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EU Council Turning Supply Chain Law into Window Dressing
(Brussels) – European Union member states led by France and Germany are walking back on their commitment to protect human rights and the environment in global supply chains, Human Rights Watch said today. On June 23, 2025, member states agreed on a European Council position that, if it becomes law, would hollow out an EU directive on protecting rights in supply chains.
The directive, known as the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), was designed to protect victims of human rights abuses as well as the environment while creating a level playing field for companies. It marked an important shift from voluntary standards to holding companies legally accountable for human rights and environmental abuses in their entire supply chain. It entered into force in July 2024 as part of the European Green Deal, the EU Commission’s flagship project to make the EU more sustainable and climate neutral by 2050.
“EU member states want to turn the European supply chains law into a toothless tiger, failing victims and survivors of abuses in the supply chain of European companies,” said Hélène de Rengervé, senior corporate accountability advocate at Human Rights Watch. “This proposal betrays the EU’s commitment to human rights and sustainability and would do little to prevent human rights and environmental harm in supply chains.”
The next step is for the European Parliament to adopt its position on the proposed rollback. This is a crucial and final opportunity for the parliament to take a stand to prevent the directive from unraveling and to retain meaningful protection for victims of corporate abuses.
Efforts to undermine the legislation began in February 2025, when the new EU Commission made a U-turn and advanced the so-called Omnibus proposal to strip the directive of its most important elements. These include the obligation for companies to conduct human rights and environmental due diligence across their whole supply chain and the possibility for victims to sue companies if their rights are abused. These measures were viewed as important compromises reached through careful negotiations.
Certain industry lobby groups appear to have played a major role in pushing for the changes. Their calls for competitiveness and simplification, which are being used to justify the rollbacks, hide a wider deregulation agenda and disregard the actual purpose of the law: to protect victims from abuse while creating a level playing field for companies.
The EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, the European Central Bank, progressive companies, legal experts and economists, high-level personalities, leading United Nations officials and experts, and the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights have all criticized the move, urging the EU not to weaken the directive.
The June 23 decision, led by the Polish presidency, supports the commission’s plan to limit mandatory and systematic due diligence obligations only to direct suppliers. As many human rights violations occur further along global supply chains, for example at the raw material level or in manufacturing, these limitations severely hamper the law’s ability to curb abuses.
The decision also contradicts the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which extend the responsibility of companies to conduct human rights due diligence to the whole value chain. Limiting due diligence to direct suppliers would ignore the parts of the supply chain where most abuses occur, Human Rights Watch said.
“If the CSDDD is limited to the direct supplier, this will mean empty words for workers,” said Kalpona Akter, a labor activist from Bangladesh. “We would be left out. It is unacceptable.”
Member states have proposed to reduce the directive’s requirements even further, by weakening climate mitigation plans and limiting the scope of the law to companies with more than 5,000 employees and a €1.5 billion net turnover.
Estimations by the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations under its CSDDD data hub show that such a threshold would exclude 72.5 percent of companies currently covered under the 2024 law, reducing the number to fewer than 1,000.
The council’s proposal to limit due diligence mostly to direct suppliers means companies could ignore the parts of the supply chain where most risks occur, while pushing down the cost and responsibility of due diligence to their direct suppliers through unfair commercial contracts.
The council’s decision to replace an EU-level, harmonized rule to hold companies accountable with rules at member state level would also mean that there would be 27 sets of rules. This would make enforcing the law more complex and expensive, while weakening its preventive nature and encouraging forum shopping between member states, Human Rights Watch said.
Industrial disasters resulting in workers’ deaths and injuries, such as the Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh, and corporate abuses of human rights, labor rights, and environmental standards in global value chains have prompted a groundswell of support for binding legislation to hold companies accountable. Rights groups, trade unions, consumers, political leaders, and progressive businesses have pushed for the law.
But the legislative process, which began in 2020, has been difficult; with stiff opposition by multinationals and business associations, and with the governments of France, Italy, and Germany leading efforts, directly and through their employers’ lobby group, to significantly dilute the most meaningful provisions of the law.
The unusual haste with which the commission put forward the Omnibus proposal, disregarding administrative and procedural obligations and failing to consult meaningfully with civil society, led eight civil society organizations to file a complaint with the European Ombudsperson’s office in April. In response, the Ombudswoman opened an inquiry in May.
Human Rights Watch supports this very important initiative by the organizations and urges the Ombudsperson’s office to try to finalize the inquiry as expeditiously as possible, ideally before the final text of the CSDDD is adopted. The inquiry is a major step towards full transparency and accountability in the commission’s decision-making process, helping to ensure it reflects the EU’s core democratic values.
“The European Parliament has an opportunity to stop this race to the bottom and fight for a law that truly holds corporations to account for human rights and environmental abuses,” de Rengervé said. “Both victims of corporate abuse and EU consumers deserve better.”
Budapest Pride 2025: A Record Crowd Stands Up for Democracy
This weekend in Hungary’s capital Budapest, Human Rights Watch staff witnessed the city transform—if only for one brilliant afternoon—into a beacon of resistance. Budapest Pride was more than a celebration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights; it was a clear and courageous stand for democracy, dignity, and the rule of law.
This year’s Pride faced unprecedented legal and political obstacles. In March, Hungary’s parliament amended the Assembly Act to restrict the right of assembly for LGBT rights. The same draconian legislation legalized the use of facial recognition technology to identify organizers and participants.
In the run up to the event, organizers faced political pressure and police bans. Budapest’s mayor, Gergely Karácsony, stepped in to support and host the march as a municipal event and was threatened with imprisonment by the minister of justice.
In a stark reminder of the government’s double standards, far-right groups were allowed to rally freely. Police did their job by keeping them separate from Pride, though they were vastly outnumbered by the supporters of equality.
Instead of silencing Pride, the authorities’ attacks drew more people out. This year saw record attendance, Hungarians from all walks of life turned out, LGBT people, allies, families, and students; their message was clear: this was about more than LGBT rights. When governments scapegoat minorities, they undermine everyone’s freedom.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government has spent years hollowing out Hungary’s democratic institutions: capturing courts, muzzling the media, attacking civil society, and rewriting laws to entrench power. The assault on Pride was part of this broader strategy and an effort to divide, distract, and dominate. The response was a demonstration of unity, courage, and hope.
A march is powerful, but lasting change will take sustained action from Hungary’s people and the European Union. The EU Commission should deploy its full rule of law enforcement tools, including seeking prompt interim measures at the EU Court of Justice to suspend the effect of the March law and all anti-LGBT and antidemocratic laws and policies. Leaders in the European Council should take note of the appeal by Hungarians to protect democracy in the country and move forward the article 7 procedure. The Hungarian government should heed the calls of its own citizens and immediately repeal laws that target LGBT people and undermine democratic freedoms, including free assembly.
Hungarians sent a strong message this weekend: they will not be silenced. The EU should listen and respond.
Arrest Putin if He Visits Brazil
Federal prosecutors in Rio de Janeiro should ask a court to issue an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin of Russia if he visits Brazil for the summit meeting on July 6 and 7, 2025 of BRICS, the Broad Democratic Front for Human Rights, a Brazilian organization, Truth Hounds, an Ukrainian organization, and Human Rights Watch, an international organization, said today. BRICS is a group of nations, including Brazil and Russia, that come together for discussions and cooperation on economic, political and other issues.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against Putin in March 2023, which Brazil as a court member, is required to enforce.
While a spokesperson for the Russian government announced on June 25 that Putin would not travel to the summit “due to certain difficulties, in the context of the ICC requirement,” Brazilian authorities should take legal measures to execute the ICC warrant, should Putin change his mind and travel to Brazil.
The following is a joint statement from the Broad Democratic Front for Human Rights, Truth Hounds, and Human Rights Watch:
Joint statement from the Broad Democratic Front for Human Rights (FADDH), Truth Hounds, and Human Rights Watch (HRW)
The Broad Democratic Front for Human Rights (FADDH) called on the Regional Federal Prosecutor’s Office in the State of Rio de Janeiro to ask a court to issue an arrest warrant against the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, should he enter Brazilian territory to attend the BRICS summit on July 6 and 7, 2025. The formal communication, sent on June 27, 2025, to federal prosecutors, is supported by Truth Hounds and Human Rights Watch.
The request is based on the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Putin in March 2023, in connection with the unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia from areas of Ukraine Russian forces are occupying. Brazil is a State Party to the Rome Statute, the ICC’s founding treaty, which holds supralegal status within the national legal system, meaning it is superior to domestic law, apart from the Constitution. As a State Party, Brazil has an obligation to cooperate with the ICC, including in the arrest and surrender of individuals subject to warrants issued by the Court when they are on Brazilian territory.
The Broad Democratic Front for Human Rights, author of the formal communication, Truth Hounds, and Human Rights Watch ground their request on Brazil’s constitutional and international duty to uphold human rights and ensure compliance with international justice norms. President Putin’s attendance at the BRICS summit in Brazil, without action by Brazilian authorities to enforce the ICC arrest warrant, would constitute a serious breach of the country’s international legal commitments.
The three organizations also call on Brazil to commit to enforcing all of the Court’s decisions. Principled, robust and consistent state party support is critical at a time when the Court is under extreme pressure due to sanctions imposed by the United States. Brazil should stand up for all the victims of serious crimes around the world, who look to the ICC for justice.
The Broad Democratic Front for Human Rights, Truth Hounds, and Human Rights Watch believe that the current global context is delicate, and that strengthening international institutions and respecting international law are essential to restoring international stability and cooperation.
The three organizations emphasize that the ICC is key to fighting impunity for serious international crimes, such as the alleged war crimes that led to the issuance of the arrest warrant against Putin. They call upon the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Ministry of Justice, and the Federal Government to take all necessary measures to fully uphold Brazil’s international legal obligations.
Russia: Rising Toll of LGBT ‘Extremism’ Designation
(Berlin, June 30, 2025) – Russian courts have issued 101 “extremism”-related convictions for allegedly participating in the “International LGBT Movement” or displaying its alleged symbols, Human Rights Watch said today. The prosecutions, approximately 98 of them for administrative, or minor misdemeanor, offenses and three for criminal liability, demonstrate Russian authorities’ determination to penalize, persecute, and silence lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and their supporters.
In 2023, Russia’s Supreme Court designated the “International Public LGBT Movement” an “extremist” organization: a legal and factual mischaracterization of a diverse, decentralized global human rights cause. The ruling entered into force in January 2024, opening the floodgates for arbitrary prosecutions of individuals who are LGBT or perceived to be, along with anyone who defends their rights or expresses solidarity with them.
“Russian authorities weaponize and misuse the justice system as a tool in their draconian crusade to enforce ‘traditional values’ and marginalize and censor LGBT people,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “They are flagrantly violating Russians’ rights to free expression, association, and nondiscrimination.”
Human Rights Watch identified the 101 cases through court websites and other official channels. Russia’s 2013 “gay propaganda” law made any positive or neutral depiction or discussion of nonheterosexual relations an administrative offense. The 2023 Supreme Court designation enabled authorities to pursue a broader range of arbitrary charges including, for the first time, criminal prosecutions against LGBT people and their supporters.
Human Rights Watch found that between January 2024 and June 2025 at least 20 people faced criminal charges due to their alleged participation in the “International Public LGBT Movement.” One of the accused died by suicide in pretrial detention. Courts sentenced two to prison. Seventeen cases are pending, or their outcomes are unknown.
On May 15, 2025, investigators charged three staff from two publishing houses with allegedly “running an extremist organization” (article 282.2 of the Russian Criminal Code) by selling fiction exploring LGBT themes and thereby “recruiting” readers into the “International Public LGBT movement” organization. They face up to 12 years in prison.
Human Rights Watch also identified 81 people in 98 court cases, who since January 2024, had been found guilty of administrative offenses for displaying the symbols of the LGBT movement, such as the rainbow flag, most on social media. Human Rights Watch identified the victims by examining courts’ information and rulings in cases under article 20.3 of the Russian Code of Administrative Offenses for displaying banned symbols, news releases by courts and law enforcement, and reports by media and human rights organizations.
Some people had multiple administrative convictions. The repeated display of any banned symbol is punishable under the criminal code with up to four years in prison. One person was convicted of criminal charges and sentenced to six months of compulsory labor after posting the rainbow flag on a social media page.
Many people convicted for administrative offenses deleted their social media accounts, apparently for fear of criminal prosecution.
In 2023, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk condemned the Supreme Court’s “LGBT-extremism” ruling. Independent UN experts warned that the designation enables arbitrary and abusive application of the law and jeopardizes a wide range of activities protected under international human rights law.
The prosecutions for both criminal and administrative offenses that Human Rights Watch examined blatantly violate the right to receive and impart information and ideas guaranteed by article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Russia is party, and its prohibition on discrimination. They also violate the rights to association, liberty and security of the person, and to privacy, among others.
In May 2025, two leading Russian LGBT rights organizations, Coming Out and Sphere, documented that after the Supreme Court decision, LGBT support groups “experienced a substantial rise in requests for assistance with departure, processing humanitarian visas, seeking asylum and emergency evacuation under circumstances of persecution.” They also emphasized that the ruling “severely constrained the operational capabilities of support organizations, leading to the closure of queer spaces and events, forcing them into clandestine modes of operation.”
“Russia’s international partners should call on the government to end its persecution of LGBT people and their supporters,” Williamson said. “Other governments should also provide safe haven and meaningful protection to those fleeing Russia for fear of prosecution based on their sexual orientation or gender identity and their public expressions of support for LGBT rights.”
For additional details, please see below.
Methodology
Human Rights Watch collected data from official courts’ websites related to cases of displaying banned symbols, focusing on cases dating from November 2023. The researcher then reviewed social media pages mentioned in or identifiable from the court judgments and their archived versions, if available.
To supplement this data, the researcher archived and reviewed Telegram messages from 213 official channels for various branches of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, courts, and Russia’s chief investigative agency. The researcher also archived and reviewed messages from channels run by rights groups and independent media, which mentioned “LGBT,” extremism, banned symbols, and relevant articles of criminal and administrative law. We also reviewed published research findings and databases by prominent civil society groups, such as Sova Center, OVD-Info, and Political Prisoners Support. Memorial.
To avoid creating additional security risks for the people targeted, Human Rights Watch did not link to the court cases cited unless they were previously covered in the media or the defendants’ social media pages.
Convictions for Administrative Offenses
Human Rights Watch identified 97 convictions on charges under article 20.3 of the Russian Code of Administrative Offenses for alleged displays of LGBT symbols, and one conviction under article 20.29 of the same code for distributing content justifying extremism.
The first conviction under article 20.3, for publishing the rainbow flag on social media, appeared to be on January 25, 2024. Since then, the number of such cases has increased quickly. Thirty-eight of the cases were brought in Moscow, the most for any region in Russia.
Human Rights Watch found one initial acquittal by a court of first instance. In January 2024, a Krasnodar court held that the defendant had not committed an offense because they had published an “LGBT flag” on their social media page before the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision. However, the police appealed the ruling and the regional court ruled in their favor finding that the defendant had not deleted the flag after it had been outlawed and committed the offense by omission.
In many court decisions, the illicit symbol is only described in general terms, such as “the symbol of the ‘International Public LGBT movement.’” In most cases, it appears to be the six-color rainbow flag identified in the Supreme Court decision as one of the organization’s symbols. In at least two instances, people appear to have been prosecuted for displaying a regular seven-colored rainbow. In at least one case, the case related to a blue-pink-white flag, a symbol associated with transgender people’s rights.
Seven people were convicted for offline activities. In January 2024, a court in Nizhny Novgorod sentenced Anastasia Ershova to five days in detention for wearing frog-shaped rainbow-colored earrings, following an apparent politically motivated assault against her and her friend, which was recorded by the assailant and published online.
Another person in the city of Perm was fined for placing the rainbow flag in their window. Two others were charged for taking a picture with the rainbow flag outdoors in the middle of the night in the Moscow region.
In November 2024, a court in Nizhny Novgorod fined a teacher for placing the rainbow flag in the school’s space designed to promote tolerance. Also in November, a court in Yakutsk imposed an additional sentence on a prisoner for allegedly showing the rainbow flag to other prisoners. In May 2025, the same court convicted another prisoner who allegedly drew a picture in a notebook, using the rainbow colors.
Ninety convictions have been for online activities; most for posts, images or user profile information published on social media, with 61 on VKontakte, Russia’s largest social media platform. Thirteen were based on information law enforcement identified on Telegram. The remaining cases were based on activities on other platforms: Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, TikTok, Odnoklassniki (another Russian social media site), a dating website, a stock photo website, and the official state services portal.
The police also pursued charges for using the rainbow flag in memes sent in public and closed group chats or for displaying it on profile pictures or using the rainbow flag emoji in a post or profile status. In one case, the head of a regional campaign office for an opposition candidate in the 2024 presidential election was detained for six days for reposting a picture with the rainbow flag in a closed friends’ chat of 11 people. OVD-Info, a leading Russian rights organization, said that the police received access to the group after one of the participants’ accounts was hacked.
Not everyone targeted had used the rainbow flag in support of LGBT people or a neutral context. In April 2024, a court in Volgograd fined an administrator of a xenophobic and homophobic Telegram channel for publishing a video showing the Swedish military at the 2023 Pride parade.
In another context, a court in Moscow fined Aleksandra Marova for including contact information for the psychological support helpline of the Russian LGBT Network, a prominent support group, in a post she published following a devastating March 2024 armed attack on a concert hall. Her conviction was under article 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offenses, which punishes distributing materials on the Ministry of Justice’s list of extremist materials or “other” materials “justifying” extremist activities.
In 17 cases, courts sanctioned defendants with detention. The average punishment was 8 days of a maximum of 15 days by law. In 81 cases, courts imposed fines of up to the maximum 2,000 rubles (US$25).
Repeat Offenses
Under the 2022 amendments to Russia’s Criminal Code, repeat displays of banned symbols—after the person has served the first administrative sentence—are punishable by up to four years in prison, even if a different symbol unrelated to LGBT rights is displayed in subsequent cases.
One person wrote on social media: “The issue is of course not a thousand rubles but the [criminal] liability for subsequent violations of the law, which, as it turns out, can stem from harmless old posts, if so desired [by the authorities].”
The threat of criminal prosecution is far from illusory. According to Supreme Court Judicial Department data, courts imposed 131 convictions in 2024 for repeated displays of banned symbols under article 282.4 of the criminal code. Human Rights Watch identified one criminal case under that provision in 2025, in which the person was convicted following a conviction for an administrative offense for an old social media post displaying the rainbow flag.
The convicted person said in online videos that they were not contesting the charges. The court sentenced them to six months of compulsory labor and banned them from publishing content on social media or participating in group chats. After the judgment entered into force, the victim deleted their social media accounts.
In recent years, Russian authorities have outlawed a variety of organizations as “extremist” or “terrorist,” and banned their symbols.
Prosecutions for displays of banned symbols spiked in 2020, when the Supreme Court designated as “extremist” a popular subculture related to prison culture. A court in Krasnoyarsk sentenced an artist under the “extremist symbols” article in September 2024 for making a roly-poly toy with prison tattoos.
In 2024, human rights defender Alexey Sokolov spent six months in pretrial detention on charges of repeatedly displaying the Facebook logo on a website (in 2022, Russian authorities designated Meta an “extremist organization”). He was released in January 2025 pending trial.
In recent years, the list of banned organizations has ballooned with Ukrainian military units, volunteer units fighting alongside Ukraine, anticolonial and Indigenous groups, local and countrywide protest movements and opposition organizations, Instagram and Facebook, and owners of Ukrainian food and beverage conglomerates.
Law enforcement and judicial practice with regard to banned symbols is also constantly expanding. Human Rights Watch has recorded that after the June 2021 designation of organizations led by the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny as “extremist,” courts issued 194 convictions for administrative offenses. Courts arbitrarily named as “extremist” symbols, the names, and logos of the organizations themselves, those of related opposition initiatives, pictures of Navalny or his name, and slogans in support of political prisoners or against President Vladimir Putin.
“Erasure”
The broad and ambiguous nature of Russian anti-extremism legislation turned it into a powerful censorship tool that also forces many to self-censor. In a 2024 survey of LGBT people in Russia conducted by Sphere and Coming Out, 82 percent said they saw personal risks after the movement’s “extremist” designation, and 88 percent said they had been “affected by the government’s LGBT+ censorship.”
In 11 administrative cases reviewed by Human Rights Watch, the convicted individuals deleted their posts or photographs that had triggered the charges. One person deleted many of their posts, including information about sexual health, discussions of history, and links to or mentions of health videos on Instagram.
In 32 cases with convictions, the content had arguably been published before the Supreme Court’s 2023 extremism decision entered into force, some as far back as 10 years ago. One person, who received three administrative fines, argued in court that they posted the publications that had triggered the cases in 2014–2015. Three others were convicted for posts dating back to 2016. Russian courts consider “unlawful” online publications a “continuing” offense, indefinitely extending the legal risks.
Current Russian legislation stipulates that once authorities identify offending content under article 20.3, they have three months to prosecute, or the case must be discontinued. In at least one case examined, the authorities apparently disregarded that requirement. The defendant, Sergei Sosov, who was prosecuted on charges of insulting the memory of veterans, is recognized as a political prisoner by Memorial, a leading Russian rights group.
People with an active online presence would find it extremely difficult to ensure that nothing they had ever posted could be considered “extremist” at some later time. In 28 cases reviewed, following prosecutions for posting LGBT symbols, people deleted not just the posts that triggered prosecution, but their social media pages entirely, or closed them to the public.
A journalist and LGBT activist told Sphere and Coming Out, “The key words for 2024 for me are ‘isolation,’ ‘loneliness,’ ‘fear,’ and ‘the erasure of queer culture,’ unfortunately.”
The prohibition on retroactive application of criminal law is a core principle of due process, and enshrined in international human rights law. The ban covers prosecutions under the Code of Administrative Offenses, because although the offenses are labeled “administrative,” they are equivalent to misdemeanor crimes, qualify as substantively criminal in nature, and attract criminal penalties including potential custodial sentences.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled against Russia in 2024 and 2025 in cases involving convictions under the Code of Administrative Offenses for actions that in part had taken place long before they were punishable under the code. The court, finding multiple violations of the European Convention on Human Rights, ruled that “imposing a responsibility … to foresee future designations constitutes an impossible and unreasonable burden” and that such retrospective application of the law results in a “chilling effect” and violates the right to expression.
Criminal Charges
The first known criminal conviction based on a repeated display of the rainbow flag as an “extremist” symbol was handed down in May 2025.
Separately, authorities opened multiple cases against people accused of “participating in” or “running” the “LGBT movement.” In February, the state news agency RIA Novosti reported that, according to the Federal Security Service, a person already serving a prison sentence in Kemerovo region received an additional six-year prison sentence for participating in the “LGBT movement” and “involving” other prisoners in its activities.
In March, a doctor in Ulyanovsk region who faced a maximum punishment of one year in prison for alleged sexual coercion, was also prosecuted for “involving” the other man in the “LGBT movement,” and received a three-year sentence.
In December 2024, Andrei Kotov died by suicide in a pretrial detention center where he was held on charges of running an “extremist organization.” The authorities claimed Kotov’s company Men Travel, which sought to market tourist travel to gay men, was a “branch” of the LGBT movement.
The review of media, human rights groups and law enforcement reports from November 2023 to the present found that 17 other people have faced criminal LGBT-related extremism charges, including for running bars popular among LGBT people, dating people of the same sex, and advocating for LGBT rights.
On May 15, 2025, investigators pressed charges against three staff of two publishing houses. They were accused of participating in the “extremist” organization “LGBT movement” and recruiting people into it by selling fiction books that included references to LGBT people and same-sex relationships. At the time of writing, they remain under house arrest and each faces up to 12 years in prison.
Many more LGBT people and their allies are at risk of arbitrary and discriminatory prosecutions. Since the November 2023 designation, police have conducted dozens of raids on establishments popular among LGBT people, recorded the clients’ personal data, and examined the contents of their devices.
In March 2025, a Moscow court rejected a lawsuit by an activist, Yaroslav Rasputin, against his designation as a “foreign agent”; a smearing label that imposes absurd restrictions and penalties, incompatible with international law. The court claimed he was “secretary” of “International Public LGBT Movement.” In April, a court rejected a similar challenge by Vadim Vaganov to his designation as a “foreign agent,” saying that he is an “activist” of the LGBT movement.
Other LGBT-Related “Offenses”
Prosecutions for displaying “extremist” LGBT symbols are often accompanied by other administrative charges, with “gay propaganda” one of the most common.
The authorities sharply intensified their use of “gay propaganda” charges following December 2022 amendments to the “gay propaganda” law. The 2013 law banned spreading among children any information that depicted same-sex relations in a neutral or approving manner (article 6.21). The 2022 amendments extended the ban to adults and added a ban on displays and description of “non-traditional” relations and preferences (article 6.21.2).
In 2023 and 2024, courts imposed 257 “gay propaganda” penalties, compared with 22 in 2021–2022. Fines levied in the past two years totaled over 63 million rubles (US$780,000). Non-citizens can also be detained if convicted on these administrative charges, followed by mandatory deportation. Eight people received short-term detention sentences, and in 14 cases, courts ordered deportation of alleged offenders who were foreign nationals.
Although the “gay propaganda” law does not allow for criminal prosecution of repeat offenders, the fines under its article 6.21 are much steeper than those under the “extremist symbol” law. The maximum administrative fine for publishing the rainbow flag under the “extremist” symbols law is 2,000 rubles ($25), while individuals can be fined as much as 400,000 rubles ($4,970) if the authorities press charges of engaging in “gay propaganda” among children.
One person received three fines under the “gay propaganda” law and ten fines for displaying the “extremist” rainbow flag in different pictures posted on social media, 320,000 rubles in total ($4,050). Another person was fined 300,000 rubles ($3,800) for three counts of “gay propaganda,” in addition to 10 days in detention for displaying “extremist” symbols. The descriptions and the dates of these supposed offenses are sometimes identical.
In addition to pressing “gay propaganda” charges against individuals, TV channels, and streaming services, police have also charged bookstores and online marketplaces that featured books discussing sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as theme bars popular among LGBT people.
In May 2025, a judge in St. Petersburg fined a local bookstore 800,000 rubles ($10,200) for featuring books by Susan Sontag and Olivia Lang, internationally revered writers and cultural critics. Also in May, the authorities brought criminal charges against publishers for publishing fiction books that explore LGBT themes. These developments apparently triggered a massive purge on Russian book markets.
In the following weeks, publishers asked bookstores to return or destroy dozens of books. On May 29, a prominent Russian book distributor sent a letter to bookstores requiring them to immediately remove 37 books, because they “do not comply with Russian laws.” They included international bestsellers and award-winning titles and touched on a range of topics and views out of sync with the Kremlin’s “traditional values” crusade, including LGBT themes.
China: Building a ‘Patriots Only’ Hong Kong
(New York) – China’s government has erased Hong Kong’s freedoms since imposing the draconian National Security Law on June 30, 2020, Human Rights Watch said today.
Chinese and Hong Kong authorities have harshly punished critics of the government, created a highly repressive national security regime, and enforced ideological controls on the city’s residents. Increasingly, only Chinese Communist Party loyalists – that is, “patriots” – can occupy key positions in society.
“In just five years, the Chinese government has extinguished Hong Kong’s political and civil vibrancy and replaced it with the uniformity of enforced patriotism,” said Maya Wang, associate China director at Human Rights Watch. “This heightened oppression may have dire long-term consequences for Hong Kong, even though many Hong Kongers have found subtle ways to resist tyrannical rule.”
Since adopting the National Security Law, the Chinese government has largely dismantled freedoms of expression, association and assembly, as well as free and fair elections, fair trial rights and judicial independence. The government has increasingly politicized education, created impunity for police abuses, and ended the city’s semi-democracy. Many of Hong Kong’s independent civil society groups, labor unions, political parties, and media outlets have been shuttered.
The Chinese government has been building a new and opaque national security legal regime and bureaucracy, weaponizing the courts to hand down severe punishment for dissent – up to life in prison – and harassing and surveilling Hong Kongers at home and abroad. The authorities are also rewriting Hong Kong’s history.
When Britain handed over Hong Kong’s sovereignty to China in 1997, Beijing promised a “high degree of autonomy” and that “Hong Kong people rule Hong Kong.” Since 2020, the Chinese Communist Party – which is not even registered as a political party in Hong Kong – has extended its control over all levers of government in Hong Kong, by embedding Beijing’s concept of national security into Hong Kong laws, and by revamping the city’s governance structure.
Several other governments and the United Nations have expressed concern about the rapid deterioration of freedoms in Hong Kong, but few have taken concrete actions. The United States imposed sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials in 2020, 2021, and 2025 for abuses associated with the National Security Law, but was the only government to do so. The United Kingdom, the European Union, and Australia, which also have human rights sanctions regimes, should impose targeted sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials most responsible for serious rights violations, Human Rights Watch said.
“Governments should press the Chinese government to end its repressive policies in Hong Kong by holding responsible officials to account,” Wang said, “Beijing should no longer feel emboldened to tighten its grip on Hong Kong people without consequences.”
Gutting Hong Kong’s Freedoms
Demolishing Hong Kong’s Semi-Democracy
Among the Chinese government’s actions after imposing the National Security Law in June 2020 was to turn Hong Kong’s vibrant semi-democratic Legislative Council into a rubber stamp like China’s National People’s Congress.
The Chinese and Hong Kong authorities first disqualified pro-democracy legislators from holding office for “endangering national security.” The authorities then prosecuted 45 pro-democracy politicians and activists for “subversion” under the National Security Law. They were convicted and sentenced to between 4 years and 2 months and 10 years in prison.
The authorities also changed the regulations so that only “patriots” – as those who “support the … leadership of the Chinese Communist Party” are called – could run in Legislative Council elections, and revised the electoral laws to prohibit the “incitement of others to cast blank ballots.” In 2023, the Legislative Council unanimously voted to adopt similar electoral changes to the District Council, which oversees local affairs.
With pro-democracy figures barred from running for office, and people unable to cast blank protest votes, the 2021 Legislative Council elections were meaningless and had a record-low voter turnout at 30 percent. The Council now also struggles with low attendance at its meetings.
Demolishing Civil Society, Political Parties
The Chinese and Hong Kong governments have dismantled Hong Kong’s independent civil society organizations by imprisoning and harassing organizers and activists and freezing groups’ funds. Since 2020, nearly 100 civil society organizations, labor unions, and political parties have been disbanded. These include some of the city’s oldest and largest groups that formed the backbone of the city’s democracy movement, such as the Civil Human Rights Front, the Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union, and the Civic Party. The Democratic Party, founded in 1994, is set to disband.
After resisting five years of intensifying harassment, which included prosecutions and home searches, Hong Kong’s last pro-democracy political party, the League of Social Democrats, announced its disbandment in late June.
Suppressing Freedom of Assembly
The imposition of the National Security Law coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic. Hong Kong authorities abused Covid-related measures to prohibit peaceful assemblies, including, in 2020 and 2021, the annual vigil at Victoria Park that commemorated the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre. The authorities have charged the Hong Kong Alliance, the organizer of the vigil, and its three former leaders with “inciting subversion” under the National Security law, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. Every year since 2020 around June 4, Hong Kong people who tried commemorating the massacre near Victoria Park have been arrested and imprisoned on dubious charges.
For decades, Hong Kong had massive pro-democracy protests, some attracting over a million people, but the authorities have not permitted any such demonstration since 2020. Police harass the few people who show up for even nonpolitical protests. In 2023, a small rally concerning land reclamation took place only after organizers agreed to stringent police demands requiring no more than 100 participants who would wear number tags, have their banners examined in advance, and stay behind a police cordon away from the media.
The Hong Kong government has continued to persecute protesters who participated in the 2019 protests: As of April, 10,279 people had been arrested, 2,976 prosecuted, and 2,422 convicted.
Eliminating Independent Media
Since the adoption of the National Security Law, at least 14 independent media outlets have shuttered, including Apple Daily in June 2021 and Stand News in December 2021. The two influential outlets were forced to close following high-profile police raids and arrests of their editors for national security crimes. Apple Daily’s owner, Jimmy Lai, 77, is serving a 5 year and 9-month prison sentence on charges of “fraud” and “participating in an unauthorized assembly.” He faces a maximum of life in prison in an ongoing National Security Law trial for “foreign collusion.”
Self-censorship among journalists is rampant. In 2022, the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents’ Club ended its Human Rights Press Awards; its then-chair Keith Richburg said his lawyer told him that he would not get “a fair hearing before a national security law judge.” After the major Chinese-language outlet Ming Pao dismissed two political columnists in 2023, its editor-in-chief warned the remaining writers to “be extra careful.”
Widespread Censorship
Shortly after the National Security Law was passed, Hong Kong authorities banned 2019 protest slogans such as “Liberate Hong Kong, the Revolution of Our Times.” They also pulled China and Hong Kong-related political art, films, and books from museums, theaters, public libraries, and the annual book fair, and blocked access to pro-democracy websites.
Censorship has broadened to works that are not explicitly political. In 2025, the Hong Kong government permanently removed 10 bronze sculptures that had been on display since 2017. Two of the figures wore yellow raincoats, which became associated with protests after a pro-democracy demonstrator fell to his death while wearing one in 2019.
Censorship also became institutionalized. In 2021, the Hong Kong government amended the Film Censorship Ordinance, enabling the authorities to censor films deemed “contrary to the interests of national security.”
The Hong Kong Immigration Department has frequently refused entry or visas to people critical of the government, including journalists, academics, rights advocates, artists, and the British parliament member Wera Hobhouse. In some cases, they were questioned for hours before being deported.
Creating a “Patriots Only” Hong Kong
New National Security Legal Regime and Bureaucracy
The Chinese and Hong Kong governments have established a national security legal regime. Augmenting the National Security Law, the Hong Kong government in March 2024 also introduced the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance (SNSO).
The Hong Kong authorities also revived a colonial-era sedition law under the Crimes Ordinance. After the Court of Final Appeal ruled in December 2021 that sedition constituted a security-related crime, sedition has become the most frequently used national security offense to target a wide range of peaceful expression, including children’s books, independent journalism, and social media posts. The SNSO further raised the maximum penalty for sedition from 2 to 7 years in prison, and 10 years when it involves “collusion with foreign forces.”
Taken together, the three laws expand police powers, stipulate harsh punishments up to life in prison for peaceful speech and activism, and deprive suspects of fair trial rights. Suspects are typically denied bail, subjected to years of prolonged pretrial detention, and tried not by a jury but by judges hand-picked by Hong Kong’s chief executive.
Since 2020, 326 people have been arrested for national security offenses; and 187 people and 5 companies have been charged. National security trials have a nearly 100 percent conviction rate.
The Chinese and Hong Kong governments have also established a new national security bureaucracy: the Office for Safeguarding National Security, which appears to be part of China’s spy agency, the Ministry of State Security; the Hong Kong National Security Committee, a government body consisting of senior Hong Kong officials and a Beijing “adviser” on national security matters; and the National Security Department under the Hong Kong Police Force.
Very little information is available about these extremely powerful bodies. The Hong Kong government allocated HK$13 billion (US$1.7 million) for national security between 2020 and 2023 but would not disclose the amount allocated in subsequent years.
In May, the Hong Kong government enacted a set of subsidiary laws accompanying the SNSO that further expand the powers of the Office for Safeguarding National Security, including punishing those who disclose information related to its possible investigations with up to seven years in prison. In June, the Office for Safeguarding National Security and the National Security Department conducted their first joint operation, arresting six people affiliated with an organization for “foreign collusion”; no further information was released.
Chinese Communist Party Establishes Direct Rule
Since 2020, the Chinese government’s rule over Hong Kong has undergone significant changes. A set of “institutional reforms” in 2023 further asserted the Chinese Communist Party’s control of state institutions in China. These resulted in China’s top Hong Kong affairs office being operated under dual identities: as a government office (Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office of the State Council), and as a Chinese Communist Party body (Hong Kong and Macao Work Office of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party), but with the same leadership team. This so-called institutional doubling has been a feature in China’s governance under President Xi Jinping.
This new arrangement has drastically expanded the scope of Beijing’s control over Hong Kong’s affairs. The office is now responsible for “supervising the implementation … of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee’s power of comprehensive governance” over Hong Kong, a goal the Chinese government has articulated since 2014.
The Chinese government maintains that Hong Kong is still ruled under a policy of “One Country, Two Systems,” which has not as a practical matter been the case since at least 2020. The 2023 “reforms” cemented what has increasingly become “One Country, One System,” in which the Party increasingly asserts its supremacy in governance and society and is effectively running the city.
On paper, the Hong Kong government is headed by a Hong Konger, the Beijing-appointed Chief Executive John Lee. But real power firmly rests with the Chinese Communist Party’s top leadership. Since 2020, the Party’s institutional arrangements have meant that a mainland official – currently Zhou Ji – holds three Hong Kong leadership titles, including his “adviser” role over the Hong Kong National Security Committee, which allows him to effectively direct Hong Kong affairs. Hong Kong governance now resembles that of Xinjiang and Tibet, where the ethnic Uyghur and Tibetan leaders listed as heads of government in these nominally “autonomous” regions are subordinate to Han Chinese Party officials.
Administrative Punishments, Threats, Intimidation
People in Hong Kong now face persecution from many fronts, not only police surveillance and harsh prison sentences for dissent, but also harassment from Hong Kong government agencies, smears from Beijing-owned media outlets, and threats from pro-Beijing organized crime triads.
The problems faced by the Hong Kong Journalists’ Association, the city’s largest union of local journalists and the only major union remaining, are illustrative. In 2024, Hong Kong tax authorities ordered the Journalists’ Association without evident basis to pay HK$400,000 (US$51,000) in back taxes. The group was a repeated target of smear campaigns by Beijing-owned media. Its previous chairperson was arrested during a reporting assignment. In 2025, two hotels cancelled the group’s reservation for a fund-raising dinner without explanation.
At least eight other media outlets and 20 individuals affiliated with these outlets have reported similar demands for bogus “back taxes,” including those ostensibly owed by spouses and parents. Other kinds of harassment against Hong Kong journalists include death threats and false complaints against them sent to government departments.
Surveillance of Residents and Activists Released from Prison
In 2020, Hong Kong police set up a national security hotline to encourage people to report on each other; by June 2025, it had received over 920,000 tips.
Hong Kong activists released from prison are now subjected to police surveillance, arbitrary restrictions on their movements, and pressure to inform on others, tactics long used by the authorities in mainland China.
The activist Agnes Chow said that after her release, national security police watched her closely and forced her to meet with them regularly. Before she left Hong Kong to study in Canada, the police pressed her to spy on other Hong Kong activists there. When she refused, police took her to mainland China, where she was shown “the brilliant achievements” of “the motherland.” The pro-independence activist Tony Chung reported a similar experience.
Repression Extended Abroad
The Chinese and Hong Kong governments have used the national security legal regime to try to silence critics in the diaspora, many of whom left Hong Kong due to growing repression. Hong Kong police have issued baseless National Security Law arrest warrants and HK$1 million (US$129,000) bounties for 19 exiled Hong Kong activists who live in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, and Australia. The government has also cancelled their passports.
The authorities have also targeted their funding sources. In 2023, Hong Kong police arrested 12 people linked to the now-defunct 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, which police accused of providing financial support for exiled activists, and four others for subscribing to the Patreon pages of two “wanted” activists.
Hong Kong police have also harassed the activists’ families, interrogating and detaining them, as well as raiding their homes. In February, the authorities confiscated HK$800,000 (US$103,000) from an activist and his family. In the first known prosecution of a family member of an exiled activist, national security police in April charged the father of the “wanted” activist Anna Kwok for allegedly handling her finances, an SNSO crime punishable by up to seven years in prison.
Harassment of these 19 activists has intensified both online and offline, including rape and death threats, some linked to Chinese authorities. In 2024, over two dozen anonymous online accounts attempted to mobilize people on the far-right to attack two UK-based activists. In 2025, some London residents received anonymous letters urging them to hand over two “wanted” UK-based activists to the Chinese embassy. Similar letters targeted Ted Hui, an Australian-based activist. Joe Tay, who was running for office in Canada, had to scale back his campaign fearing for his safety after online harassment. Hong Kong police also took his family in for questioning.
Rewriting History
Hong Kong authorities have been seeking to rewrite history as the city’s information landscape is increasingly dominated by Beijing-friendly voices.
In 2022, the Hong Kong Education Bureau released four sets of textbooks denying that Hong Kong was ever a British colony. In 2023, the police aired a television program featuring a young activist in prison, expressing remorse about his participation in the 2019 protest in a style similar to China’s coerced televised confessions of activists.
The authorities have continued to characterize the 2019 protest movement as a “black-clad riot” instigated by “foreign proxies.” In addition, they have mobilized the Hong Kong justice system to rewrite one infamous event during the protest, when pro-Beijing thugs assaulted protesters and passersby at a train station.
Although the authorities arrested some of the alleged assailants, they also arrested some victims for “rioting” after the National Security Law was imposed, and convicted and sentenced them to between 25 months and 37 months in prison. The violent assault – witnessed by many Hong Kongers – is now being officially portrayed as a “fight” between “two groups of people who hold different political views.”
Imposing Ideological Control
The Chinese and Hong Kong governments have used the national security regime to impose ideological control on Hong Kong’s population.
The authorities have revised school curriculum and guidelines to mandate political indoctrination from kindergarten through primary and secondary school, with the aim of “systematically cultivating students’ … sense of national identity from an early age.” In 2023, the Hong Kong government eliminated Liberal Studies, a required subject for most secondary school students that encouraged critical thinking, blaming it for the 2019 protests and replacing it with one that fosters patriotism and requires trips to mainland China. Primary school students are encouraged to take similar trips. Secondary school students are taught “Xi Jinping Thought,” while publicly funded university students must take national security courses.
The government also imposes patriotism more broadly. It punishes dissent against Chinese national symbols, starkly illustrated by enactment of the National Anthem Law in June 2020 to criminalize “insulting” the Chinese national anthem. At least six people have been arrested for booing during the national anthem, failing to stand up while the national anthem was being played, and sharing a video in which the national anthem was replaced with the protest anthem “Glory to Hong Kong.”
At the same time, the authorities mark April 15 as National Security Education Day, organizing city-wide promotional events, and creating programs to recruit students and members of the public as “ambassadors” to promote national security. Hong Kong government departments, no longer politically neutral, fund shows featuring dancers dressed like Cultural Revolution Red Guards.
Click to expand Image A child poses for a photo at the Hong Kong Correctional Services Academy during the National Security Education Day in Hong Kong, April 15, 2023. © 2023 Louise Delmotte/AP PhotoBuilding a “Patriots Only” Hong Kong
Increasingly, Hong Kongers in careers with broad social reach are required to pass national security examinations, while those in leadership positions are required to show loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party.
Since 2020, China’s state-run media outlets have identified and attacked judges who ruled against the government or acquitted pro-democracy supporters. After being targeted by such a smear campaign, Judge Sham Shiu-man retired early and left Hong Kong in 2021.
In 2021, the authorities required more than 180,000 civil servants in Hong Kong to sign a document pledging allegiance to the government. Hundreds resigned or were fired for failing to do so. New civil servants are now required to pledge allegiance to the government and attend training that aims to instill patriotism.
Starting in 2023, kindergarten and publicly funded primary and secondary school teachers have been required to pass a test on their knowledge of the national security laws.
In 2024, the Hong Kong government amended the relevant regulations to ban for life any social worker convicted of national security offenses. It also restructured the Social Workers Registration Board, reducing the proportion of elected board members and requiring the board’s chair and vice-chair be appointed by the chief executive. The restructured board then suspended eight social workers with convictions related to the 2019 protests.
In 2025, the government introduced amendments to labor union laws, which will permanently bar those convicted of national security offenses from serving in labor unions and require that unions do not accept funding from “external forces.”
Even Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-shing, faces intensifying pressure to demonstrate loyalty. In 2025, Chinese officials and Beijing-owned newspapers subjected Lee to weeks of pressure as his conglomerate tried to sell its Panama Canal port assets to a US-led consortium of companies. Beijing-owned papers even suggested that the deal might endanger national security.
UAE: 24 Defendants Sentenced to Life Imprisonment
(Beirut) – The recent convictions of 24 defendants in the United Arab Emirates to life imprisonment were based on a fundamentally unfair mass trial, Human Rights Watch said today. On June 26, the Criminal Chamber of the UAE’s Federal Supreme Court overturned a prior judgment to dismiss the cases against 24 defendants, instead reconvicting and sentencing the defendants to life in prison. The UAE originally announced terrorism-related charges against these individuals in 2023 under the country’s deeply flawed counterterrorism law.
The June 26 ruling brings the total number of convictions in the mass trial case to 83, up from 53. Of those convicted, 67 defendants have received life sentences. Eighty-four defendants were originally referred to trial in December 2023. One person appears to have been acquitted, but Human Rights Watch was not able to confirm their identity.
On July 10, 2024, the Abu Dhabi Federal Appeals Court convicted 53 defendants and meted out sentences ranging from 10 years to life in prison following an unfair mass trial—the UAE’s second-largest—marred by due process and fair trial violations. The court dismissed the criminal cases against 24 others, but the UAE’s attorney general subsequently appealed the 24 dismissals. Yesterday’s ruling is the outcome of that appeal.
“The UAE’s second-largest mass trial case has been justified under the guise of countering terrorism, but it’s just part of the Emirati government’s relentless efforts to prevent the re-emergence of any independent civil society in the country,” said Joey Shea, United Arab Emirates researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Life in prison for nonviolent activism shows Abu Dhabi’s utter contempt for both peaceful criticism and the rule of law.”
In December 2023, while hosting the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), Emirati authorities brought charges against at least 84 defendants in retaliation for forming an independent advocacy group in 2010. Many of them were already serving prison sentences for the same or similar offenses. The unfair mass trial was marred by serious due process and fair trial violations, including restricted access to case material and information, limited legal assistance, judges directing witness testimony, violations of the principle of double jeopardy, credible allegations of serious abuse and ill-treatment, and hearings shrouded in secrecy.
In a statement released in January 2024, Emirati authorities accused the 84 defendants of establishing and managing a clandestine terrorist organization in the UAE known as the Justice and Dignity Committee. The charges appear to come from the UAE’s abusive 2014 counterterrorism law, which sets punishments of up to life in prison and even death for anyone who sets up, organizes, or runs such an organization.
Prominent activists such as Ahmed Mansoor, who is on Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa advisory board, and an academic, Nasser bin Ghaith, were on trial in the July 2024 mass trial case; both were sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment.
Given that the charges are based solely on defendants’ peaceful practice of their human rights and that the convictions were based on a fundamentally unfair trial, Emirati authorities should immediately overturn the convictions and release all defendants, Human Rights Watch said.
In March 2025, an Emirati court rejected all appeals by the 53 human rights defenders and political dissidents convicted in July 2024, upholding their unfair convictions and abusive sentences. On March 1, the Emirates News Agency (WAM), the UAE’s official state news agency, announced that the State Security Chamber of the Federal Supreme Court would issue the appeals verdict on March 4. The March 4 session was the first and only hearing for the appeal. None of the detainees were present, and only one of the defendants’ lawyers was able to attend the session, according to the Emirates Detainees Advocacy Center (EDAC), a human rights organization supporting imprisoned human rights defenders in the UAE.
Little is known about the 53 convicted defendants’ conditions because most are denied visits and calls from family members, EDAC said. “From what we have heard, they have been moved out of solitary, but everything is unconfirmed because there is no real source of information,” one relative said. “There is no real way to get information. We think this is just a sham trial.”
At least 60 of the defendants had already been convicted in 2013 for their involvement with the Justice and Dignity Committee, EDAC said. In 2013, the grossly unfair “UAE94” trial resulted in convictions of 69 critics of the government, including 8 in absentia, on charges that violated their rights to free expression, association, and assembly. These 69 defendants were among 94 people detained beginning in March 2012 in a wave of arbitrary arrests amid an unprecedented crackdown on dissent.
“Emirati authorities should overturn these convictions and release the defendants immediately and unconditionally,” Shea said.
Kyrgyzstan: Parliament Weakens Torture Protection, Media Freedom
(Bishkek, June 27, 2025) – Kyrgyzstan’s parliament on June 25, 2025, passed two draft laws that threaten to significantly weaken media freedom and protection against torture in the country, Human Rights Watch said today.
The draft Law on the Ombudsman effectively dismantles the independent National Center for the Prevention of Torture by merging it with the office of the Ombudsman. The draft Law on Mass Media grants authorities wide powers to deny media outlets registration, obstruct their work, and close them down without judicial oversight.
“Kyrgyzstan's parliament has put human rights protections at serious risk by passing bills that would dismantle crucial oversight mechanisms against torture and undermine media independence,” said Syinat Sultanalieva, Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “President Sadyr Japarov should veto both bills, which would breach Kyrgyzstan’s international human rights obligations and threaten people’s safety and freedom.”
The two draft laws were rushed through second and third readings in a single day, with substantial changes from the versions initially presented to parliament and approved in their first reading, depriving lawmakers and civil society of adequate time to review and respond to the modifications. Kyrgyzstan’s parliament has passed problematic laws in the past in a similarly rushed manner, at the end of its annual session, in violation of its own procedural regulations.
President Japarov should immediately send the bills back to parliament for proper review and revision following due parliamentary process and in consultation with civil society and international experts. The bills as currently written are incompatible with Kyrgyzstan’s international human rights obligations.
The push to merge the independent National Center for Torture Prevention with the Ombudsman's office, which would reduce the Center’s powers, is not new. In June 2022, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights urged Kyrgyzstan to halt a previous effort, warning that it would weaken torture prevention. The UN Human Rights Committee in 2022 specifically recommended that Kyrgyzstan provide the National Center with the necessary resources to carry out its mandate effectively and independently.
The UN Committee against Torture in 2021 also urged the government to ensure that the Center has adequate financial and human resources, and expressed concern about the 2020 repeal of a provision in Kyrgyzstan’s Criminal Code that had penalized obstruction of the Center’s exercise of its authority.
The National Center was established in 2012 after Kyrgyzstan ratified the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in 2008, and has been frequently praised by UN human rights experts. After the UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, visited Kyrgyzstan in March 2025, he noted that the Center was a “model for the Central Asia region, as the only independent national human rights institution that meets international standards.”
The government has also previously threatened independent media. The draft Mass Media law that parliament passed represents an attempt by the authorities to control information and silence independent voices. Lawmakers deliberately moved away from a previously approved compromise bill that had been developed in collaboration with media stakeholders and legal experts during 18 months of consultations, after a presidential decree established a working group in December 2022.
The bill approved on June 25, in second and third readings, rejects the compromise version. It reinstates the designation of all websites as media outlets and requires them to be registered under rules subject to governmental control. Failure to register would mean they are not allowed to disseminate information and risk prosecution if they do. Websites that are not operated by media entities, such as those belonging to national and international nongovernmental organizations and professional organizations, will most likely also fall under the scope of this designation.
These new registration requirements significantly increase the risk that independent media outlets will be denied registration or ordered to close without judicial oversight, and that the authorities will use the law to silence critical voices, Human Rights Watch said.
The law also restricts foreign ownership or investment in media companies, limiting foreign participation (both by individuals and legal entities) to no more than a 35 percent ownership stake, and notably not making any distinction between commercial media ventures and public interest/nonprofit media organizations. In the past, nonprofit independent media organizations in Kyrgyzstan have drawn on both domestic and foreign funding. Kyrgyzstan’s journalists, media experts, and lawyers have appealed to President Japarov not to sign the bill into law.
Kyrgyzstan’s international partners should urgently call on President Japarov to veto the bills and express their strong concern over measures that undermine fundamental human rights protections. They should make clear that such regressive steps will have consequences for Kyrgyzstan’s relationships and standing.
The European Parliament and EU member states in particular should raise how these bills breach the essential rule of law and rights clauses in the new Enhanced Partnership and Cooperation Agreement between the EU and Kyrgyzstan, which is pending ratification. The bills are also incompatible with Kyrgyzstan’s obligations under preferential trade regimes with the EU.
“These draft laws are a further dangerous regression in Kyrgyzstan’s human rights commitments,” Sultanalieva said. “President Japarov needs to decide if he will act on his commitment to human rights, stop these harmful bills from becoming law, and ensure proper consultation on any future legislation affecting fundamental freedoms.”
Ecuador: Public Integrity Law Endangers Children
(New York) – Reforms passed by Ecuador’s National Assembly and signed by President Daniel Noboa severely threaten children’s rights and fail to protect children who are recruited or used by organized crime groups, Human Rights Watch said today.
On June 24, 2025, the National Assembly approved the Public Integrity Law. The law’s stated goals are to eradicate violence and corruption across all public offices, improve public sector efficiency, and ensure that public goods and services meet citizens’ needs. But it includes harmful changes to laws on youth justice that put children’s rights at risk. President Noboa swiftly signed it into law on June 25.
“The National Assembly has pushed through reforms that put the rights of Ecuadorian children at risk,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “If authorities truly want to end the recruitment and use of children by organized crime groups, they should be focusing on protecting children and prosecuting those who recruit them.”
In recent years, Ecuador has seen a sharp surge in violence linked to organized crime, pushing homicide rates to record levels, including homicides of children. It has also led to increased child recruitment and compromised children’s right to a safe learning environment. But the measures in this law would punish children, not protect them from being recruited and subjected to abuse.
The law comes in the same month that President Noboa officially declared preventing and eradicating the recruitment and use of children by non-state actors a national priority. He ordered the creation of an interinstitutional committee tasked with formulating and implementing public policies to achieve this goal.
The law amends provisions of the Child and Adolescent Code to increase sentences for children. While the maximum sentence for a child was 8 years, now children could be sentenced to up to 15 years for crimes committed during what the government calls an “internal armed conflict.” These children, when turning 18, will finish serving their time in “special sections” of adult prisons.
Since January 2024, the government has invoked an “internal armed conflict” to justify loosening human rights protections in its fight against crime. The Constitutional Court has repeatedly ruled that the government’s arguments did not allow the court to verify the existence of the criteria established under international law for the existence of such armed conflict.
The law also prohibits the use of any measures other than incarceration as punishment for children convicted of crimes that carry sentences of over five years. In those cases, it also bans access to prison benefits such as open or semi-open regimes, that allow more flexible measures than strict confinement. The law increases the maximum period of pretrial detention from 90 days to one year for children accused of serious crimes.
These provisions should be amended so that they align with both the constitution and international human rights obligations.
Under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the arrest, detention, or imprisonment of a child must be in accordance with the law and even then should be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time. Similarly, under the Ecuadorian Constitution, youth justice should be governed by specialized legislation and institutions. The constitution indicates that children should only be subjected to “socio-educational measures” that are proportional to the infraction committed and that deprivation of liberty may only be used in exceptional circumstances and for as brief a period as possible.
In February, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child urged Ecuador to subject children to detention only as a last resort, for the shortest time necessary, and separate from adults. It also required the country to ensure regular reviews to facilitate release. The Committee also urged authorities to reject any proposals to prosecute children as adults for serious crimes, to promote noncustodial measures such as probation and community service, and to maintain the minimum age of criminal responsibility at 14.
The Committee on the Rights of the Child has said that punitive approaches that disregard children’s rights can have lasting consequences on their development and severely hinder their chances of social reintegration.
The government should also address underlying risk factors exploited by organized crime groups that use and recruit children, including entrenched poverty and loss of income as a result of widespread violence, lack of educational and economic opportunities, and violence and abuses faced by many children. It should take adequate measures to protect schools from violence, attacks or recruitment, without resorting to militarization, and create safe, supportive spaces for extracurricular activities where children can grow, learn, and engage in activities that both protect them, and steer them away, from crime and violence.
“These reforms are both abusive and ineffective. Denying children the chance to heal and reintegrate will only deepen cycles of violence and abuse,” Goebertus said. “Gang leaders will continue recruiting new children if those bearing the brunt of government policies are children themselves.”
El Salvador: Police Officers Speak Out About Abuses
(Washington, DC) – Interviews with police officers and internal police documents reveal abusive practices that have led to arbitrary detention and abuse of power in El Salvador, Human Rights Watch said today.
Police officers told Human Rights Watch that many arrests during the ongoing “war against gangs” were the result of pressure on police officers to meet daily arrest quotas and were based on dubious or fabricated evidence. They described arrests based on the fact that someone had a tattoo of any kind, on patently false information included in police reports, and on uncorroborated anonymous calls. The officers also described a climate of impunity that led some officers to demand bribes and, in some cases, demand sex from women in exchange for not arresting their relatives.
“President Nayib Bukele publicizes his security policies as a positive model for the world, but the police officers we spoke with tell a completely different story,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Their accounts provide a rare insight into how the Salvadoran police have fabricated evidence to fulfill arrests quotas, extorted innocent people, bypassed due process, and defied court orders.”
Since March 2022, El Salvador has been under a state of emergency, which suspended some due process rights. Security forces have since reported arresting over 86,000 people, including more than 3,000 children.
Human Rights Watch interviewed 11 police officers, with between 9 and 31 years of service. Nine are active members of the police. The two others have extensive knowledge about police and remain well connected with colleagues currently in the force. They included sergeants, investigators, forensic technicians, and agents in the states of Santa Ana, San Vicente, and San Salvador. Four of the interviews were conducted in San Salvador, and the rest by phone. Human Rights Watch has withheld the officers’ names and other identifying information due to security concerns. Human Rights Watch corroborated the police officers’ allegations with internal police documents, court rulings, and testimony from other police officers and victims of abuse.
Human Rights Watch has documented widespread human rights violations during the state of emergency including arbitrary detention, torture and other ill-treatment, and serious due process violations. The vast majority of detainees are held in pretrial detention, many in inhumane conditions.
While officers spoke of the serious security issues posed by gangs and said gang violence has decreased significantly, they denounced the tactics they said police were forced to adopt by their superiors. Officers said that they were often punished if they failed to meet daily arrest quotas. Some said they could not go off duty, have a meal, or rest at the station until they had met their quota. When officers refused or raised concerns about lack of evidence to justify an arrest, they were threatened with undesirable transfers or with being charged with the crime of “breach of duty.”
In some cases, they said, police files were fabricated. An officer said: “There are no investigations. Police just create profiles. These are arbitrary acts … that profile becomes the ‘evidence’ that someone is a gang member.”
Another officer said: “[People] would just call and say someone was a ‘collaborator,’ and we would go arrest them.” He described the practice as “detain first, investigate later.”
Many officers said that accusations received via anonymous calls that led to arrests at times proved to be false and based solely on personal disputes. As one officer put it, “People were detained just because a neighbor didn’t like them.”
Some officers also said that they had instructions not to allow detained people to be released. They described a “protocol” to create a new case against anyone courts ordered released to rearrest them immediately, in some cases, as one officer described it, “just as they passed the prison gates.”
Officers also said that the state of emergency and lack of accountability create an environment of impunity. As one of them described it, police felt “all-powerful.”
They also said that harsh working conditions, low salaries, and personal security risks, which have been long lasting problems in El Salvador, facilitate corruption and abuse of power.
Officers described how their colleagues extorted people and engaged in acts of sexual exploitation. “[The attitude of officers is] ‘if you don’t do what I say, I’ll apply the state of emergency to you,’” one said. “The state of emergency became a tool of coercion.”
“Gang violence has clearly decreased in El Salvador,” Goebertus said. “But Salvadorans are not safe: they are exposed to abuses by the country’s unchecked security forces. Experience suggests the abusive behavior will only worsen and spread if police are not held strictly accountable.”
Police Quotas and Other Perverse Incentives
Several police officers said that at times their superiors set a quota for the minimum number of arrests they needed to make each day and threatened to punish them if they did not meet it. They said such orders led to the arbitrary detention of people with no connections to gangs.
A police officer said:
We knew who the gang members were. But when they fled to the mountains … they just told us to bring in five people a day. “Go out and detain five people: I don’t care why you arrest them.” At the morning lineup at 8 a.m., they gave the order for the patrol unit to conduct five arrests. The order was issued and came from the top. Some colleagues didn’t agree with it, others did.
Another police officer said:
Commanders demanded daily arrest quotas from officers at national police stations. If someone “looked suspicious,” they would arrest them. [If they didn’t comply], high-ranking officers threatened them with disciplinary proceedings or dismissal from the National Civil Police.
A third one said:
They imposed arrest quotas on us. Each patrol had to detain three to four people per shift. If not, we couldn’t return to base. Just to get a break, [police officers] arrest whoever. Our colleagues do it because they’re forced to. Our three-day leave would be taken away as punishment. We had identified the areas where the gangs were located, and we began to carry out illegal arrests.
Some police officers said they were threatened with transfers to other police stations or with serious sanctions if they failed to bring people in. “If we didn’t detain someone, they threatened us with charges of breach of duty [punishable by dismissal and incarceration]. In the end, we gave in out of fear,” one said.
Human Rights Watch also reviewed an April 2022 internal police report, in which three officers wrote to the inspector-general of public security, a police oversight body, describing sanctions against officers who refused to make an arrest due to lack of evidence. The report indicates that the officers had been ordered to detain the relative of a gang member and “not to return to base without conducting the arrest.” It also notes that the officers were required to make “a daily quota of five arrests.” The report also indicates that the officers refused to make an arrest because they believed there was no evidence linking the relative to crimes. The following day they were transferred to another police station.
These accounts are consistent with findings from the news outlet La Prensa Gráfica, which reported that officers were instructed to meet arrest quotas – a total of up to 1,000 per day nationwide – and faced threats of sanctions if they failed to comply.
Use of Dubious or Fabricated Evidence
Police officers said that the police made arrests on the basis of weak or false evidence. For example, they said, any visible tattoo was treated as grounds for detention.
Despite its inaccuracy, authorities have long relied on tattoos as an indicator of gang membership. Under the state of emergency, however, police said this practice has become even more entrenched. “Having a tattoo in El Salvador is now a crime,” one police officer said. “If the police see your tattoos, they won’t stop harassing you. If they don’t detain you, they stop and search you at any time, they take photos of you.”
The officer also said that police used tattoos as an excuse to accuse people of belonging to gangs, artificially increasing the number of alleged gang members arrested. He said that “police commanders wanted people detained for the crime of ‘unlawful association,’” which is typically used against gang members. “For example, if two people were fighting on the street, [prior to the state of emergency] we used to detain them for ‘public disorder.’ But under the state of emergency, if they have tattoos, they were also charged with ‘unlawful association’, even if they have nothing to do with gangs.”
A police sergeant said:
Today, being a police officer no longer has any real meaning: we’re like puppets. A police commander told me to go give a statement to the prosecutor’s office saying that the people they had imprisoned here were gang members. I said I wouldn’t do that. “They are criminals, thieves, but they aren’t gang members. Let someone else do it.” He told me I’d be sanctioned if I didn’t do it.
Several officers also said that many arrests, especially in the first months of the state of emergency, were made on the basis of uncorroborated anonymous calls to the police emergency 123 hotline. An officer said: “They would just call and say someone was a ‘collaborator,’ and we would go arrest them.”
Some said that the accusations made on anonymous calls were at times false and based solely on personal disputes. As one officer described it:
Anyone can call 123 and file an anonymous report. An anonymous call should not be treated as an arrest warrant. Because of business competition or family disputes, people have misused the system to falsely accuse others of being criminals.
Several officers said that police reports (fichas policiales) used to justify arrests frequently relied on weak or fabricated evidence. They said that officials in the Information Analysis and Processing Section and the Police Intelligence Division created these reports based on unverified or false information.
These internal files, which are normally based on criminal records and intelligence reports, include names, ID numbers, addresses, photographs, alleged gang affiliations, aliases, and other information. They are kept in internal police databases and typically used by police officers to identify the people they arrest or stop at checkpoints.
Officers said that during the state of emergency having a prior police record, regardless of whether there was a pending arrest warrant or investigation, has been sufficient grounds for police to make an arrest.
For example, one officer said:
There are no investigations. Police just create “profiles.” These are arbitrary acts. For example, a neighbor calls 123 and says, “I saw some young men using drugs.” A report is filed, the police arrive, and an intelligence investigator creates a “profile” in a PowerPoint template. That “profile” becomes the “evidence” that someone is a gang member.
Another officer said:
You’d hear police commanders saying, “Add in that he’s a gang member,” just so they could justify an arrest. If I didn’t like someone, I could ask for their documents, create a file, and in the “observations section” write something like “he’s a collaborator”: all based on a neighbor’s gossip or an anonymous call. That’s how we detained people.
A third officer described a “method” used to create the reports:
The other method they use is that police or soldiers stop you and fill out a report. They take your photo and send it to a database. Using the photo from your ID, they create a police report, and then they fabricate the connection with gangs themselves. Since their mission is to make arrests, they label you a gang collaborator. You don’t have any tattoos, but they claim “public sources” say you’re a collaborator. They just make it up.
The investigative outlet El Faro found, after reviewing 690 criminal files, that many used imprecise descriptions such as “looking like a gang member,” “fitting a profile,” or “nervous appearance.”
In March 2024 officers detained the son of a police sergeant, accusing him of being a gang member. He was detained after soldiers intercepted him during a hike in Santa Ana and flagged his tattoos – which include his initials and a small lizard – as gang-related, even though he had no prior gang record.
In response to the arrest, a senior police officer issued a memo to the Department of Police Investigations, which Human Rights Watch reviewed, reminding police officers that police files should be based on “information previously confirmed through an investigation and/or existing in the corresponding files or control systems.” The son of the sergeant remains in detention.
Human Rights Watch reviewed several court rulings that sentenced children accused of gang membership solely on the basis of police files and testimony from police involved in the arrest. Typically, police officers cited police files and nothing else when testifying in court that a defendant is a member of a gang, and prosecutors did not put other witnesses on the stand or offer additional evidence. Even though police files and testimony are often the only “evidence” presented against defendants at trial, judges repeatedly gave them more weight than the testimony of defense witnesses or school or work records that defense lawyers offer to prove that the children accused were not gang members.
In one ruling, a judge acknowledged that the use of police files against children appeared to contradict article 30 of the Juvenile Criminal Law, which states in part: “[c]riminal records cannot be kept for offenses attributed to children.” However, the judge ruled that a police file does not constitute “a formal criminal record” and that the state of emergency had, in her view, “g[iven] legal effect to the police intelligence database arising from citizen reports.”
Human Rights Watch reviewed a 2024 Attorney General’s Office document instructing officials to compile photos in “photograph albums” of alleged members of two MS-13 “cliques,” or units. A police officer said that the “photograph albums,” which normally include photos of people and their tattoos, will most likely be used as evidence of gang membership in mass trials authorized under a July 2023 law.
Other Forms of Abuse of Power
Officers said the state of emergency gives them broad powers that many of their colleagues abuse. They said that the authorities foster an environment of impunity that allows officers to target anyone, regardless of whether there is evidence linking them to a crime. Some described it as a “blank check.”
One recalled a police officer telling a street vendor, “I have the power to decide whether I lock you up or not.” He said that the officer arrested the vendor because she did not respond to the officers’ order to move her food cart. “She ended up in jail. She was crying and told us it was her birthday,” the officer said. “I saw this with my own eyes.”
Police officers also said some of their colleagues received bribes to arrest people. One former police officer said:
People detained under the state of emergency were reported by their enemies or adversaries for all kinds of reasons: business competition, family disputes over inheritance.… Police have made arrests on those grounds, often in exchange for payment. That has been the basis for many detentions.
Some officers also said that the police demanded bribes or engaged in sexual exploitation, soliciting sexual favors in exchange for preventing the detention of a relative. One said:
In some cases, police officers threatened women, saying that if they didn’t comply with their demands for sex with them, they would arrest their cousin, brother, or husband. And it happened. Police officers even told people, “Give me this amount of money or I’ll take your son.” That’s extortion.
These allegations are consistent with findings by La Prensa Gráfica. In one case, officers reportedly told a woman that her brother, who has a mental disability, had been arrested to fulfill a detention quota and that she would need to engage in sexual acts with several officers to secure his release.
Rearrest of Detainees
Since the start of the state of emergency, Salvadoran authorities have detained over 86,000 people.
El Salvador has one of the highest rates of pretrial detention in Latin America and the Caribbean. According to a World Bank report from April 2025, only 23 percent of people in prison have been convicted and sentenced: the lowest proportion in Latin America.
According to government figures, over 8,000 people detained during the state of emergency have been released.
One reason that so many innocent people remain behind bars, an officer said, is that police have instructions to prevent the release of detainees. Two officers said that people released from prison during the state of emergency are often re-arrested immediately upon exiting the prison gates.
One of them said:
They don’t let people leave the prisons: officers wait for them at the gates. Judges order their release. They take you out of the prison, past the gate, and when you’re walking away, they arrest you again. The same prison guards call the police and tell them that a certain person is about to be released, and they rearrest them for the same charge: “unlawful association.” They want to cover up [that there are people] who have nothing to do with gangs or prisons.
Another officer who managed a police station where people who had been arrested were held, said that officers were instructed not to comply with judicial orders to release people:
There’s a protocol: under the state of emergency everyone must be rearrested. They don’t get released.… Even if they had served their sentence, a new process [is] opened against them.
Several media outlets have documented cases of people being rearrested immediately after their release.
Police Working Conditions
Police officers said that harsh working conditions, low salaries, and personal security risks, which have been longstanding problems in El Salvador, facilitate corruption and abuse of power.
One said the police station where he works is overcrowded, with one bathroom for 50 people, water often running out, and toilets often unusable. During the first months of the state of emergency, some officers remained on duty for shift after shift without leave for up to two months.
According to official data from 2024, agents – who occupy the lowest rank within the National Civil Police (PNC) – earn between US$424 and US$603 per month, depending on their years of service. Agents make up the vast majority of the police force. Officers said that low salaries facilitate corruption. “You can’t live on that,” an officer with 28 years of service said. “That’s why some officers turn to corruption.”
Many officers also were traumatized by the nature of the work and threats from gang members. “They told me a hundred times they were going to kill me,” an officer said. “Being a police officer was harder than the war,” another one said.
Kenya: Hold Authorities Accountable for Protesters’ Deaths
(Nairobi) – Kenyan authorities should be held accountable for all abuses during countrywide protests on June 25, 2025, including killings, gun injuries, and beatings, Human Rights Watch said today. Authorities should also embrace international norms and, going forward, ensure security forces’ response to the ongoing protests is lawful and adheres to international human rights standards.
Thousands of people took to the streets on the morning of June 25 in Nairobi and across several counties in Kenya to commemorate the deaths of the protesters who were killed by security forces during the June 2024 demonstrations. At the time of writing, preliminary media reports indicated that, in addition to the police presence, Kenyan authorities deployed the military to push back large numbers of protesters heading toward Nairobi’s Central Business District and the State House, the official residence of the president. According to media reports, at least 16 people were shot dead by the police, including one each in Machakos, Kisii, and Nakuru counties, while over 400 people were reportedly admitted to Kenyatta National Hospital with bullet wounds and other injuries. Among those admitted for treatment was NTV journalist Ruth Sarmwei, who was hit by a rubber bullet while covering the protests.
“Kenyan authorities should not treat protesters as criminals,” said Otsieno Namwaya, associate Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Both Kenyan law and international human rights law require Kenya to recognize protests as a legitimate form of expression that the government should protect rather than ruthlessly silence.”
This afternoon, the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) issued a directive signed by its director general, David Mugonyito, to all television and radio stations to end live broadcasts of the protests, as they allegedly “are contrary to Articles 33(2) and 34(1) of the Constitution of Kenya and Section 46I of the Kenya Information and Communications Act, 1998.”
Shortly after the release of the CA directive, at least three television stations—NTV, KTN, and Citizen TV—reported that their signals had been switched off for allegedly defying the directive. Key players in the media sector, notably the Kenya Union of Journalists and Kenya Editors Guild, have described the CA action as a threat to press freedom.
The Kenya Media Sector Working Group, the Law Society of Kenya, and a coalition of civil society organizations accused the government of ignoring the constitution and a court order that found a similar directive issued during the 2024 protests to be unconstitutional and urged media houses to ignore it. In the early evening, a high court in Milimani, Nairobi, issued a conservatory order suspending the CA ban on media coverage of the protests.
Reports by Kenyan and international human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, found that police and other security agencies, such as the military and the secret service, were implicated in the killing, abductions, disappearances, and maiming of both protesters and non-protesters during the 2024 anti-Finance Bill protests across Kenya.
The 2024 protests took a violent turn on June 25 of that year when security forces used lethal force to disperse protesters who breached the walls of the Kenyan parliament and made their way into the chambers. The state-funded Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) reported in December 2024 that police had killed at least 63 and abducted 87 between June and October 2024. Still today, the whereabouts of at least 26 people remain unknown.
In May 2025, the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) said it had completed investigations of 22 deaths that occurred during the 2024 protests, but only two of these are in court. Kenyan human rights groups have criticized the IPOA for not doing enough to ensure police accountability.
“Kenyan authorities should refrain from deploying the military, which has been implicated in serious abuses in the past, to manage peaceful protests,” Namwaya said. “President William Ruto should uphold constitutional guarantees of media and press freedom by immediately ensuring the restoration of signals of media houses switched off by the CA.”
Philippines: Trans Rights Activist Murdered
(Manila) – A hooded gunman in General Santos City in the southern Philippines carried out an apparent targeted killing on June 23, 2025, of a transgender rights activist who worked as a radio commentator, Human Rights Watch said today.
The media reported that an unidentified man shot Ali Jejhon Macalintal several times at the acupuncture clinic she owned in General Santos City, and fled on a motorcycle. Police said they were investigating whether Macalintal's history of activism, as well as her recent business ventures, were possible motives for the attack.
“Ali Macalintal's murder is a brutal reminder that engaging in any kind of activism in the Philippines carries grave risks,” said Carlos Conde, senior Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities should leave no stone unturned in finding out why she was killed and who was responsible.”
Macalintal, a 39-year-old trans woman, was an activist for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, where she also advocated for the rights of Muslim Filipinos, known as Moros, and Indigenous peoples. She was the deputy-secretary general of the human rights group Karapatan in General Santos City until 2018. She also worked as media liaison for the leftist activist group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan.
The authorities should fully and impartially investigate whether Macalintal’s killing was motivated by her political activism or her gender identity, Human Rights Watch said.
In 2002, Macalintal and two other Moros were arrested for allegedly taking part in the bombing of a department store in General Santos City in which 15 people were killed. At the time, she was a member of the activist group Bayan Muna, which Philippine officials often targeted for harassment and “red-tagging” – the practice of alleging that individuals are members or sympathizers of the communist insurgent group New People’s Army.
Macalintal and her co-accused spent eight years in police detention before a court acquitted them in 2010, ruling that the evidence submitted by the authorities was inadmissible. She and the others alleged that they were mistreated and tortured in custody.
After her release, Macalintal continued her activism despite the threats she faced. In a statement, Karapatan said that Macalintal, in messages to them in 2024, reported harassment by government security forces. In 2019, in text messages viewed by Human Rights Watch, Macalintal received threats, one of them in the form of a media advisory that she had been shot to death. The threats did not deter her activism. “She was never afraid to speak truth to power and expose uncomfortable truths,” Reyna Valmores Salinas, spokesperson for the LGBT rights group Bahaghari, said in a statement.
“Strong government action is needed to put an end to the targeting of Filipino activists,” Conde said. “President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. needs to demonstrate his commitment to human rights by ensuring justice for Macalintal and other victims of abuses.”
Türkiye: Jailed Mayor’s Lawyer Detained
(İstanbul, June 26, 2025) – An Istanbul court’s decision on June 19, 2025, to allow the detention of a leading defense lawyer for the jailed Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu appears to be in reprisal for his legal representation of his client, Human Rights Watch and the Turkey Human Rights Litigation Support Project said today.
Turkish authorities should immediately release the lawyer, Mehmet Pehlivan, whose detention is based on vague witness statements pending an investigation into his alleged “membership of a criminal organization,” an offense carrying a possible sentence of two to four years in prison. Leading a criminal organization is one of the charges İmamoğlu was also detained on. The authorities have targeted at least three other lawyers defending İmamoğlu or his colleagues, initiating investigations against them for speaking to the media or allegedly attempting to interfere with a fair trial.
“It is alarming to see that the Erdoğan government is not only unlawfully attacking its main opposition presidential candidate, but also his defense lawyers,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Detaining Mehmet Pehlivan looks to be a retaliatory abuse of power, and he should be released immediately.”
Failure to release Pehlivan would not only constitute a violation of his right to liberty and security, but his right to discharge his professional duties as a lawyer and his client’s right to a fair trial, the organizations said.
Investigations targeting Pehlivan began days after İmamoğlu’s detention on March 23. Pehlivan had previously said at a February 25 news conference and elsewhere that the authorities’ move to revoke İmamoğlu’s university diploma to prevent him from being eligible as a presidential candidate had been arbitrary and unlawful. Police had previously arrested Pehlivan on March 28 allegedly on suspicion of money laundering. A court released him subject to an international travel ban.
The Istanbul prosecutor called Pehlivan again to testify on June 19. Pehlivan refused on the grounds that the justice minister had not granted permission to investigate him, a necessary prerequisite to opening investigations into lawyers. A court then accepted the prosecutor’s request to detain Pehlivan in the scope of the ongoing criminal investigation targeting İmamoğlu and over 200 officials and businesspeople working with the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality.
Prosecutors are relying on witness statements by two suspects in the investigation under the “effective repentance” law, which potentially allows reduced sentences for helping with the investigation. The Istanbul Court ordered Pehlivan’s detention solely on the basis of these statements.
The witnesses alleged in vague and unsubstantiated terms that Pehlivan operated within what the prosecutor argues was a criminal network’s organizational hierarchy to orchestrate the appointment of particular lawyers to represent and meet with suspects, to attempt to access confidential investigation files and witness statements, and to pressure witnesses
Pehlivan faces another possible criminal investigation after members of Türkiye’s Higher Education Board filed a criminal complaint accusing him of defamation and insult on the basis of his public remarks about the board regarding the revocation of İmamoğlu’s university diploma. Progress in this investigation also depends on Justice Ministry authorization.
The prosecutors opened the investigations against the three other lawyers, alleging that they violated the confidentiality of the investigation by commenting on it in the media or that they allegedly attempted to influence a fair trial by briefing those who were under investigation.
Media reports indicate that the prosecutor’s office planned to investigate a fourth lawyer, but so far he has not been summoned to testify. One of the three lawyers under investigation also acted on behalf of Pehlivan. The three have been conditionally released under court orders that also imposed an international travel ban.
“The judicial harassment of lawyers like Mehmet Pehlivan, who represent clients facing politically motivated charges, is part of a broader pattern of shrinking democratic space and disregard of the rule of law in Turkey,” said Ayşe Bingöl Demir of the Turkey Litigation Support Project. “Lawyers are essential to upholding fundamental rights, and their strong public stance challenges government-led efforts to control the narrative. This crackdown signals that effective legal defense is seen as a threat, and unless firmly addressed by the international community, it risks losing more ground to the growing authoritarianism.”
UN Financing Development Meeting Should Advance Tax Justice
(Seville) – The United Nations conference on financing for development should help pave the way for meaningful progress on improving international tax cooperation to benefit everyone’s human rights, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch issued a database on tax references made by UN treaty bodies.
The fourth international meeting in development financing will begin on June 30, 2025, in Seville, Spain. The conference will bring together governments, international and regional organizations, civil society, financial and trade institutions, and businesses to agree on key reforms for financing at all levels, including global systemic barriers to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
“Current flaws in tax systems and tax cooperation deprive governments of billions of dollars in revenue and undermine their capacity to deliver on their human rights obligations, such as to health and education, as well as to development,” said Lama Fakih, acting deputy executive director at Human Rights Watch. “The Financing for Development Conference in Seville is a chance for the international community to commit to meaningful change, including by supporting ongoing negotiations for a UN tax treaty.”
Ahead of the conference, on June 27, civil society organizations, including Human Rights Watch, will hold a day-long conference highlighting the links between taxation, public services, and development. Governments have already agreed to a draft outcome document for the Seville Conference. After the United States withdrew from negotiations, the agreement was adopted by consensus across the remaining 192 countries.
The conference is an opportunity to mobilize support for a United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, which governments will be negotiating until 2027. The treaty process was initiated in 2022 by African countries, which face particularly consequential losses under the current tax system yet lack fair representation in international economic decision-making.
Even though countries have already agreed on an outcome document for the Seville conference, it will be a critical opportunity to discuss how to carry out these commitments. It will also be important to collectively address economic issues, including their human rights dimensions, amid global instability.
Equitable global tax rules are key to supporting “human rights economies” that align domestic and international economic decision-making with the realization of human rights. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) obliges its 172 states parties to use maximum available resources, including through international cooperation, to fulfill economic, social, and cultural rights, such as health, education, and social security.
Tax cooperation is critical to realizing those and other human rights obligations, by making it possible for governments to raise revenues to fund these rights and by reducing inequality within and between countries.
Several of the UN committees charged with assessing states’ compliance with human rights treaties have consistently urged states to align their tax systems with their human rights obligations, particularly those charged with interpreting and monitoring state compliance with the ICESCR and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
These committees have emphasized the importance of improving international cooperation and ensuring that their tax rules do not undermine other governments’ ability to meet their human rights obligations. Others have focused on more specific human rights dimensions of taxation, including how particular tax policies can either reinforce or effectively combat harmful patterns of discrimination within societies.
The Human Rights Watch database includes every reference to taxes made by these treaty bodies in their periodic assessments of states’ human rights performance since 2007. It categorizes them according to key themes, such as nondiscrimination, adequacy of available resources, and progressive taxation. Human Rights Watch found that since 2007, seven treaty bodies included some discussion of tax in 168 reviews of 98 states’ compliance with their human rights obligations.
Many governments face significant constraints raising revenues they need to improve the protection or progressive realization of human rights under existing international tax rules and practices, and many are also saddled with high debt servicing costs. This is a key driver of persistent human rights problems that deprive millions of people of critical health services or quality education.
Recent Human Rights Watch analyses of health spending globally and education spending in Africa, including in Egypt, show that most governments are failing to meet minimum spending on public services in order to realize rights, leading to high rates of school dropout and worsening employment conditions for public health workers and teachers.
Human Rights Watch research also documents that emerging labour models, such as platform or “gig” work, allow companies to avoid tax and social security contributions, undermining funding for public services and social protection while building billion-dollar industries.
While many Global North countries opposed efforts led by Global South countries for a commitment on a binding instrument to address debt, the agreed text for the conference includes several positive commitments for international tax cooperation.
These include a commitment “to engage constructively in the negotiations on a United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation” and an assertion that “governments will make sure that multinational companies are taxed “where economic activity occurs.” The ability of multinational companies to shift profits to tax havens is a major source of revenue loss for governments. The draft outcome document also includes specific commitments for transparency and exchange of information critical to stemming tax abuse and avoidance.
“A strong and unified commitment to tax justice could finally help turn the tide on an international system that has faltered,” Fakih said. “Billions of people are suffering the consequences of severely underfunded public services, even as the wealth of the richest continues to soar.”
Ethiopia: Crackdown on Health Workers’ Protests
(Nairobi) – The Ethiopian authorities should immediately rescind the suspension of a prominent health professionals organization and meaningfully address public healthcare workers’ outstanding grievances, Human Rights Watch said today.
The government suspended the Ethiopian Health Professionals Association (EHPA) in early June 2025, following over a month of strikes by public healthcare workers for better working conditions and adequate pay. During the work stoppages, the authorities arbitrarily detained dozens of public healthcare workers across Ethiopia, either without charge or for peacefully exercising basic liberties. On May 30, the EHPA called for “an immediate stop” to “dismissals from work,” the use of “threats and intimidation,” and vacancy postings aimed at replacing striking professionals.
“Since May, the Ethiopian authorities have resorted to repressive tactics instead of addressing healthcare workers’ concerns about their livelihoods and safety,” said Laetitia Bader, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The government should immediately lift the suspension of the Ethiopian Health Professionals Association and stop harassing healthcare workers.”
According to 2022 World Health Organization data, Ethiopia’s public healthcare spending is far below the international benchmarks of 0.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) compared with the average of 1.2 percent for other low-income countries. A surgeon told Human Rights Watch that despite being in the upper echelons of the pay scale, he earned only US$80 a month. “I cannot even change my shoes,” he said. “I cannot even properly feed my child.”
The Ethiopian Authority for Civil Society Organizations (ACSO), a government body that oversees nongovernmental groups, suspended the EHPA, one of the first groups to endorse the public healthcare workers’ demands. The association took part in discussions organized by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission with the government in late May, which did not resolve the issues. On June 21, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed met with a select group of healthcare professionals.
The EHPA’s president, Yonatan Dagnaw, told the media that ACSO claimed that the association had not held a general assembly or submitted financial reports, and Yonatan was quoted as saying that the association had complied with the “guidelines and laws of the country.” He told the media that he believed that the suspension was linked to the health workers’ movement.
The healthcare workers carried out a month-long social media campaign. On May 13, they halted non-emergency services at public hospitals and medical teaching institutions across the country.
On May 15, the Health Ministry ordered striking workers to return to work or face legal action. In the statement, posted on social media, the ministry alleged that unnamed healthcare workers had spread false information about the work stoppages.
Beginning in early May, the authorities arrested, detained, and then released dozens of doctors, including Yonatan. On May 23, the Ethiopian Police Commission announced that it had detained 47 healthcare workers, including physicians and medical residents. An online healthcare workers’ group told Human Rights Watch that 148 healthcare workers had been arrested between early May and early June, though this figure could not be corroborated.
Several doctors, a doctor’s relative, and members of healthcare organizations described cases of harassment and arbitrary detention. For example, the authorities detained Dr. Mahlet Guush, a pathologist, for over three weeks in the Addis Ababa Police Commission headquarters, after the BBC’s Focus on Africa podcast interviewed her regarding conditions facing medical professionals in the country. Officials arrested her without a warrant and searched her house, seizing two laptops and two mobile phones, a source said.
The authorities initially said in a letter to the First Instance Court that they were investigating her along with eight others, “most of them doctors,” for inciting violence and unrest in the country by allegedly coordinating with “anti-peace” groups. They also accused those detained of “abandoning their duties” and “conspiring to erode public trust in the government.” The police never charged the group members and released them all by June 12.
In Ethiopia’s embattled Amhara region, local militias arrested a physician and other hospital staff who had participated in a short protest and transferred them to police custody, where they spent a week in detention. The physician said he was arrested without a warrant and was never brought to court and charged. “I think they want to intimidate the health workers,” he said. “They simply said I was with the opposition armed forces around there.” After his release, the authorities threatened him and two other detained healthcare workers. “They said if there is anything again, you are in trouble,” he said. “It will be hard for you if something like this happens again.”
Although Ethiopia’s labor proclamation prohibits medical practitioners from striking, the authorities have not invoked it, as far as Human Rights Watch has been able to determine. The country’s civil servants’ proclamation, which regulates public healthcare workers, does not prohibit strikes. The Health Ministry accused healthcare workers who had gone on strike of violating the civil servants’ proclamation by committing misconduct that could harm their healthcare institution.
International human rights law, including International Labour Organization conventions, protects the right to strike but allows for some restrictions on that right under domestic law, including with regard to workers who provide essential services like health care. Article 42 of the Ethiopian Constitution broadly embraces that approach, affirming the right to strike but with some limitations.
Lawful restrictions on the right of healthcare workers to strike do not permit the authorities to harass, bring criminal charges against, or deprive healthcare workers of their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly protected under international human rights law, Human Rights Watch said.
“The Ethiopian authorities won’t be able to tackle the country’s serious healthcare problems by suspending doctors’ associations or by harassing and jailing healthcare workers,” Bader said. “The government should instead address healthcare workers’ legitimate concerns through meaningful dialogue.”
Bangladesh: Foreign Aid Cuts Affect Rohingya Children’s Education
(Bangkok, June 26, 2025) – United States and other foreign donor cutbacks in humanitarian aid have worsened the already existing education crisis for 437,000 school-age children in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, Human Rights Watch said today. On June 3, 2025, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) suspended thousands of “learning centers” run by nongovernmental organizations in the refugee camps, due to lack of funding.
The only education currently in the Bangladesh refugee camps is at schools established by the Rohingya community without outside support or official recognition. Bangladesh’s interim government should urgently lift restrictions on education for Rohingya refugees, such as lack of accreditation, and donors should support community-led schools. The government should also permit Rohingya children to enroll in schools outside the camps.
“The US and other donor governments are abandoning education for Rohingya children after the previous Bangladesh government long blocked it,” said Bill Van Esveld, associate children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. “The interim Bangladesh government should uphold everyone’s right to education, while donors should support the Rohingya community’s efforts to prevent a lost generation of students.”
In April and May, Human Rights Watch spoke with 39 Rohingya refugee students, parents, and teachers in the camps in the Cox’s Bazar District, 22 on Bhasan Char island also housing refugees, and 14 international and Bangladeshi teachers, humanitarian workers, and education experts. Most Rohingya fled persecution and wartime atrocities in Myanmar, where they are effectively denied citizenship and other rights.
In 2024, the US government provided US$300 million to respond to the Rohingya refugee crisis, over half of the total amount received by humanitarian agencies. But as of June 2025, the administration of President Donald Trump had slashed aid to $12 million. By April, the humanitarian education sector in Bangladesh – which funds the learning centers – had secured only about $22 million of its $72 million annual budget and was significantly reducing expenditures. Out of a target of 437,000 school-age children in the camps, about 304,000 were enrolled in the learning centers, now closed. UNICEF aimed to reopen the learning centers it funded for classes 6 and above by June 29, and encouraged nongovernmental organizations NGOs to reopen lower classes if they could find other sources of funding.
Rohingya refugees said that community-led schools offered higher-quality education than the learning centers. They hired teachers who had completed most of their upper secondary schooling, and classes had multiple teachers who specialized in different subjects.
The community-led schools, unsupported by government or private donor funding, charge parents monthly tuition fees ranging from around $0.50 for class 1 up to $5 for class 12, a barrier to enrollment for some families. One refugee said: “Parents want to send kids to community-led schools but can’t afford the fees, so the only options are [learning centers]. But when they see that the kids aren’t learning, they send the child to work.”
“There are over 100 [community-led] schools [in the Cox’s Bazar camps],” a principal said. “But no humanitarian [groups] are supporting us, because the Bangladesh authorities don’t recognize us.”
Teachers said the lack of certification, which affected learning centers as well as community-led schools, also undermined students’ hopes to build a better future upon eventual return to Myanmar. “If you made it to grade 12, but without a certificate, you will have to start all over from the beginning,” a community-school teacher said.
Lack of education opportunities has also increased children’s vulnerability to spiraling violence by armed groups and criminal gangs in the Cox’s Bazar camps, including abductions, recruitment, and trafficking. Abductions of children were so frequent in late 2024 that many parents stopped allowing their children to leave their shelters to go to school, refugees said. Protection monitors reported 51 child abductions in the first quarter of 2025.
With the learning centers shut down due to the funding crisis, whether or not funding is found to re-open them, the interim Bangladesh government and donors should recognize and fund community-led schools to increase their capacity, Human Rights Watch said.
The interim Bangladesh government should recognize community-led schools, and the United Nations and aid agencies should include Rohingya educators in decision-making and leadership roles, Human Rights Watch said. Recognition of Rohingya-led schools could encourage donor support and help achieve better instruction for more students.
Bangladesh should follow the example of countries, including Türkiye, that have accredited and certified education for refugee children, including refugee-led schools teaching the curricula of their countries of origin.
Under international human rights law, all children have the right to quality education, without discrimination, regardless of their residency or migration status. International standards for refugee education recommend that refugees meaningfully participate in the planning, implementation, and monitoring of programs.
“The previous Bangladesh government for years blocked education for hundreds of thousands of Rohingya children because they were refugees,” Van Esveld said. “The interim government should reject old policies and support education without discrimination for all children.”
For additional details, please see below.
Background
Educating Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh
Bangladesh hosts over one million Rohingya refugees, 750,000 of whom fled the Myanmar military’s war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide in 2017. An additional 150,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since mid-2024 to escape hostilities between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army, an ethnic armed group that now controls most of Myanmar’s Rakhine State. Because Rohingya in Rakhine State live under apartheid and persecution, children’s access to education has eroded and is now almost nonexistent, with schools closed due to conflict.
Bangladesh’s national security adviser has said that the interim government’s policy is to repatriate Rohingya to Myanmar, even though repression and violence make safe, dignified, and voluntary returns impossible. The Bangladesh government’s restrictions on education will undermine Rohingyas’ ability to rebuild their lives when returns are possible. “If they don’t get an education here,” said a humanitarian education worker, “when they go back home they will have a huge learning gap.”
The Bangladesh government has prohibited Rohingya refugee children who have arrived since 2017 from enrolling in public or private schools, learning Bangla, or studying a formal curriculum, to prevent their long-term integration in Bangladesh. Humanitarian agencies initially responded by establishing “learning centers” in the Cox’s Bazar camps without a set curriculum. By 2018, Rohingya refugee teachers in the camps had also created informal community-led schools, teaching the Myanmar curriculum.
Additional learning centers have since been set up in Bhasan Char island’s reinforced-concrete cyclone shelters.
In 2020, the Bangladesh government permitted the learning centers to introduce the Myanmar curriculum informally. These centers were closed during the Covid-19 pandemic. Community-led schools continued teaching until late 2021, when authorities forcibly closed them for lacking authorization. About 100 community-led schools have since reopened.
Meanwhile, by early 2025, humanitarian organizations had scaled-up use of the Myanmar curriculum and introduced an accelerated learning program for out-of-school children, before having to suspend activities in June due to US funding cuts.
The learning centers, operated by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), were tuition-free. The previous Bangladesh government restricted Rohingya teachers to paid “volunteer” positions and required the learning centers to be managed by professional staff from Bangladeshi organizations. Their educational programs were negotiated between the UN and the government. In Cox’s Bazar, Rohingya “volunteer” teachers taught five subjects, while Bangladeshi nationals taught English. The Bhasan Char centers only used Rohingya teachers. Rohingya teachers earned 13,000 Bangladeshi taka (US$106) per month.
Community-led schools charge monthly tuition fees, and teachers earn 3,000 to 8,000 taka ($25 to $65) per month. Many of these teachers had primary jobs with humanitarian agencies, which was their main source of income. Bangladesh’s interim government allows the community-led schools to operate before 8 a.m. and after 4 p.m., outside the learning centers’ hours.
Students and teachers described greater absenteeism at learning centers, where fewer students continued to upper-secondary level. The Cox’s Bazar learning centers, before the US cutbacks, had only 57 students in class 11, the most senior class offered. On Bhasan Char, where the authorities have transferred thousands of Rohingya refugees, the learning centers had 11,000 students, but only 6 in class 9, the most senior class available there.
Rohingya students and teachers at both community-led schools and learning centers, and education experts said the lack of accredited education or pathways to higher education contributed to students leaving education before completing secondary school. Refugees described family members who fled the refugee camps and risked potentially deadly overseas journeys, including to find formal education in other countries, or sent remittances to pay fees at community-led schools in the camps.
Refugee Participation in Education Programs
The Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) Minimum Standards for Education, developed by leading governmental and nongovernmental agencies, recommend meaningful refugee community participation in humanitarian education responses. International human rights conventions enshrine “the liberty of individuals and bodies to establish and direct educational institutions” and to choose schools that “ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions.”
Rohingya students, parents, and teachers interviewed by Human Rights Watch expressed greater satisfaction with community-led schools than the learning centers. However, Rohingya “master-trainers,” who trained teachers at learning centers, said Bangladesh’s policy restricting Rohingya to paid “volunteer” roles limited their ability to improve quality.
“If you want to develop a society you must involve people from the society,” said a community-led school principal. “[Humanitarian NGOs] conduct many meetings and say ‘We prioritize your feedback,’ but don’t implement it.”
A master-trainer on Bhasan Char said, “We have no decision-making authority.… All the quality-assurance people in education are Bangladeshi, but they don’t know the [Myanmar] curriculum, so they can’t improve the system.”
A master-trainer in Cox’s Bazar said a Bangladeshi teacher habitually “came and signed in at the school but then left.” When “I tried to say something, it made problems, so now I don’t say anything,” the master-trainer said. “The [NGO] office prohibited us from managing the host-community teachers.”
Instruction Quality
A 2019 research-institute study found that teachers at community-led schools had “invaluable” knowledge of the Myanmar education system and the Rohingya and Burmese languages, but had not been “meaningfully engaged” by the humanitarian education sector.
Rohingya students, parents, and educators said that learning center teachers were less qualified and typically taught five subjects, versus specialized teachers at community-led schools. One mother said, “[I]f there was no community-led learning our children would not improve at all.”
Teachers contrasted community-led schools, which paid teachers according to their qualifications, with learning centers, which paid primary and secondary teachers and teacher-mentors the same amount. Master trainers, the highest education-sector position available to Rohingya, were paid 15,000 taka ($123) a month. A Rohingya man with a university degree, who established a community-led school, said that one of his students was hired as a master trainer at a learning center.
Humanitarian planning reports have described the lack of educated Rohingya refugees, due to discriminatory restrictions against Rohingya education in Myanmar, as an obstacle to scaling up quality education. The humanitarian education sector in Bangladesh provided trainings to teachers at learning centers, including on subjects in the Myanmar curriculum, monthly lesson planning, and preventing and reporting child abuse, and to Rohingya teacher mentors (responsible for multiple learning centers) and master trainers.
However, teachers and principals at community-led schools said that more educated Rohingya often chose not to teach in the learning centers. They contend that a better-organized system, with Rohingya participation in management decisions, teachers paid according to their qualifications, and classes taught by teachers with subject-matter expertise, would attract more and better teachers and reach more students.
The Rohingya interviewed said that quality of instruction is also linked to greater retention of students in secondary and upper-secondary levels at community-led schools than at learning centers. “When I started in class 4 there were 20 students, now only five remain,” said a class 8 learning-center student. On Bhasan Char, a community-led school with 100 students had more students in classes 9 to 11 than all the learning centers, with 11,000 students. Two teachers said that they asked NGOs if they could teach community-led school classes in unused rooms in the cyclone shelters used by learning centers but were told that they would be fired if they continued to teach in the community-led school.
Testing and Grade Promotion
Learning center students took end-of-year tests in June 2024, a process organized by UNICEF where, to ensure fairness, tests were marked by teachers from different learning centers. However, the results were not distributed until May 2025, after students had been promoted to the next class. Two teachers said their managers pressured them to fill in students’ marks on their “progress cards,” without knowing the marks by the start of the academic year in August 2024. Human Rights Watch observed marks on several students’ progress cards, before the marks had been distributed.
Some tests, marked by teachers from other learning centers, were clearly mistaken, teachers said. A class 5 teacher said he had a student “who can’t write Burmese, and he got the highest mark in Burmese. The best student got a much lower mark.” Another teacher said the top marks in his class went to a student who did not know the material and attended classes “at most, five days per month,” because he worked to help his parents earn income.
Due to the budget cuts, the humanitarian education sector cancelled the 2025 learning assessments.
By contrast, about 50 Rohingya community-led schools in the Cox’s Bazar camps established an “examination board” to ensure fair exams, which will next be held in March 2026. Community-led schools had previously held tests and distributed the marks by the start of the next academic year. Passing the previous class is required to advance, creating “motivation for the learners to work hard,” a master teacher said.
Upper Secondary School Classes for Adolescent Girls
Few Rohingya girls continue in education after age 13, in part because of parents’ concerns about the risk of violence including abduction and sexual assault. To mitigate these concerns, the humanitarian sector established “community-based learning facilities,” where female teachers used their own shelters as classrooms to teach girls living nearby. However, none of the learning centers in the Cox’s Bazar camps offered lessons higher than class 5.
In one camp with 28 such facilities, the highest level offered was class 2, a master trainer said. On Bhasan Char, 13 female students, ages 13 to 18, 2 of whom are married with children, are currently studying class 3 at a learning center. However, there is a need for girls to have safe and secure access both to primary and secondary-level classes, teachers said.
By contrast, in one Rohingya community-led school with 175 female students, which used individual shelters as classrooms across 5 camps in Cox’s Bazar, girls are studying in class 9 and 10 of the Myanmar curriculum. One student in class 10, aged 14, said she hopes to complete secondary education and continue to university. A woman now working at a continuing education program said she and six female classmates started class 7 in a community-led school “and all seven of us completed class 12.”
Child marriage of girls in the refugee camps is widespread due to lack of education, income, and space in overcrowded shelters, according to a group interview with six women from various camps in Cox’s Bazar. Improving access to quality education for girls would help prevent child marriage, one woman said. Another woman added that learning centers carried out community outreach on the importance of girls’ education but said this was undermined by the perceived poor quality of education at learning centers.
Importance of Continuing and Higher Education
Without accredited education or the ability to leave the camps, it is impossible for Rohingya students in Bangladesh to pursue higher education.
Most of those interviewed said that the lack of professional and educational pathways decreased students’ motivation and increased dropouts and discipline problems. A teacher at a community-led school in Camp 17, with 300 students, said: “Students are not seeing their future, so there is no discipline. If teachers say something and students don’t agree, they might just leave and say we are wasting our money.”
A master trainer contrasted his youth in Myanmar, before restrictions blocked Rohingya from university education, and in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps. “When I was a student in class 2, we already dreamed of going to university and professions. But here … there are no goals, they don’t see anything in the future. If there is no dream, there is no reason for hard work.”
One positive initiative in the camps is a six-month learning program for Rohingya aged 15-24, run , with an 83 percent completion rate, according to staff. However, the program’s capacity is limited. About 1,000 Rohingya had completed the program and 1,000 more are enrolled while a 2022 UN assessment found more than 306,000 youth aged 18-24 in the camps.
A Bangladeshi education expert said that the government should allow universities to enroll Rohingya students and allow internet access for online learning including higher education. Some students manage to enroll in online higher education in the camps but contravene official policy to do so.
Child Abduction and Recruitment by Armed Groups
Abductions for ransom or by armed groups of children in the Cox’s Bazar camps were so frequent in late 2024 that many parents stopped allowing their children to leave their shelters, including to go to school, camp residents said. A learning program for 15–24-year-olds stopped operating for a month because “students had been abducted, children and adults,” the director said. A father said that UN agencies were unable to keep children safe, and regretted that his 8-year-old son, and his daughters in class 5 and class 4, had all dropped out of community-led schools due to fear after attempted attacks or assaults.
In the first quarter of 2025, UN protection monitors reported 38 boys and 13 girls were kidnapped or abducted in the camps. In group interviews conducted in April 2025, 14 people in the Cox’s Bazar camps described six cases of child abduction for ransom in 2024 and 2025, in one of which the child abducted was killed. They said none of the cases had a meaningful police investigation.
Human Rights Watch documented cases in which Rohingya armed groups recruited and used a 13-year-old boy as a porter and cleaner in Myanmar, and used a 10-year-old boy to smuggle yaba, a methamphetamine, across checkpoints. The prevalence of child recruitment, a humanitarian official said, was linked to the lack of education: “[Children] are in this small area, with no certificates, no future. Ask them about their dreams and they might laugh. [Armed groups are] the way to status and some money.”
By contrast, on Bhasan Char, Human Rights Watch interviewed three refugee families who had relocated to the island after being targeted by armed groups in the mainland camp. All the people interviewed said there was no armed group activity on the island, unlike the mainland camps, and that Bangladesh authorities clamped down periodically on smuggling groups.
Bhasan Char Island
“The main reasons for dropouts are lack of quality education, [to go] to work, and to go back to [the mainland] camp,” a teacher said. A student at a learning center said that three of the four teachers he had last year had fled. The journey to the mainland can prove fatal: during the rainy season in 2024, two or three people drowned each month as they took boats to reach the mainland, a teacher said.
There are currently no specialized education programs for children with disabilities in the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar or on Bhasan Char island. Groups specializing in support for children with disabilities used to work in Cox’s Bazar but closed their programs due to funding cuts.
Turkmenistan: Imprisoned Activist Faces New Dubious Charges
(Berlin, June 25, 2025) – Turkmenistan’s authorities have brought new charges against an imprisoned activist who had been scheduled for release earlier in June 2025, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities should immediately and unconditionally free the activist, Murad Dushemov, and drop all abusive efforts to extend his detention.
Dushemov was jailed in 2021, following an arbitrary prosecution for criticizing the authorities, and was due to be released on June 14, 2025. But on June 10, authorities transferred him from the prison colony in Seydi, Lebap province, where he was serving his sentence, to a pretrial detention facility in Turkmenabat, also known as Abdy Shukur prison.
“Dushemov has already suffered a terrible miscarriage of justice due to his peaceful activism,” said Rachel Denber, deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Turkmen authorities should immediately release him and not subject him to another bogus prosecution and unfair trial.”
The government of Turkmenistan has an appalling human rights record, is extremely repressive, and tolerates no dissent. It has unlawfully imprisoned people for exercising their right to free speech. Individuals imprisoned on politically motivated charges experience abysmal prison conditions and ill-treatment. Torture and incommunicado detention are a serious concern. Dozens remain victims of enforced disappearances.
In 2021, Dushemov published videos criticizing the Turkmen government’s policies and challenging its official narrative related to the Covid-19 pandemic. He demanded access to accurate information about the situation and questioned restrictions imposed by the authorities who falsely claimed Covid-19 was not present in the country.
On June 18, 2025, the Netherlands-based outlet Turkmen.news reported that Dushemov’s whereabouts were unknown and that he may be facing new charges, based on a dubious allegation by another prisoner that Dushemov had broken his arm.
The timing and source of the new charges, combined with the opaque nature of Turkmenistan’s prison system, strongly suggests the charges are fabricated, Human Rights Watch said. In at least several instances, Turkmen authorities have previously brought fabricated charges against people in their custody to extend their prison’s sentence.
On June 21, Turkmen.news reported that the head of the Abdy Shukur prison confirmed to Dushemov’s mother, who had gone to look for him at the facility the day before, that Dushemov is being held there and was expected to face a new trial in about 10 days. The prison chief said the new charges stem from an alleged “fight with cellmates.” He also told her that a state-appointed lawyer has been assigned to the case but refused to provide the lawyer’s contact information or allow her to visit her son.
The Vienna-based Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights (TIHR) reported that on June 25, a lawyer told Dushemov’s relatives that his trial would take place soon, but had no information on the charges against him or the exact date of the hearing. TIHR also corroborated the claims that shortly before Dushemov’s sentence was set to end, another inmate was placed in his cell, who falsely claimed that Dushemov assaulted him.
In June 2021, Turkmen authorities fined Dushemov 100 Turkmen manat (US$28) for allegedly using profanity in public places the day after he published a video requesting information about the “country’s epidemiological situation” and asked questions about the Covid-19 vaccination requirements in one of Ashgabat’s hospitals.
On July 7, 2021, authorities sentenced Dushemov to a 15-days arrest for “petty hooliganism,” an administrative offence, after he had blocked a road with his car. The arrest followed a verbal dispute at a checkpoint when officers barred Dushemov from leaving Ashgabat, claiming he lacked a certificate proving that he had tested negative for Covid-19. Police reportedly refused to provide any legal basis for demanding such a certificate and held him at the checkpoint for four hours.
On July 22, 2021, when Dushemov’s detention ended, authorities did not free him but instead initiated a criminal investigation against him. Three weeks later, a court in Dashoguz sentenced Dushemov to a four-year prison term on trumped-up charges of extortion and intentional infliction of moderate bodily harm. The charges stemmed from a manufactured fight with a cellmate during his 15-day jail sentence and from an alleged complaint by a hospital doctor who accused Dushemov of attempted extortion in exchange for not publishing a video filmed in the hospital. Dushemov denied all charges.
Turkmen authorities have a long record of persecuting people they suspect of disloyalty to the government, Human Rights Watch said.
Among those currently serving politically motivated sentences is Mansur Mingelov, arrested in 2012 shortly after he had spoken out about beatings he experienced and witnessed during two weeks in police custody. He was sentenced later that year to 22 years in prison on bogus narcotics charges.
Pygambergeldy Allaberdyev, a lawyer sentenced to six years in prison in 2020 on bogus allegations of connections with activists abroad and pardoned in December 2022, remains subject to a five-year travel ban. In January 2025, authorities barred Nurgledy Khalykov, a Turkmen.news stringer, who in 2024 had completed a four-year prison term on fabricated fraud charges, from traveling to the UAE for work.
Authorities twice prevented Soltan Achilova, an activist and independent journalist, from travelling to Geneva for a human rights award ceremony. In November 2024, authorities forcibly hospitalized her on false pretenses and in November 2023, border officials deliberately damaged Achilova’s passport and refused to allow her through passport control.
In March 2023, the United Nations Human Rights Committee in its concluding observations on Turkmenistan’s compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, expressed deep concern “about reports of the widespread practice of persecution of civil society representatives … who peacefully exercise their freedom of expression…,” and “about numerous reports that politically motivated criminal trials occur behind “closed doors.” It called for the release of Dushemov and Mingelov.
In May 2023, Dushemov and three other prisoners wrote to the UN office in Turkmenistan, stating their cases were fabricated, and their rights continued to be violated in detention. The prisoners asked UN representatives to visit them in custody. In response to Turkmen.news’ written questions about the letter, the UN resident coordinator for Turkmenistan stated that he “is in contact with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva on this issue.”
Turkmenistan’s international partners should press Turkmenistan to end Dushemov’s baseless detention and immediately free him and others imprisoned in apparent retaliation for the peaceful exercise of their right to freedom of expression, Human Rights Watch said. They should also press Turkmen authorities to stop persecuting people, including through arbitrary travel bans, in retribution for their peaceful activism.
“Turkmenistan should free Dushemov and stop using the justice system to punish peaceful dissent,” Denber said. “We are witnessing yet again that rather than rectify an injustice, the government is doubling down on its wholesale disregard for rights and the rule of law, and other governments should not ignore it.”
New Global Coalition Urges Rights-Based Climate Relocation Policies
Last week, Human Rights Watch hosted the launch of the “Coalition on Dignified Climate-related Planned Relocation,” a new global alliance working to ensure communities forced to plan relocations due to climate change can do so on their own terms and with dignity.
Over two days in New York City, more than 40 relocating community leaders, researchers, and advocates from across the globe—including those from Panama, Fiji, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Sweden, Germany, and the United States—came together to exchange lessons and build a collective strategy.
From these discussions, it was clear that while climate-related relocation is a measure of last resort, it is already happening across the world, often without government support. Few countries have national policies in place to guide these processes; even fewer have rights-respecting policies that center on community leadership.
Despite their different political contexts, leaders of coastal communities shared remarkably similar stories of having to face existential challenges and holding their governments accountable on their own. Their experiences illustrated that planned relocations can be fraught processes that threaten the rights of people and their communities—including to an adequate standard of living, housing, and land—when governments fail to support those at risk.
Grounded in these sobering realities, coalition members spent two days sharing lessons learned from different relocation processes and governance strategies. They also imagined how, if well-supported and anchored around a community’s own visions for the future, planned relocations could be a successful adaptation solution of last resort.
Coalition members focused around two main goals:
Continuing to build cross-context solidarity and learn from one another.Advocating for every country with a coastline to adopt a rights-respecting relocation policy or governance framework.The coalition affirmed that the tools already exist; what’s needed is political will. It is critical to move from principles to practice and to ensure that the most affected communities lead the way. As climate impacts intensify, planned relocation may become an unavoidable reality for more communities. Governments need to take climate relocation seriously, and this coalition intends to help make policies and practices more rights-respecting and community-centered.
UN Human Rights Office Calls for Action on ‘Transnational Repression’
Last week, the United Nations Human Rights Office issued its first ever guidance paper on “transnational repression,” aimed at increasing awareness and understanding of this expanding global issue.
Transnational repression occurs when governments reach across their borders to stifle criticism and dissent. It can take the form of online harassment, surveillance, enforced disappearances, targeting of relatives, and physical attacks, including killings. Last year, Human Rights Watch documented how this phenomenon is often downplayed or ignored.
The UN paper notes that victims of transnational repression often face barriers accessing protection and remedies. Authorities in some host countries fail to ensure adequate protective measures, but others have actively facilitated foreign governments’ repression of people seeking refuge.
The UN high commissioner for human rights, UN human rights experts, and member states have increasingly been raising the alarm over this practice.
In 2024, following a landmark report by the United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression on transnational repression of journalists, dozens of countries from all regions issued a statement condemning transnational repression, committing to supporting those targeted, and holding perpetrators to account.
In his global update earlier this year, the UN high commissioner for human rights noted the rising number of “egregious examples” of transnational repression around the world and called for all states to adopt a “zero-tolerance policy” towards the practice.
The new UN guidance reminds states of their responsibility to respect and protect rights and refrain from committing, enabling, or condoning acts of transnational repression. It offers concrete recommendations to governments for raising awareness and addressing the protection and accountability gap, including establishing mechanisms for remedies and reparations for victims and issuing a moratorium on exporting surveillance “spyware” tools.
Governments should also work together to ensure a coordinated international response to transnational repression that offers robust protection to those at risk.
At the current session of the UN Human Rights Council, states will have opportunities to reference transnational repression in a number of relevant resolutions under negotiation: notably on the protection of journalists and of civil society space. This would help acknowledge the concerns expressed by the UN Human Rights Office and independent rights experts, and build awareness and focus attention on coordinated prevention and remedy.
It is time for a concerted international effort to better understand and address the serious rights impacts of transnational repression and to ensure protection and justice for those targeted.
Haiti: Displacement Hits Record as Security Efforts Fall Short
(Washington, DC) – One year since deployment of the first personnel of the United Nations-authorized Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission to Haiti, violence and human rights abuses continue to rise, Human Rights Watch said today.
Ongoing shortfalls in personnel, funding, and equipment have severely limited the MSS’s ability to contain violence, which has intensified in Haiti’s capital and beyond, leaving at least 2,680 people killed and 957 injured, according to UN figures. UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ latest report documented an alarming increase in grave violations against children from 383 in 2023 to 2,269 in 2024. This includes a twelvefold increase in documented cases of recruitment and use of children in criminal groups and an even larger increase in rape and sexual violence against children.
Violence has forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes, pushing the number of internally displaced people to nearly 1.3 million, the highest ever recorded in Haiti, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
“Each day, violence forces hundreds of Haitians to flee with nothing but the clothes on their backs to makeshift sites or other cities, where they remain at risk and have little to no access to food and water,” said Nathalye Cotrino, senior Americas researcher at Human Rights Watch. “UN member countries should immediately reinforce the MSS. The UN Security Council should end its inaction and transform the MSS into a full-fledged UN mission that has the personnel, resources, and mandate to effectively protect the Haitian people.”
In late April and early May 2025, Human Rights Watch visited Cap-Haïtien, the capital of Haiti’s Northern department. With support from the National Human Rights Defense Network (Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains, or RNDDH) and Haiti’s Ombudsperson Office, researchers interviewed 33 internally displaced people who had recently fled Port-au-Prince, its metropolitan area, and other municipalities. They also met with humanitarian workers, diplomats, and representatives of Haitian civil society and UN agencies.
Since early 2025, criminal groups have escalated attacks in previously safe areas including Port-au-Prince, its metropolitan area, as well as in the municipalities of Mirebalais and Saut-d’Eau in the Centre department, and Petite Rivière in Artibonite. This violence—including clashes with self-defense brigades, often operating with the involvement of police officers, and confrontations with security forces—has forced more than 245,000 people to flee their homes, according to the IOM.
Many of Human Rights Watch’s interviewees were university students or professionals with stable jobs and financial resources, including homes or small businesses, who had been able to live largely unaffected by violence until recently.
“I was living well in my neighborhood, it was peaceful. Then suddenly, security problems started,” said a 23-year-old civil engineering student who was displaced from Port-au-Prince to Cap-Haïtien in March after an attack that killed his brother. “Men came, a lot of bandits. They started shooting. My family and I ran out of the house. While crossing the street, [my 19-year-old brother] was hit by a bullet. [T]he bullet went through his head … after that, we came to Cap-Haïtien. In my neighborhood, no one is left, only the bandits.”
During recent attacks, several interviewees said criminal groups used apps to share audio messages warning residents that they had only a few hours to flee.
A 38-year-old plumber from Port-au-Prince who is the father of a six-month-old baby, told Human Rights Watch: “The bandits sent messages to warn us.… We knew they were coming, and they came. They stormed in and ransacked [the neighborhood]. The police deserted. They killed people, burned homes. I lost my house. We saw lifeless bodies everywhere, and there was a nauseating stench. You had to run through it.… We had to leave to save ourselves.”
International human rights workers reported that criminal groups set fire to homes on the outskirts of targeted neighborhoods to force residents—and, at times, the police—to flee.
According to UN officials, these tactics appear aimed at forcibly depopulating areas to allow criminal groups to expand their presence and pave the way for them to take control of other areas.
Many interviewees were displaced multiple times, fleeing first to other areas of Port-au-Prince or nearby cities before seeking refuge in Cap-Haïtien. They traveled by bus, facing risks along the way as criminal groups control key routes, operate checkpoints, and extort passengers.
A 37-year-old woman from Cabaret, an area north of Port-au-Prince long controlled by criminal groups, told Human Rights Watch that after being displaced multiple times in the same area, she fled to Mirebalais to protect her 14-year-old daughter from the risk of sexual violence. However, in late March, after criminal groups attacked Mirebalais, burning homes and killing several people, she fled again. “I took refuge in a church in Hinche [a nearby city]. My husband had gone out to work, painting a house. I haven’t heard from him since ... I just hope he isn’t dead. I left Hinche because there were rumors about an imminent attack.… Now we are here [in Cap-Haïtien] but I fear the violence will follow us.”
Displaced people, now approximately 11 percent of Haiti’s population, are sheltering across all ten departments. Fifty-five percent of the displaced are women and girls; most are staying with host families or in improvised sites where they face severe shortages of food, water, health care, and other essential services. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, over 8,400 people in makeshift displacement sites are facing famine.
Conditions in makeshift displacement sites across Haiti are increasingly dire, with over 246 informal sites reported as of early June 2025, each hosting an average of 2,000 people. Many people are sheltering in overcrowded schools or public spaces, facing severe protection risks and what Haiti’s Office of the Ombudsperson has recently called “inhuman” conditions.
The scale of the displacement crisis has overwhelmed existing capacities. The UN’s Humanitarian Response Plan, which aims to assist 3.9 million Haitians out of the 6 million in need of humanitarian aid, is only eight percent funded. The transitional government’s failure to develop a national, comprehensive plan for supporting internally displaced people has also hindered efforts to coordinate and sustain an effective response.
The international community isn’t doing enough to support the MSS’s efforts to protect Haitians from the criminal groups displacing them, Human Rights Watch said.
Although eight countries notified the UN secretary-general in 2024 of their intent to contribute personnel to the MSS, only Kenya, which leads the mission, Guatemala, El Salvador, Jamaica, and The Bahamas have deployed forces. Their combined deployment totals just 991 officers, well below the expected 2,500.
The MSS still requires additional funding to sustain operations through December and establish the remaining 9 of the 12 planned operational bases critical for securing territory and consolidating its presence.
The UN Security Council should ensure that the UN-backed MSS receives the personnel and resources needed to fulfill its mandate, and agree on steps to transform the mission into a full-fledged UN operation capable of protecting human rights and preventing a further escalation of violence, Human Rights Watch said.
“Violence in Haiti is getting worse by the day,” said Cotrino. “The Security Council should end its waiting game and make the MSS a UN mission. How many more killings, rapes, kidnappings, and child recruitments will it take for governments to wake up and realize what needs to happen?”
South Korea: Human Rights Issues for New Government
(Seoul) – South Korea’s new government should adopt measures to address human rights problems in the country and abroad, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to President Lee Jae-myung. It is critically important for the government to bolster democratic institutions, end entrenched discrimination, protect digital rights, and promote North Koreans’ human rights.
President Lee took office on June 4, 2025, after winning the presidential elections following the impeachment of former President Yoon Suk-yeol for imposing martial law in December 2024.
“South Korea’s election cycle followed mass protests in support of accountable government,” said Lina Yoon, senior Korea researcher at Human Rights Watch. “President Lee Jae-myung should engage constructively on the range of human rights issues facing the country, including protecting freedoms of expression, assembly, and the media, strengthening digital rights and social protections, and addressing systemic discrimination against women and marginalized groups.”
The South Korean government should act to safeguard civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights, Human Rights Watch said. These include ensuring the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and the press. The government should also pass a comprehensive anti-discrimination law protecting women and girls, older people, people with low socio-economic status, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, people with disabilities, migrants, and North Korean escapees.
Other priorities include closing the gender pay gap and combating digital sex crimes; ensuring that artificial intelligence regulations protect privacy and children’s rights; and strengthening pensions and social protections. The government should also prevent the misuse of emergency, security, and defamation laws to silence dissent. It should advance climate justice; reduce fossil fuel dependency, notably new liquified natural gas projects, and increase opportunities to generate renewable energy.
The government should also propose legislation to require companies to prevent, mitigate, and remediate actual and potential adverse human rights, labor, environmental, and climate impacts, and promote North Korean human rights through full implementation of the 2016 North Korean Human Rights Act.
“President Lee Jae-myung should recognize that taking office presents both opportunities to advance the rights of the South Korean people and possible pitfalls should existing rights concerns fail to be addressed,” Yoon said. “The new government’s actions will not only affect the rights of people in South Korea, but also those of North Koreans and many others around the world.”