even those who have severe medical conditions are not transferred outside [prison] for medical care … prisoners are not even taken to the prison clinic.”  

Prisoners who protest deteriorating and unsafe prison conditions are at risk of reprisals and violence. The organizations received information that in at least three prisons, security forces have used force, including lethal force, to quash protests by prisoners who fear for their safety and/or object to poor prison conditions.  

Iranian authorities have also been making repeated threats of further atrocities to prevent and stifle any form of dissent. On March 10, Ahmadreza Radan, the commander of the Islamic Republic’s police forces, known as FARAJA, warned, “we will not deem anyone who takes to the streets at the will of the enemies as a protester or anything else, but as the enemy [itself] and will [thus] treat them in the same manner that we would treat the enemy.” He said that security forces had “their fingers on the triggers.”  

The next day, the IRGC’s Intelligence Organization issued a statement warning that any protests would be faced “with [even] a harsher blow than that of January 8,” when Iranian authorities carried out massacres of protesters.

Iran’s domestic regulations provide for humanitarian release at times of crisis. A 1986 resolution by the Supreme Judicial Council allows for the conditional release or release on bail of prisoners during wartime emergencies. In addition, article 201 of Iran’s Prisons Regulations provides for the release of prisoners in certain circumstances, for example during other times of “crisis such as natural disasters, unforeseeable incidents, or outbreaks of dangerous infectious diseases.” 

Under international humanitarian law, also known as the laws of war, prisons and detention facilities are presumptively civilian objects. Serious laws of war violations committed by individuals with criminal intent—that is, deliberately or recklessly—are war crimes.

UN member states should press Iran’s authorities to immediately release all individuals arbitrarily detained, halt all planned executions, and implement domestic regulations that allow for the release or temporary leave of prisoners on humanitarian grounds, the two organizations said. They should further urge all parties to the conflict to prioritize the protection of civilians.

“Instead of releasing prisoners, authorities are relentlessly arresting real and perceived dissidents and carrying out executions, once again putting on full display their absolute disregard for human life,” said Rebin Rahmani, a member of the broad of directors at Kurdistan Human Rights Network. “Many anxious families do not even know where their loved ones are being held as bombs and missiles hit different parts of cities on a daily basis.”

Risk of Death and Injuries Due to Airstrikes 

Since February 28, Israel and the US have carried out thousands of strikes across Iran. According to reports by relatives of detainees, media, and human rights organizations, a number of strikes have targeted locations in proximity to prisons, including Evin Prison and the Greater Tehran Penitentiary, Isfahan Central Prison in Isfahan province, Mahabad Prison in West Azerbaijan province, and Zanjan Central Prison in Zanjan province, while at least one, Marivan Prison in Kurdistan province, is reported to have been damaged as a result of a strike. 

Relatives of Lindsay Foreman and Craig Foreman, a British couple detained in Iran since January 2025, have reported that on February 28 a strike near Evin Prison resulted in shattered windows and plaster raining down from the ceiling of the ward in which they were being held. 

An informed source told Human Rights Watch that prisoners in Zanjan Central Prison, where the arbitrarily detained human rights defender and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi is held, could also hear the sounds of airstrikes in the city and were terrified as they felt the explosion’s shock waves. On March 31, the Iranian Red Crecent said that its rescue teams had removed survivors from under the rubble after a strike on Zanjan’s Hossienieh Azam, which appears to be only several kilometers from the Zanjan Central Prison. According to information received by Human Rights Watch, Mohammadi’s health has been deteriorating in detention and she may have suffered a heart attack following denial of medical care. 

A source with information about a prison in central Iran told the organizations, “The night when there was a strike nearby, everyone was terrified and the guards did nothing to reassure them.” 

On March 13, the Kurdistan Human Rights Network raised concerns about the fate of detainees amid a wave of strikes on intelligence and security facilities across Kurdistan, Kermanshah, and West Azerbaijan provinces. One of the facilities reportedly struck was an IRGC-run intelligence center, Shahramfar base in Sanandaj, Kurdistan province. Based on extensive documentation by human rights organizations, the center has included a section used as a detention facility for decades. 

An informed source, whose relative had once been held in Shahramfar, told Human Rights Watch that the detention center was a “terrifying facility” used to hold dissidents, and that at any given time, a group of concerned families would be standing outside to inquire about their detained loved ones. The source also said that there was no information about the fate and whereabouts of a friend who had been arrested during the protests and was subsequently held in Shahramfar.  

During the Israel-Iran conflict in June 2025, Human Rights Watch documented an unlawful attack by the Israeli forces on Evin Prison, an apparent war crime. The attack resulted in the killing and injury of scores of civilians, including prisoners. Prior to the attack, Iran’s authorities refused to take measures to protect prisoners despite prisoners’ repeated pleas with judicial, prosecutorial, and prison officials to release them or grant them humanitarian leave.

Those arbitrarily detained in Iran include thousands of prisoners held for exercising their human rights, including the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly; people convicted following grossly unfair trials, which are systematic and widespread; and debt prisoners whose numbers are reported to be over ten thousand. Article 11 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights prohibits the imprisonment of individuals who are unable to fulfill a contractual obligation.

Deteriorating Prison Conditions 

Detainees, their families, and human rights organizations have also reported that the situation in prisons across the country, including in the provinces of Alborz, Fars, Gilan, Kermanshah, Lorestan, Qazvin, Qom, Razavi Khorasan, Tehran, West Azerbaijan, and Yazd, has been deteriorating. Prisoners face shortages of food and potable water, as well as limited access to basic necessities, medication, medical care, and visitation rights. Prison shops, where prisoners can buy goods such as food, are also reported to be facing shortages while their prices have significantly increased, so many prisoners can no longer afford them.  

In a March 3 letter addressed to the head of the judiciary, the arbitrarily-detained human rights defender Reza Khandan wrotethat, “thousands of unlawfully detained prisoners are held in prisons without any reason, trapped under the threat of bombardments day and night, many services to prisoners have been cut off and if the war continues, shortages or [even] lack of food and hygiene [products] is foreseeable.” 

One source with knowledge about a prison in western Iran said that prisoners whose medication for chronic illnesses is provided by their families will soon run out of medication if this situation continues, as families were prevented from visiting jailed loved ones and authorities had not distributed the items families had brought for the prisoners. 

Another source with information about a facility in central Iran also said that they faced shortages of medication and that all “transfers to hospitals were cancelled … even a prisoner who fell seriously ill was not transferred outside [for medical care].”

Information received by the organizations from the Greater Tehran Central Penitentiary also points to a further deterioration of the facility’s already poor conditions, including overcrowding, reduction of food portions to half their regular size, and lack of access to potable water. An informed source told the Kurdistan Human Rights Network that detainees arrested in connection with the protests were held in three halls in the Greater Tehran Central Penitentiary, each holding 250 to 300 people. Several detainees had been taken to the prison with serious injuries, including bullet wounds, and prisoners were held in insect-infested wards without access to adequate medical care, the source said. 

Media and human rights organizations reported that prisoners in Ghezel Hesar Prison in Alborz province have started a hunger strike to protest the deteriorating conditions, particularly the lack of access to sufficient food and medical care.

Prisoners and their familieshave also reported restrictions imposed by the authorities on visitation rights and contact with the outside world, which has further compounded their anxiety. “They have not allowed any family visits since the start of the war,” said one source with knowledge about a prison in western Iran. 

“Prisoners who are mothers are particularly anxious for their children outside,” another source said.  

Risk of Atrocities, Including Mass Arbitrary, Secret, and Summary Executions 

Since the start of the armed conflict on February 28, which came in the wake of the countrywide massacres of protesters and bystanders on January 8 and 9, Iran’s authorities have repeatedly threatened further atrocities. These threats are made by high-ranking commanders and state institutions that orchestrated the January massacres, and, as such, should be treated as serious and imminent. 

Detainees, many of whom have been arrested in connection with recent protests and held incommunicado or subjected to enforced disappearances remain particularly vulnerable and at risk of torture and ill-treatment. On March 24, the Baha’i International Community reported that authorities subjected Peyvand Naimi, a young Baha’i man arrested on January 8 in Kerman, to torture, including beatings, denial of food and water, prolonged solitary confinement, and mock executions on two occasions to coerce him into making self-incriminating statements. 

Based on reports from families of prisoners and human rights organizations, some detainees have been transferred to undisclosed locations, further heightening fears about their fate and safety. In some cases, authorities have refused to provide families with any information about the detainees’ fate and whereabouts, thus subjecting them to enforced disappearances. On March 3, human rights organizations and families of prisoners reported that detainees held in section 209 of Evin Prison, which is controlled by the Ministry of Intelligence, had been transferred to an undisclosed location. 

An informed source told the Kurdistan Human Rights Network that detainees, both men and women, held in Section 2A of Evin Prison, which is controlled by the IRGC, were transferred to an IRGC base for several days following the start of the conflict. Some detainees were subsequently taken to an official prison, but the source had no information about the others. 

Based on information reviewed by Human Rights Watch and the Kurdistan Human Rights Network, the authorities have also significantly increased the presence of security forces in prisons. An informed source with knowledge about a prison in central Iran said that three weeks into the war, senior prison officials told prisoners that prison guards had “pre-authorized shooting orders.” 

The source said that in addition to regular prison guards, anti-riot forces were deployed to the prison and authorities had tripled the number of guards stationed in the prison’s watch towers and at entrances. Another source with information about a prison in western Iran said that the prison was filled with security forces and that armed guards with rifles were stationed on the prison roof. 

There have also been reported crackdowns within Iran’s detention facilities. 

On March 5 and 6, Kurdistan Human Rights Network reported that after a military strike in proximity to Mahabad Prison in West Azerbaijan province on March 3, security forces fired tear gas against prisoners who were scared and started protesting seeking to be released. Subsequently, 120 prisoners were transferred to the quarantine section of Miandoab Prison in the same province, where they were held in poor conditions without access to sufficient food.

Two Balochi human rights defenders who had spoken with families of prisoners, and other informed sources in Chabahar in Sistan and Balouchistan, said that security forces used force, including lethal force, after protest broke out in Chabahar Prison on March 18, reportedly killing and injuring several prisoners. The protests are reported to have started following several days without food. 

Based on media reports, on March 2, following several strikes around the Greater Tehran Penitentiary, prisoners who attempted to leave their wards in fear were violently repressed. The strikes were reported to have resulted in shattered glasses and damage to walls. 

Fears of mass, summary, secret, and arbitrary executions have also been increasing amid a significant escalation in the authorities’ use of the death penalty over the past years, particularly in 2025, including as a tool of political repression and an ongoing communications blackout that further hinders independent reporting. 

On March 18, Mizan News Agency, owned and operated by Iran’s judiciary, announced that Kourosh Keyvani, a Swedish-Iranian dual national, had been executed for “intelligence cooperation and espionage in favor of the Israeli government.” Keyvani is reportedly the third man to be arbitrarily executed over allegations of espionage for or collaboration with Israel in 2026. At least 13 men were arbitrarily executed on similar charges in 2025, the vast majority after the 12-day armed conflict with Israel.  

On March 19, Mizan News Agency announced that three people—the 19-year-old wrestling champion Saleh Mohammadi and two other young men, Saeed Davoudi and Mehdi Ghassemi—had been executed earlier in the day over allegations of involvement in the deaths of two members of security forces during the nationwide protests of December 2025 and January 2026. Their arbitrary executions were carried out following grossly unfair and summary proceedings that lasted just over two months, from the time of arrest to the implementation of sentences. 

Human Rights Watch reviewed the verdict issued by a criminal court in Qom against Mohammadi and Davoudi, which shows that both defendants retracted their “confessions” in court saying they were extracted under torture, but the court dismissed their testimony without any investigation. Human Rights Watch received information that Mohammadi was held in stress positions and beaten. Mizan News Agency reported that the executions were carried out “in the presence of a group of people in Qom,” indicating that they were carried out in public, in violation of the absolute prohibition against torture and other ill-treatment. 

On March 30, authorities arbitrarily executedAli Akbar Daneshvarkar and Mohammad Taghavi Sangdehi, on the charge of “armed rebellion through membership in the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran.” The next day, two other men, Pouya Ghobadi and Babak Alipour, were executed on the same charges. The men, codefendants in one case, had been sentenced to death by a revolutionary court in Tehran following a grossly unfair trial. 

Human rights organizations reported that the authorities did not provide advance notice to the men’s families and lawyers, in violation of both international law and Iran’s domestic regulations. Two other political prisoners sentenced to death in the same case, Vahid Baniamerian and Abolhassan Montazer, are at imminent risk of execution. 

On March 31, Amnesty International reported that another five young men, Mohammad Amin Biglari, Ali Fahim, Abolfazl Salehi Siavashani, Amirhossein Hatami, Shahin Vahedparast Kolo, had been transferred from Ghezel Hesar Prison to an undisclosed location, sparking fears of their imminent execution. All five were sentenced to death in connection with alleged offences committed in the context of the December 2025 and January 2026 protests.

Iranian authorities’ track record of committing mass atrocities in prisons has further heightened concerns for prisoners. In 1988, authorities extrajudicially executed thousands of imprisoned political dissidents in prisons across the country, known as the “1988 prison massacres.” The massacres constituted crimes against humanity. 

Click to expand Image Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, left, meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, January 16, 2026. © Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP, File

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s unwillingness to condemn forced labor in China risks reducing pressure on the Chinese government to end its repression of ethnic Uyghurs.

Responding to Member of Parliament Michael Ma’s comments casting doubts on reports of forced labor in China, Carney told the media on March 30 that Canada “takes issues of forced labor and child labor incredibly seriously.” But when asked directly whether forced labor is present in China, Carney said that “there are parts of China that are higher risk.”

Carney’s remarks ignore extensive and consistent documentation of state-imposed forced labor involving Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in China’s supply chains, including cotton, automotive, solar, and critical minerals. The United Nations, Human Rights Watch, and others have for several years reported on crimes against humanity by Chinese authorities in the Xinjiang region.

Carney’s comments also divert from past Canadian government statements expressing concern at forced labor in Xinjiang. In January 2021, Canada’s Global Affairs Ministry issued an advisory warning businesses of forced labor risks there.

In his remarks, Carney also said that “Canada has the most rigorous set of engagements” on child and forced labor. Carney’s government, however, has so far failed to adequately enforce legislation blocking products made with forced labor and has not acted on a proposed supply chain due diligence law modeled in part on legislation in the European Union.

Canada’s forced labor import restrictions also do not include a presumption that products produced in Xinjiang are linked to forced labor and cannot be imported, a key feature of the United States’ Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. US authorities announced last month an investigation into the effectiveness of forced labor import restrictions in 60 countries, including Canada.

In the face of US President Donald Trump’s open hostility toward Canada, Carney has sought to strengthen Canada-China ties to diversify Canada’s trade partnerships. But any pivot toward China needs to prioritize human rights; otherwise, Canada risks facilitating a “low-rights” economy that increases economic, security, and governance risks for Canadian manufacturers and consumers.

As Prime Minister Carney takes Canada forward in a multipolar world, he should make clear that Canada’s foreign and trade policy will be grounded in human rights, including by unequivocally condemning Uyghur forced labor.