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Civilians Around Sudan’s El Fasher Face New Attacks
Global leaders need to respond to reports of fresh attacks by Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on the Zamzam displacement camp near North Darfur’s capital of El Fasher. The camp hosts at least half a million people who have fled past and present violence and abuse in Darfur.
In recent days, hundreds of desperate civilians have arrived in Tawila, a town 60 kilometers west of Zamzam, destitute, hungry, and thirsty, reporting that conditions in Zamzam had become unbearable.
Since May 2024, the RSF have besieged civilians living in and around El Fasher, cutting off supplies and shelling populated areas. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and their allied joint forces, which claim to be defending the city, have not appeared to take all feasible measures that they could to minimize harm to civilians, including during heavy fighting in and around populated areas.
The RSF attacked the Zamzam camp in February 2025, destroying civilian infrastructure. International bodies had earlier confirmed famine in the camp, but civilians there had largely been spared from the fighting. Following the new attacks, however, the handful of aid organizations operating in the camp, including Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders or MSF) and the United Nations’ World Food Programme, halted services for civilians dying of hunger.
There have been worrying signs of a large-scale imminent attack for days. Abdel Raheem Dagalo, the deputy RSF leader, was recently filmed mobilizing forces engaged in El Fasher. On April 10, RSF shelling hit El Fasher’s Abu Shouk camp. Local responders reported more than a dozen people, including children, had died.
There were similar warning signs ahead of the RSF’s attacks on the suburb of Ardamata in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur and the last safe haven for ethnic Massalit, in late 2023; a massacre of civilians ensued.
In June 2024, the UN Security Council passed a resolution condemning the RSF siege of El Fasher and pressing all parties to protect civilians, guarantee their safe movement, and calling for safe aid access. But the RSF has ignored these calls.
The consequences of a large-scale attack for the civilian population are all too clear. Global leaders need to act. The UN Security Council should meet and respond to the crisis, including by imposing sanctions on abusive commanders and condemning countries providing support to parties in violation of the ongoing UN arms embargo.
Civilians Around Sudan’s El Fasher Face New Attacks
Global leaders need to respond to reports of fresh attacks by Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on the Zamzam displacement camp near North Darfur’s capital of El Fasher. The camp hosts at least half a million people who have fled past and present violence and abuse in Darfur.
In recent days, hundreds of desperate civilians have arrived in Tawila, a town 60 kilometers west of Zamzam, destitute, hungry, and thirsty, reporting that conditions in Zamzam had become unbearable.
Since May 2024, the RSF have besieged civilians living in and around El Fasher, cutting off supplies and shelling populated areas. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and their allied joint forces, which claim to be defending the city, have not appeared to take all feasible measures that they could to minimize harm to civilians, including during heavy fighting in and around populated areas.
The RSF attacked the Zamzam camp in February 2025, destroying civilian infrastructure. International bodies had earlier confirmed famine in the camp, but civilians there had largely been spared from the fighting. Following the new attacks, however, the handful of aid organizations operating in the camp, including Médecins Sans Frontières(Doctors without Borders or MSF) and the United Nations’ World Food Programme, halted services for civilians dying of hunger.
There have been worrying signs of a large-scale imminent attack for days. Abdel Raheem Dagalo, the deputy RSF leader, was recently filmed mobilizing forces engaged in El Fasher. On April 10, RSF shelling hit El Fasher’s Abu Shouk camp. Local responders reported more than a dozen people, including children, had died.
There were similar warning signs ahead of the RSF’s attacks on the suburb of Ardamata in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur and the last safe haven for ethnic Massalit, in late 2023; a massacre of civilians ensued.
In June 2024, the UN Security Council passed a resolution condemning the RSF siege of El Fasher and pressing all parties to protect civilians, guarantee their safe movement, and calling for safe aid access. But the RSF has ignored these calls.
The consequences of a large-scale attack for the civilian population are all too clear. Global leaders need to act. The UN Security Council should meet and respond to the crisis, including by imposing sanctions on abusive commanders and condemning countries providing support to parties in violation of the ongoing UN arms embargo.
US/El Salvador: Venezuelan Deportees Forcibly Disappeared
(Washington, DC) – The governments of the United States and El Salvador have subjected more than 200 Venezuelan nationals to enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention, Human Rights Watch said today.
On March 15, 2025, the US government removed 238 Venezuelans to El Salvador, where they were immediately transferred to the mega prison known as the Center for Confinement of Terrorism (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, CECOT), known for its abusive conditions.
Since then, the Venezuelans have been held incommunicado. United States and Salvadoran authorities have not disclosed a list of the people removed, although CBS News published a leaked list of names. Relatives of people apparently transferred to El Salvador told Human Rights Watch that US authorities said that they were unable to share any information on their relatives’ whereabouts, while Salvadoran officials have been completely unresponsive.
“These enforced disappearances are a grave violation of international human rights law,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “The cruelty of the US and Salvadoran governments has put these people outside the protection of the law and caused immense pain to their families.”
US authorities should publicly identify the Venezuelans who were removed to El Salvador. The Salvadoran government should confirm their current whereabouts, disclose whether there is any legal basis for their detention, and allow them contact with the outside world.
Human Rights Watch has so far interviewed 40 relatives of people apparently removed to El Salvador. Human Rights Watch sent a letter to Salvadoran authorities on April 5, asking for information on the identity of people detained, their conditions of detention in CECOT, and the legal basis for their detentions. The government of El Salvador has not responded.
All family members interviewed said that US immigration authorities initially told their relatives, who were in immigration detention, that they would be sent back to Venezuela. None of the detainees were told that they would be sent to El Salvador, the relatives said.
The US authorities announced on March 17 that 238 Venezuelans had been removed and had arrived in El Salvador. The government of El Salvador published a video showing the faces of some of them, but neither government published a list of the people who were sent to and detained at CECOT, nor explained the legal basis, if any, for their detention there. The same day, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that 137 people had been deported under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, an archaic and seldom-used statute that allows the president of the United States to order the arrest and removal of people connected to a “hostile nation or government.” Leavitt said 101 others had been removed under Title 8, pursuant to regular immigration procedures.
The Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act against “Tren de Aragua,” a Venezuelan organized crime group. Yet, the government has produced no evidence establishing that the people removed are affiliated with Tren de Aragua. A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official acknowledged that “many” of those deported to El Salvador “do not have criminal records in the United States.” Additionally, many of the relatives of people sent to El Salvador shared with Human Rights Watch researchers government documents indicating they had “no criminal records” in Venezuela or in other countries in Latin America where they lived in recent years.
ICE maintains an Online Detainee Locator System (ODLS), which lawyers and relatives use to find people held during immigration proceedings. Human Rights Watch cross-referenced the case numbers of some of the deportees and confirmed that they had been removed from the system. ICE indicates on its website, most recently updated on April 7, 2025, that “the ODLS only has information for detained aliens who are currently in ICE custody or who were released from ICE custody within the last 60 days.” This seems to indicate that the names of the Venezuelans Human Rights Watch interviewed were deleted sooner than is standard ICE practice.
Some relatives said that when they called US detention centers or ICE offices to ask about their relatives’ whereabouts, officials told them that they could not provide any information, that their family members no longer appeared in the locator system, or that their whereabouts were unknown. In a few cases, officials informed them that their relatives had been removed from the United States, but did not say where they had been sent.
On March 20, CBS News obtained and published an internal US government list of names, without identification numbers, of people sent to El Salvador. Neither Salvadoran nor US authorities have confirmed the authenticity of the list, although Human Rights Watch found all the names of the cases it has documented on the list.
Many of the relatives interviewed said they are unfamiliar with the legal system in El Salvador and do not know which authorities they should contact to obtain information about their relatives.
Some said they emailed the Salvadoran presidential high commissioner for human rights and freedom of expression, Andrés Guzman, but have received only an automatic acknowledgment of receipt or a response indicating that their request had been forwarded to the “relevant institutions.” A Salvadoran lawyer representing several of the detainees told Human Rights Watch he has not been allowed to meet or speak with his clients.
The interviewees said that they believed their family members are in El Salvador because of compelling scraps of evidence they have been able to piece together. Some identified their relatives’ faces or parts of their bodies in a video posted by Salvadoran authorities. Others discovered that their family member’s names had been removed from ICE’s location database on or around March 16, or found their relative’s name on the CBS News list.
The Salvadoran government has articulated no legal basis for detaining the Venezuelan deportees and has offered no indication of when, if ever, they would be released from incarceration. It appears that their detention is wholly arbitrary and potentially indefinite; a grave violation of El Salvador’s human rights obligations, Human Rights Watch said.
Under international law, an enforced disappearance occurs when authorities deprive a person of their liberty and then refuse to disclose that person’s fate or whereabouts. This violation is especially serious because it places people outside the protection of the law, making further abuses likely.
“Nobody should be forced to piece together bits of information from the media or to read into the authorities’ silence to find out where their relatives are being held,” Goebertus said. “Salvadoran authorities should urgently disclose the names and locations of all detainees transferred from the US, and allow them to contact their families.”
Instead of Addressing Child Abuse Prevention, Trump Attacks Trans Youth
In his proclamation for National Child Abuse Prevention Month, rather than addressing real threats to children like the federal government should do, United States President Donald J. Trump focused almost exclusively on attacking supporters of transgender youth. He declared broadly defined “gender ideology” as “one of the most prevalent forms of child abuse” and labeled gender-affirming care as “evil”.
Gender-affirming care is recognized as the gold standard of medical care for transgender youth by major medical associations. This care consists of social practices (changes to one’s name, wardrobe, etc.) to mental health counseling to medical interventions, such as puberty blockers and hormone therapies. In all, the care emphasizes a personalized, multidisciplinary, and gradual approach. Studies demonstrate that youth receiving this care experience 60 percent lower odds of depression and 73 percent lower odds of suicidality, with approximately 98 percent of youth continuing this care into adulthood.
Contrary to the proclamation’s assertions about the prevalence of gender-affirming care, a dataset of private insurance claims from 2018-2022 covering more than 5 million adolescents found that less than 3,000 transgender youth had access to puberty blockers or hormone therapies. Currently, 27 states ban some form of gender-affirming care for transgender youth.
A January 28, 2025, executive order aims to withdraw federal funds and support for such care to people younger than 19.
The proclamation’s language also echoes state-level efforts to weaponize child welfare systems against supportive families of transgender youth. In 2022, Texas Governor Greg Abbot ordered state agencies to investigate parents whose children receive gender-affirming care, jeopardizing their custodial rights. This year, Texas and Montana advanced legislation to classify some or all gender-affirming care as child abuse.
While the administration targets families of transgender youth, actual child welfare crises remain inadequately addressed, including the harm Black and Indigenous people and families living in poverty face in child welfare systems, the indiscriminate prosecution of children as adults, hazardous child labor conditions, and family separation at border facilities.
US officials should prioritize protecting children from genuine harms rather than threatening the wellbeing of supportive families.
The Trump Administration’s Assaults on Black History
This week, it was reported that the United States National Park Service had begun scrubbing information from its exhibits about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad; one of the most significant stories of resistance against chattel slavery in the United States. The move would have destroyed knowledge about how oppressed people in the United States have successfully fought for freedom. While the Park Service walked back the revisions after public outcry, it’s just one example of the Trump administration’s campaign to curtail understanding of racism’s legacy in the United States.
Click to expand Image Harriet Tubman. © 1885 National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian InstitutionThe erasure at the Park Service follows President Donald J. Trump’s recent executive order targeting the National Museum of African American History and Culture for being “divisive,” which led to museum director Kevin Young’s resignation last Friday. Leaders called the order a sign of the administration’s attempts to stifle cultural spaces dedicated to preserving Black history and truths that don’t align with Trump’s political ideology. The Institute for Museum and Library Studies has also been subjected to staff and funding cuts.
These actions continue similar efforts during Trump’s first term, including his ban on efforts to “inculcate” what he called “divisive concepts.” He was targeting work like the 1619 Project, a publication exploring the enduring impacts of racial slavery in the United States, including in housing, incarceration, health care, and education. Trump also created the 1776 Commission, which aimed to produce “patriotic education” that whitewashed history and understated the role racism played in shaping US political, economic, and legal systems.
International human rights bodies have condemned these kinds of practices. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination maintains that states should “educate the population as a whole in a spirit of non-discrimination,” specifically regarding people of African descent. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protects minorities’ rights to enjoy their culture, including in community with others. To exercise that right, people need access to accurate historical knowledge about their communities.
Assaults on historical truth serve a purpose. They prevent Americans from understanding that racism is less about individual blame, but is instead a system built and maintained through centuries of law, policy, and violence. The attacks also deny people access to models of courage and organized resistance like Tubman and the Underground Railroad. This isn’t only about the past; it’s about politicians trying to foreclose the possibility of confronting ongoing and future injustices.
People across the United States took to the streets last weekend to demand the Trump administration keep its “hands off” democracy. It should keep its hands off Black history too.
New Data Exposes Global Healthcare Funding Inequalities
New data from the World Health Organization reveals that many governments’ public funding of health care falls short of what is needed to meet their human rights obligations.
The vast majority of people live in countries where low public funding undermines their access to health care. Sometimes this is due to major constraints like war and debt, but often governments just don’t prioritize it.
Governments should ensure that everyone can achieve their right to health by reducing reliance on regressive sources of financing. Wealthier governments should support appropriate tax reforms and provide debt restructuring or relief when necessary.
(Geneva) – New data from the World Health Organization (WHO) reveals that many governments’ public funding of health care falls short of what is needed to meet their human rights obligations, Human Rights Watch said today.
Most people have little access to even healthcare services considered most “essential” by the United Nations. As global health systems worldwide recoil from the United States’ sudden termination of much foreign aid and assistance, richer governments should consider debt restructuring or relief that, along with appropriate tax reforms, can help improve resourcing of public health care.
“The vast majority of people around the world live in countries where their access to health care is undermined in part by low public funding,” said Matt McConnell, economic justice and rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Sometimes this is because of major constraints like war and debt, but often governments just don’t prioritize it. Either way, people suffer.”
Human Rights Watch analyzed the most recent WHO Global Health Expenditure Database, which includes healthcare spending data from 2022 for more than 190 countries around the world. These data show that public funding for health care faltered as the Covid-19 pandemic waned and global inflation surged.
Under international law, all governments have obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill all economic, social, and cultural rights, including the right to health, which requires access to quality healthcare facilities, goods, and services. Countries must devote as many resources as possible to advancing the right to health and avoiding backsliding, which can occur when governments reduce funding for healthcare systems or fail to match their population’s growing requirements.
Most governments are not spending enough to ensure that healthcare systems can deliver on the right to health. In 2022, 141 governments spent less than 5 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on health care through public means, a widely accepted international spending benchmark for assessing healthcare spending. About 84 percent of the world’s population, or 6.6 billion people, lived in a country where public healthcare funding missed this benchmark that year.
Richer countries generally rely more heavily on public sources of funds to finance health care than poorer countries. But the level of public financial support governments provide varies widely among both rich and poor countries, indicating that this is at least in part the result of policy choices.
The relationship between public healthcare spending and improved health outcomes is complicated by many factors, including the social and commercial determinants of health. But these data also show that higher levels of public funding generally correlate with improved access to health care.
Decreases in public funding of health care need to be subject to human rights scrutiny and, unless fully justified by governments, as outlined by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, may constitute human rights violations.
Insufficient public funding shifts the burden of financing health care to individuals and households, which can significantly undermine access, particularly for people with low or irregular incomes. In many countries, including some of the world’s poorest, large segments of the population have no choice but to pay the costs themselves if they are to receive health care.
Such cost-based access barriers are incompatible with health care as a human right for all. They can also undermine people’s ability to pay for goods and services essential for realization of other human rights, including housing, food, and education.
Financial resources are limited and unevenly distributed, but WHO data shows that many governments could do better. If 17 low-tax governments had raised tax revenues in 2022 to 15 percent of GDP—a “tipping point” threshold identified by the World Bank that is well below the global average of 23 percent of GDP—they could have raised more than enough money to spend at least 5 percent of GDP on health care.
Many countries, particularly in the Global South, face significant financial and practical constraints to adequately fund health care through public sources. Some richer countries may have contributed to many of these constraints, including through the forced expropriation of resources, and should consider assuming a special responsibility to help alleviate them.
In 2022, at least 48 low- and middle-income governments paid more to service debt to foreign creditors than they spent on health care for their people. Funds from foreign governments or intergovernmental bodies such as the World Bank accounted for more than 20 percent of healthcare spending in 49 countries in 2022 and were the principal financing mechanism in 16 countries, many of which now face financial shortfalls following the United States’ suspension of foreign aid and assistance and other potential funding cuts.
In January 2025, US President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order suspending about US$44 billion in foreign aid and assistance, disrupting an estimated $12.4 billion allocated toward addressing urgent health crises worldwide. While the administration subsequently issued limited waivers to allow some of these funds to continue supporting vital programs protecting and promoting human rights, the impacts of this suspension are still unfolding and are poised to further undermine the right to health in many countries.
The extent to which governments rely on taxes for social spending varies, but greater tax revenues can both increase the financial resources available to spend on social services like health care and address inequalities in the enjoyment of rights, while also possibly improving government accountability.
Governments should ensure the right to health by reducing reliance on regressive sources of financing like out-of-pocket costs and by increasing public revenues for health care through progressive taxes and reducing tax abuses, Human Rights watch said.
They should also ensure transparency and accountability by setting specific targets for their health spending such as a minimum threshold of 5 percent of GDP or 15 percent of government expenditures, as well as improving the collection and publication of reliable health spending data that track achievement toward such targets.
Wealthier governments should meet their obligations of international cooperation and assistance. Creditor governments should assess the impacts of debt payments on debtor governments’ abilities to meet human rights obligations and provide debt restructuring or relief when necessary to enable debtor governments to adequately fund health care. Such governments should also support rights-aligned reforms to international tax rules during the ongoing UN Tax Treaty negotiations, and provide financial support for multilateral global health initiatives, particularly amid the recent US withdrawal.
The next few months will provide multiple opportunities for governments to make progress toward the realization of the right to health, including at the 78th World Health Assembly in May, at the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development in June, and at the 2nd World Social Summit in November.
“Who pays and how is a key factor is what makes healthcare systems more or less resilient to the kinds of shocks they’ve experienced in recent years,” McConnell said. “Reducing inequalities of healthcare financing between and within countries is essential to building healthcare systems that work for all and ensure we no longer leave billions of people behind.”
Analysis of Newly Available WHO Data on Healthcare Funding
As Human Rights Watch documented in 2024, the more a country spends on health care through domestically generated public sources such as tax revenues or social health insurance contributions, the less reliant its healthcare system is on fees paid out of pocket by individuals and households.
These out-of-pocket costs include a range of charges such as over-the-counter prices, deductibles, and copayments for a healthcare good or service. All out-of-pocket costs worsen health care inequalities by creating barriers to accessing health care based on the ability to pay.
The WHO considers it “catastrophic health spending” when a household must spend more than 40 percent of their combined income on health care after paying for things like food, housing, and utilities. According to WHO estimates, the risk that individuals in a country will reach that catastrophic threshold falls to negligible levels only when out-of-pocket costs average no more than 15 to 20 percent of a country’s total expenditures on health care.
Out-of-pocket costs financed more than 20 percent of the healthcare system in 126 countries in 2022, 7 more than the previous year. On average, only high-income countries (at 18.4 percent) kept out-of-pocket payments below the upper bound of this risk threshold for catastrophic health spending, while upper-middle (30.8 percent), lower-middle (35.6 percent), and low-income (42.6 percent) countries averaged far higher.
In 55 countries in 2022, out-of-pocket payments were the primary source of healthcare financing, surpassing all other forms of domestically generated public and private funding, as well as foreign sources of financing like aid and assistance. In 27 of these countries, out-of-pocket payments accounted for the majority of all money spent on health care, equal to more than three out of every four dollars spent on health care in Turkmenistan, Armenia, Afghanistan, and Nigeria.
In 2021, the most recent year with complete data, there was a moderate-to-strong relationship between a country’s share of healthcare spending coming from public funds and its achievement on the WHO’s Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Service Coverage Index, which assesses countries’ progress toward the UN Sustainable Development Goal 3.8.1 on “coverage for essential health services.”
Most Countries Still Missing the 5-Percent-Of-GDP Benchmark
Numerous studies from health economists have found that achieving UHC, a framework developed by the UN to measure access to health care and an important element of the right to health, generally requires that governments spend at least 5 to 6 percent of their GDP on health care.
Consistent with these findings, analysis of the newly available 2022 WHO data showslast year a moderate-to-strong correlation between public healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP and coverage for essential healthcare services as measured by the WHO’s UHC Service Coverage Index. Countries that met the 5-percent-of-GDP indicator in 2022 were also much less likely to depend on inherently regressive out-of-pocket costs to fund their healthcare system.
In all, 141 governments spent less than 5 percent of their GDP on health care in 2022. Only high-income countries (at 5.8 percent) averaged above this benchmark, compared to upper-middle (4 percent), lower-middle (2.4 percent), and low-income (1.2 percent) countries. Notably, no low-income country met the benchmark.
Among all countries, the global average of public healthcare spending in 2022 was only 3.8 percent of GDP. While above the pre-pandemic average of 3.5 percent of GDP in 2019, this continued a trend of year-over-year decline since the mid-pandemic peak of 4 percent in 2020.
The changes in public funding during the pandemic were not evenly distributed. Between 2019 and 2022, healthcare spending declined as a share of GDP in 69 countries. In three of these countries—Suriname, the Marshall Islands, and Costa Rica—healthcare spending fell from above 5 percent of GDP to below 5 percent.
Assessing healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP helps control for differences in the size of countries’ economies, but changes in the percentage over time can hide stagnation or decline in absolute terms. For example, if spending as a percentage of GDP stays the same while a country’s GDP shrinks, hospitals and clinics can receive less funding.
Some countries hardest hit by economic and political crises during the pandemic, such as Lebanon and Afghanistan, experienced declines in both GDP and public health spending as a share of GDP. This means that their actual healthcare spending dropped more than changes in their healthcare spending as share of GDP would suggest.
In other countries, GDP grew over this period while public health spending as a percent of GDP declined, such as in Guyana, Ireland, Bangladesh, and Tanzania. Still other countries’ public spending increased faster than GDP, indicating a higher prioritization of healthcare spending, including many countries in the Global South, such as Nepal, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Zimbabwe, and Guinea Bissau.
Most Countries are Still Not Meeting the 15-Percent-of-Government-Expenditures Benchmark
On average, a country’s national budget equates to about one-third of its GDP; in 2022, it was 33.5 percent globally. If a country’s budget-to-GDP ratio is around this global average, 15 percent of its national budget will equate to about 5 percent of GDP, the level of public investment that generally corresponds to better healthcare access and outcomes.
This 15-percent-of-budget measure is another good indicator and goal for governments that seek to improve healthcare systems. In part because of this, countries in the African Union made an explicit commitment to meet this 15-percent-of-budget benchmark in the 2001 Abuja Declaration on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Other Related Infectious Diseases.
Even so, in 2022, 147 countries spent less than 15 percent of their national budgets on health care. This means that about 6.6 billion people—or 83 percent of the world’s population—lived in a country that did not reach the threshold.
In 2022, public funding for health care as a share of government budgets was above pre-pandemic levels. Globally, the average rose from about 10.4 percent in 2019 to 10.8 percent in 2022. But these changes in public funding during the pandemic were not evenly distributed.
Inflation-Adjusted Changes in Healthcare Spending Per Capita Between 2019 and 2022
Trends in public healthcare spending during the pandemic are most stark when data is adjusted for changes in inflation, purchasing power, and population growth.
On average, the real value—the actual purchasing power—of per capita public healthcare spending around the world grew by about 27 percent between 2019 and 2022. Nevertheless, 37 countries experienced declines in the real value of their public healthcare spending from pre-pandemic levels, such as Lebanon and Malawi, where spending respectively declined by 71 and 41 percent between 2019 and 2021.
37 Countries' Real-Terms Healthcare Spending Declined
Evolution of public healthcare expenditures in local economies adjusted for changes in the purchasing power (PPP/capita)
Country % Change 2019-2022 2019 2020 2021 2022Domestic General Government Health Expenditure (GGHE-D), in current international $ (PPP) per capita (i.e., gghed_ppp_pc)
Source: WHO GHED.
Funding Health Care is a Policy Choice
Some governments provided far more public funding for health care than their peer-income-country average in 2022. In The Gambia, for example, public funds accounted for 46.9 percent of all healthcare spending, more than twice the average for low-income countries (about 22 percent) and even greater than the average among considerably richer, lower-middle income countries (about 40 percent).
Differences in Public Healthcare Spending by Income Group
Public health spending as a percentage of total government spending among countries within the same income group, and difference from the average spending in 2022
In contrast, some governments spent far less than their peers. Some of the governments, whose public healthcare spending fell significantly short of their income-group peers, were experiencing armed conflicts or significant social and economic upheaval. Others may have faced different constraints that made funding healthcare difficult, including public debt.
Increasing Public Revenues for Healthcare Spending
There is no international tax benchmark. World Bank research has identified 15 percent of GDP as a minimum tax threshold, or “tipping point,” beyond which low-income countries are better able to graduate to middle-income status. But this rather low threshold may not be appropriate for all countries.
According to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which publishes tax data on 130 countries, total tax revenues equated to about 23 percent of GDP on average across all countries in 2022. Only low-income countries (at 13.5 percent) averaged below this 15-percent-of-GDP indicator that year, while lower-middle (17.3), upper-middle (20.1), and high-income countries (32.0) came in above it.
Comparing governments’ public healthcare spending to their tax-to-GDP ratio shows that countries that spent less on health care (as measured against international benchmarks) had significantly lower tax revenues.
Among the 43 countries with OECD tax data that spent more than 5 percent of GDP on health care in 2022, tax revenues amounted to 31.8 percent of GDP on average. The remaining 87 countries that did not meet the 5 percent benchmark in 2022 had tax revenues equal to just 18.8 percent of GDP on average.
No country managed to spend more than 5 percent of GDP on health care that year with tax revenues below 15 percent of GDP.
Many of these very low-tax governments could significantly increase healthcare spending by raising tax revenues to just this 15-percent-of-GDP measure, which is only slightly above the current average for low-income countries.
For 17 of these governments, shown below, raising tax revenues to 15 percent of GDP from current levels could generate enough additional funds to fully meet 5 percent of GDP healthcare spending. An additional 35 governments could meet the 5 percent benchmark by increasing tax revenues to the average for their income group.
Many Low-Tax Governments Leave Money on the Table
If 17 low-tax governments increased tax revenues to 15% of GDP, they could generate more than enough additional revenue to fully fund public healthcare spending beyond 5% of GDP
Country Current Tax Revenues (% GDP) Current Public Healthcare Spending (% GDP) Add'l Public Healthcare Spending to Meet 5% GDP (USD per capita) Funds Available if Tax Increased to 15% GDP (USD per capita) Source: International Monetary Fund, Government Finance Statistics Yearbook and data files, and World Bank and OECD GDP estimates.The government of Sri Lanka, for example, generated the equivalent of about 7.4 percent of GDP through taxes in 2022, while spending only about 1.8 percent of GDP on health care. Meeting the 5-percent-of-GDP healthcare spending benchmark would require an additional US$108 per person of public healthcare spending, while increasing taxes to 15 percent of GDP could generate an additional $252 per person.
Increasing tax revenues can be politically and practically difficult, particularly for low- and middle-income governments that face strong external constraints, including a global race-to-the-bottom for corporate tax rates and harmful conditionalities attached to loans from actors such as the International Monetary Fund. Additionally, some taxes support the realization of rights better than others.
For example, as recently recognized in a statement by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, value-added taxes (VAT) are inherently regressive and can partly offset the benefits of increased social spending made possible by those taxes. As such, it is important for governments to ensure that their tax revenues are generated in an equitable manner. UN member states currently negotiating a first global treaty on international tax cooperation should also press for rights-aligned reforms to international tax rules.
Debt is a Major Impediment to Healthcare Spending for Many Governments
Greater international cooperation around resolving public debt is also vital for helping governments increase healthcare spending, as such debts significantly hamper the efforts of many countries, like Sri Lanka, to fund public services.
Many governments spend significant amounts paying off debts that the government accrued over time. The cost of servicing this public debt can often greatly exceed public healthcare spending.
The World Bank’s Debtor Reporting System has data for 116 of about 132 low- and middle-income countries. When measured in US dollars per capita, 48 of these countries spent more servicing their external public and publicly guaranteed debts in 2022 than they did on health care.
The government of Mongolia, for example, spent US$158 per person on health care through public means in 2022, which equated to about 3.1 percent of GDP. But that same year, Mongolia spent the equivalent of about $631 per person in the country to repay its obligations to creditors.
Such external debt obligations can form major constraints on many governments’ ability to adequately fund health care. Of the 141 governments that spent less than the 5 percent of GDP on health care through public means in 2022, at least 30 paid more to creditors than the amount needed to increase public healthcare spending to meet the 5 percent benchmark. To meet 5 percent of GDP, for example, Mongolia would have needed to increase public healthcare spending by an additional $95 per person in 2022; just 15 percent of what they paid to creditors that year.
Download the Data Used on this Article
2025 WHO: Global Health Data Excel format 2025 WHO: Global Health Data CSV format 2025 WHO: Global Health Data Column Reference CSV formatSouth Sudan: Incendiary Bombs Kill, Burn Civilians
(Nairobi) – South Sudan’s use of improvised air-dropped incendiary weapons has killed and horrifically burned dozens of people, including children, and destroyed civilian infrastructure in Upper Nile state, Human Rights Watch said today. The government’s use of these weapons in populated areas may amount to war crimes.
Interviewees described the use of improvised incendiary weapons in at least four attacks in Nasir, Longechuk, and Ulang counties, Upper Nile state, which killed at least 58 people and burned others severely. The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), which has a robust mandate to protect civilians, should establish temporary operating bases in high risk areas, and proactively respond to the deteriorating situation. UN Security Council members should urge South Sudan to cease its unlawful attacks and call for the urgent deployment of peacekeeping forces to the affected areas.
“These weapons have killed dozens of people, including children, and left survivors with severe burn injuries causing long-term harm,” said Nyagoah Tut Pur, South Sudan researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The government should immediately stop using indiscriminate incendiary weapons on communities, facilitate safe aid access, and the UN should urgently deploy peacekeepers to the affected areas.”
The government’s aerial bombardments intensified from March 16, 2025, after a March 4 attack on a government military base and Nasir town by armed Nuer youth known as the “White Army” and a March 7 attack by armed men on a UN helicopter that killed a UN crew member and over two dozen South Sudanese soldiers.
Click to expand Image Locations of attacks documented by Human Rights Watch in Upper Nile, South Sudan in March 2025. © 2025 Human Rights WatchOn March 17, South Sudan’s information minister said its air force had bombed “so called White Army areas” and falsely implied that civilians who failed to leave the areas could lawfully be targeted. He revealed that Uganda was providing technical support to the South Sudan People’s Defence Forces (SSPDF), which Uganda has acknowledged.
A Ugandan forces’ spokesperson told Human Rights Watch that their support did not include aerial or ground attacks but could, if requested and they deemed it necessary. The Ugandan forces previously refuted allegations that it had targeted civilians and civilian objects and or used “chemical weapons and barrel bombs.”
Incendiary weapons inflict excruciating burns and other physical injuries, which can lead to psychological harm and lifelong scarring and disability, which can result in social and economic exclusion. They also cause fires that can indiscriminately destroy civilian objects. Use of these weapons in populated areas violates international humanitarian law, and if done with criminal intent, constitutes a war crime.
Protocol III to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons explicitly prohibits using air-dropped weapons designed to set fires and burn people in “concentrations of civilians.” While South Sudan is not party to this protocol, its use of these weapons highlights the need to strengthen the international law that governs them.
Eight people interviewed, including witnesses, local responders, and two government officials, described the March 16 attack on Mathiang, in Longechuk county.
Witnesses described “barrels”—improvised incendiary weapons—being dropped from what appeared to be a multi-engine aircraft. A 39-year-old woman said: “It came swooping down, I thought it was going to fall on our compound…. Then we saw it drop barrels. As they dropped, [they caught fire].”
Another woman, 40, woke up feeling “the earth shaking…,” and ran outside … “only to see the village on fire.” She later saw the charred bodies of her neighbors, Khor Ruach Kerjiok, his wife, and their two children under age 10. Another resident said that the burned bodies of two older women aged 60 and above, Nyedier Kuach and Nyeget Kier, were found at home.
A senior health official said that at least 21 people were killed, 3 of whom died while being transported to Ethiopia for treatment. Health workers responding with very limited resources said the victims had extensive burn injuries. One said the burns continued to spread on the patients’ bodies, indicating that a substance that causes burns was used in the attack.
Accounts from witnesses describing what they saw and could smell when the improvised incendiary weapons were dropped, indicate that several types of flammable substances are being used as incendiary agents.
One responder explained how “[t]he area where the [flammable substance] landed was burning for some days, making crackling sounds.” Rain eventually extinguished the fires, “But it still smells … not like gasoline or kerosene,” he said.
Several residential compounds were burned, along with, a responder said, part of the market and two water pumps.
A video posted on social media on March 17 shows a fissure in the ground with visible active fire inside. The video reveals a large, burned area, including several tukuls (homes). Satellite imagery shows a burn scar appeared between March 16 to 17, along with burned tukuls 100 meters northeast of the market.
Click to expand Image Satellite imagery from March 30, 2025, showing burned tukuls (homes) in Mathiang after an attack on March 16. A linear burn scar is visible on satellite imagery and its location was also confirmed by witness accounts. © 2025 Planet Labs PBC. Analysis and graphics © 2025 Human Rights WatchTwo witnesses said at least three women suffered miscarriages or stillbirths following the bombing.
Air-dropped improvised incendiary weapons were also used in Nasir town on March 16 and 19. Two officials said that at least 22 people were killed and dozens of homes burned. Human Rights Watch has also reviewed satellite imagery showing burn scars and burned structures, including a former UNMISS site and dozens of structures along the main road between March 16 and 20.
Click to expand Image Satellite imagery from March 25, 2025, showing multiple burned structures and burn scars over several parts of Nasir town consistent with incendiary weapon following the attacks of March 16 and March 19, 2025. © 2025 Planet Labs PBC. Analysis and graphics © 2025 Human Rights Watch.Interviewees and photographs suggest that an incendiary weapon was also dropped in Kuich in Ulang county on March 21. Three witnesses describe seeing what appeared to be a propeller-driven aircraft drop incendiary substances in barrels.
“[The aircraft] dropped something that was on fire and there was a loud explosion [when it hit the ground] and immediately the surrounding caught fire,” one person said. Everyone started running in different directions.” When he returned to the site, he learned that “people [had been] killed on the spot and many people were seriously injured.”
Four witnesses said the attack killed 15 people, including 3 children, and seriously burned 17 others. A responder in Ulang town described victims, most with burn injuries, “their black skin is coming out. One man who died at the hospital was burned even his teeth. I also saw an older woman in her 70s, she had big blisters.” As of March 30, seven remained in critical condition.
Civilian structures burned included a nutrition center and a healthcare clinic. A guard there, Duop Bichiok Diew, in his 50s, died from burn injuries. Shelters and a market were also destroyed.
Photographs posted on social media on March 24, show several structures reduced to ashes near Sobat River in Kuich. Next to the nutrition center, visible impact sites were still burning. Satellite imagery confirmed that at least a dozen structures burned between March 21 and 22.
Click to expand Image Satellite imagery from March 25, 2025, showing burned structures including a destroyed nutrition center in Kuich, after the March 21 attack. © 2025 Planet Labs PBC. Analysis and graphics © 2025 Human Rights Watch.Government attacks on populated areas in the three counties, notably with helicopter gunfire and munitions continue, putting civilians at further risk and worsening the humanitarian situation, which already included a cholera outbreak.
Tens of thousands of people have fled, including into Ethiopia. Humanitarian access remains heavily constrained, as aid organizations face violence as well as bureaucratic restrictions.
South Sudan remains under a UN arms embargo prohibiting external military support to the country’s warring parties. Ugandan forces’ participation in the operations violates the embargo. The Security Council should call out Uganda’s violations and ensure renewal of the embargo to protect civilians from unlawful violence, Human Rights Watch said. The council should press South Sudan to ensure that the UN mission can safely operate and approve any requests for additional UN troops.
“As the government of South Sudan continues to show utter disregard for civilians, it is now dropping flaming barrels of fire from the air,” Pur said. “The international community should press the government to end these unlawful attacks and ensure concrete steps to protect civilian lives.”
China/Vietnam: Suspicious Death of Tibetan High Lama
(Taipei) – The Vietnamese government should investigate the death under suspicious circumstances of a senior Tibetan lama, Humkar Dorje Rinpoche, in Ho Chi Minh City on March 29, 2025, Human Rights Watch said today.
Humkar Dorje, 56, died following months of concern by the Tibetan community about his whereabouts and well-being. His followers in India, where many Tibetans live in exile, allege that Vietnamese and Chinese authorities had arrested him in Vietnam after he fled Tibet. His monastery, which is under official supervision, instead claimed that he died from illness while on a retreat.
“Humkar Dorje Rinpoche’s death in Vietnam is especially concerning given the Chinese government’s severe repression of Tibetans and its record of snatching its nationals in Vietnam,” said Maya Wang, associate China director at Human Rights Watch. “The Vietnamese authorities should credibly and impartially investigate these claims and take appropriate action, including by providing autopsy findings to Humkar Dorje’s family.”
Humkar Dorje was head of the Lung Ngon monastery in Gabde county in the Golok Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Qinghai province. He had thousands of devotees inside China and abroad, including in Vietnam. He was a prominent educator, having founded, with official permission and oversight, a vocational school and more than 10 other schools in the region, where he sponsored the education of local children.
Humkar Dorje’s disappearance and death occurred amid a Chinese government crackdown on prominent Tibetan educators and the schools that they run, which promote Tibetan language and culture, in eastern Tibetan areas including Golok.
Humkar Dorje had been missing since at least November 2024, according to Tibetan exile media. When people in Gabde county expressed concern about him in December, local authorities reportedly banned all discussion of the issue in public. The silence ended on April 1 when officials in Gabde county showed representatives of the monastery a death certificate issued by a hospital in Ho Chi Minh City.
On April 3, senior monks at Lung Ngon monastery issued a public statement stating that Humkar Dorje had “exhibited signs of ill health,” had “departed alone to an unknown place” at an unspecified date for a religious retreat, and had “suddenly died of illness” in Vietnam on March 29, without giving further details.
On April 5, his followers in India contradicted these claims and said that the high lama had been in Vietnam following a Chinese police interrogation in Tibet late last year. They said Vietnamese police, allegedly acting in concert with operatives of China’s Ministry of State Security, had detained him on March 25. He died four days later.
The monastery’s statement is incomplete and may have been written under some form of duress, Human Rights Watch said, given the Chinese authorities’ tight control over the management of Tibetan monasteries.
Tibetan lamas often go into retreat for extended periods, but it appears highly unlikely that senior monks at their monastery would be unaware of the lama’s location, conceal the information for several months, or be unaware that he had traveled abroad. In addition, if the lama had gone into retreat or had been suffering from illness, the authorities would have no need to ban discussion of his situation.
Humkar Dorje’s followers in India said that he fled his monastery in late September after government officials and local security questioned him in Gabde. An official Chinese media report shows a top county-level official visiting Lung Ngon monastery on October 15 to “inspect temple management.” Uncharacteristically, the report makes no mention of Humkar Dorje by name.
Humkar Dorje had apparently long been in good standing with the authorities. He graduated in 2001 from China’s national-level college for Tibetan Buddhist lamas and held a prestigious position in the county-level People’s Congress, where he was a deputy head of the congressional standing committee. He was also president of Gabde county’s branch of the China Buddhism Association, making him the most senior religious figure in the county.
In July 2024, he conducted a major public religious ceremony at Lung Ngon monastery, which would have required official permission. Official media reports in August showed him as one of the leaders of a government-run delegation visiting another local monastery. In September, official media showed a national-level official and members of a provincial delegation sharing a meal with Humkar Dorje at his monastery, stating that “the various works carried out by Longen [Lung Ngon] Temple in recent years have been fully affirmed by departments at all levels of the province, prefecture and county.”
Official reports of Humkar Dorje’s appearances ended by late September, which coincided with the time when his followers in India said he had fled to Vietnam.
Chinese authorities have long engaged in transnational repression—human rights abuses committed beyond a country’s borders to curtail dissent—including against Tibetans living abroad, targeting those critical of the Chinese government or taking part in activities deemed threatening to the government.
Unconfirmed reports by other followers of Humkar Dorje said that some Lung Ngon monastery members who were in Vietnam with him may have been detained at the same time and may be handed over by the Vietnamese authorities to China despite the severe risk of torture and other mistreatment.
The Vietnamese government is obligated to respect the international law principle of nonrefoulement, which prohibits countries from returning anyone to a place where they would face a real risk of persecution.
The Chinese government is known to have arrested and repatriated at least two political dissidents from Vietnam with the cooperation of the Vietnamese authorities, Dong Guangping in 2022 and Wang Bingzhang in 2002.
Consistent with the Minnesota Protocol on the Investigation of Potentially Unlawful Death, the Vietnamese government should conduct an impartial investigation into the circumstances of Humkar Dorje’s death, including the role of its security services and any involvement of Chinese security personnel or officials. This inquiry should include an autopsy to establish the causes of death, which should be provided to the family along with the body being returned to them. The Minnesota Protocol provides that “[i]n cases of potentially unlawful death, families have the right, at a minimum, to information about the circumstances, location and condition of the remains and, insofar as it has been determined, the cause and manner of death.”
“Foreign governments should press the Vietnamese government for answers on Humkar Dorje Rinpoche’s death,” Wang said. “They should hold Vietnamese officials accountable for complicity in China’s abusive practices in Vietnam and take measures to prevent their recurrence.”
Iran: Imminent Threat to Amputate Prisoners' Fingers
(Beirut) – Iranian authorities are preparing to carry out finger amputation sentences, as early as April 11, 2025, against three men imprisoned for theft following grossly unfair trials, Human Rights Watch said today. All United Nations member states should urgently call on Iran to abide by its human rights obligations and immediately revoke these sentences.
An informed source told Human Rights Watch that on March 13, the office in charge of implementing sentences in Urmia Central Prison in West Azerbaijan Province summoned Hadi Rostami, 38, Mehdi Sharifian, 42, and Mehdi Shahivand, 29, and gave them a letter from prosecutorial officials notifying them that their sentences would be carried out as early as April 11.
“Amputation is torture, plain and simple. Yet Iran persists in carrying out cruel and inhuman punishments that fly in the face of its human rights obligations,” said Bahar Saba, senior Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch. “All officials responsible for ordering and carrying out acts of torture, including any medical professionals participating in them, will be liable for criminal prosecution under international law.”
Authorities’ plans for amputating the three men’s four fingers come in the wake of the gruesome amputation of fingers of two brothers, Mehrdad Teimouri and Shahab Teimouri, also in Urmia Central Prison, in October 2024. At least two other men face amputation sentences in the same prison. Under Iran’s laws, amputations are in principle carried out without any anaesthesia.
Iranian authorities detained the three men in August 2017 over accusations that they had broken into several houses and robbed safes. In November 2019, following a grossly unfair trial, Branch 1 of Criminal Court 1 in West Azerbaijan province convicted the men of theft. The court sentenced all three to amputations of four fingers of their right hands in a manner that “only the palm of their hands and thumbs are left.”
Evidence strongly suggests that the trial was grossly unfair. According to case information reviewed by Human Rights Watch and accounts of informed sources, the men did not have access to lawyers during the investigation phase and only saw a lawyer twice; , once when they signed the retention documents and once during the court hearings. The men have also said that that the authorities tortured and ill-treated them while in the custody of the police’s Investigation Unit (Agahi) in Urmia. The sources indicate that authorities coerced the men into making statements incriminating themselves and each other by beating and flogging them and suspending them from their hands and wrists. All three men subsequently retracted their confessions, but the court relied on the torture-tainted self-incriminating statements to convict them.
Rostami has made torture complaints to high-ranking judicial officials on several occasions. Human Rights Watch has reviewed two letters he wrote, addressed in September 2020 and December 2022 respectively to the heads of Iran’s Judiciary and the Justice Department in West Azerbaijan province.
Rostami states in the letters that he denied the charges but that police officials subjected him to torture and other ill-treatment by beating him. He said they then coerced him into signing a blank piece of paper that he later discovered was filled with incriminating statements attributed to him when he was taken before prosecution officials.
The authorities have dismissed all these complaints and failed to conduct prompt, independent, transparent, and thorough investigations as required under international law. The Supreme Court verdict reviewed by Human Rights Watch confirms that Rostami had raised allegations of torture, informing judicial authorities that his self-incriminating statements had been extracted under torture. The court nonetheless upheld the amputation sentences without ordering investigation into the allegations.
Based on documentation by Amnesty International, the authorities also subjected Rostami to torture in February 2021 by carrying out a flogging sentence of 60 lashes for “disrupting prison order” in retaliation for a hunger strike.
The three men have spent eight years in prison facing repeated threats that authorities would carry out the amputations, threats that themselves constitute a form of torture or other ill-treatment. In a November 2024 letter, the men described the mental anguish they and their families had experienced as a “horrific nightmare that could become reality any second.” In a March 2025 letter published by the Kurdistan Human Rights Network, Rostami once again appealed to the international community and human rights organizations for urgent action to stop the implementation of these inhumane and cruel punishments.
At least two other men, Kasra Karami and Morteza Esmaeilian, are also held in Urmia Central Prison facing amputation sentences.
Iran remains among the handful of countries that retain, impose, and implement corporal punishments. Under international law, cruel and inhumane punishments such as flogging and amputations are strictly prohibited. All states parties to the Convention against Torture are obligated to prosecute or extradite for prosecution anyone suspected of torture within their territories, Human Rights Watch said.
Iran’s legislation governing the implementation of death sentences and corporal punishments requires the presence of medical professionals at the site where amputations are carried out. Amputations, under the law, are carried out without any anaesthesia unless it is deemed that their implementation without local or general anaesthesia would result in injuries excessive to what has been judicially ordered.
Under ethical codes for medical professionals, including the World Medical Assembly’s 1975 Declaration of Tokyo, doctors and other medical practitioners are prohibited, in unambiguous terms, from countenancing, condoning, or participating in torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading punishments and treatments. They must not provide any premises, instruments, substances, or knowledge to facilitate the commission of torture and other ill-treatment or be present during such acts. As with other officials, medical practitioners who participate in torture may be criminally liable.
All member states of the UN should forcefully condemn amputation sentences and other forms of corporal punishment and take action to prevent them, Human Rights Watch said. Countries that have universal jurisdiction provisions should criminally investigate and prosecute anyone suspected of criminal responsibility for acts of torture, including those that are judicially sanctioned, such as amputations and floggings.
Thailand: US Scholar Detained on Royal Insult Charge
(Bangkok) – Thai authorities should immediately release and drop the groundless charges against Paul Chambers, a leading Thai studies scholar, Human Rights Watch said today.
On April 8, 2025, Chambers was detained after he reported to police in Phitsanulok province regarding lese majeste (insulting the monarchy) and cybercrime charges under an arrest warrant dated March 31. The Phitsanulok provincial court denied his bail application, citing flight risks because the alleged offenses carry heavy penalties and he is a foreigner. Chambers is being held in pretrial detention at Phitsanulok provincial prison.
“The Thai authorities have long used the royal insult law to abuse Thai citizens but now seem intent on violating the rights of foreigners,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The baseless prosecution of Paul Chambers poses a serious threat to academic freedom and free speech in Thailand.”
Chambers is widely known for his research on civil-military relations in Thailand and Southeast Asia. He currently teaches at the Center of ASEAN Community Studies at Naresuan University in Phitsanulok province.
Chambers’s prosecution stems from a complaint filed by the Thai army accusing him of responsibility for a blurb advertising an academic webinar about the Thai security forces in October 2024 that the army alleged was critical of the monarchy. Chambers was the speaker at this event, hosted by Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. He is also accused of harming national security by distributing distorted or false information online.
Chambers denied all charges, saying that he neither wrote nor published the blurb.
Royalist and ultraconservative groups have targeted Chambers for many years, including by propagating online disinformation and hate campaigns and by pressing Thai authorities to revoke his visa and have him expelled from the university.
Article 112 of the penal code on lese majeste carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison. Article 14 of Thailand’s Computer-Related Crime Act is punishable by up to five years in prison.
The number of lese majeste cases in Thailand has been rapidly increasing. Thai authorities have in recent years prosecuted at least 272 people on charges of insulting the monarchy. Those arrested, including many for writing or reposting on social media, have often been held in lengthy detention without access to bail. In May 2024, the anti-monarchy activist Netiporn Sanesangkhom, 28, died after suffering cardiac arrest in pretrial detention on lese majeste charges.
The increased use of the lese majeste law has made it more difficult for the police, prosecutors, judges, and other authorities to question the merits of lese majeste allegations, out of concern that they might be accused of disloyalty to the monarchy themselves, Human Rights Watch said.
Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra has not fulfilled her 2023 election campaign pledges to initiate parliamentary discussion about measures to prevent the use of royal insult charges as a political tool and to release on bail detained democracy activists and dissidents.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Thailand has ratified, protects the right to freedom of expression. General Comment 34 of the UN Human Rights Committee, the international expert body that monitors compliance with the covenant, has stated that laws such as those for lese majeste “should not provide for more severe penalties solely on the basis of the identity of the person that may have been impugned” and that governments “should not prohibit criticism of institutions.”
Frank La Rue, then-UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, stated in October 2011: “The threat of a long prison sentence and vagueness of what kinds of expression constitute defamation, insult, or threat to the monarchy, encourage self-censorship and stifle important debates on matters of public interest, thus putting in jeopardy the right to freedom of opinion and expression.”
“Concerned governments and UN agencies should make it clear to Thai authorities that prosecuting scholars speaking on the issues of the day will have an enormously detrimental impact on Thailand’s reputation,” Pearson said. “As a new member of the UN Human Rights Council, the Thai government should be taking concrete steps to promote human rights rather than undermining them.”
Syria: Landmines, Explosive Remnants Harming Civilians
(Damascus, April 8, 2025) – Over a decade of conflict has resulted in Syria being extensively contaminated by landmines and explosive remnants of war, a major barrier to safe return and reconstruction efforts, Human Rights Watch said today. Contamination from weapons used during the 14-year conflict has killed at least 249 people, including 60 children, and injured another 379 since December 8, 2024, according to INSO, the international organization dedicated to enhancing the safety of aid workers.
The monthly number of casualties INSO has recorded from these incidents significantly increased after December 8, and international organizations and volunteer deminers told Human Rights Watch that this appears to have been driven by increased movement of displaced people returning home. Syria’s transitional government should work to urgently ensure the survey and clearance of landmines and explosive remnants of war. Stockpiles of weapons held by the former government should be secured and guarded to prevent further injuries and deaths.
“For the first time in over a decade there’s an opportunity to systematically tackle the extraordinary countrywide contamination in Syria by clearing landmines and explosive remnants of war,” said Richard Weir, senior crisis, conflict and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Without urgent, nationwide clearance efforts, more civilians returning home to reclaim critical rights, lives, livelihoods, and land will be injured and killed.”
During a February 2025 visit to Syria, Human Rights Watch spoke with 18 people including victims, parents whose children were injured, and people from communities affected by uncleared landmines and explosive remnants of war from the northern, center, and southern parts of the country. Researchers also spoke to United Nations officials, three people engaged in mine clearance, and staff from nine international and local organizations working to survey and clear landmines and explosive remnants of war across Syria.
On the night of January 27, Raneem Abulhakim Masalma woke up to a loud explosion inside her home that killed her mother and her 7-year-old niece, and injured her and 11 other family members, including her son Bashar, 16. Earlier that day, Bashar had brought home a weapon he found at an unsecured military base 100 meters from their home in Daraa. Bashar was handling the weapon in his room at about midnight when it exploded, causing the injuries and deaths, including metal fragment injuries to both of his legs, and a fire that destroyed much of their home. “He had no idea of the dangers,” Masalma said.
None of the victims and witnesses interviewed – many of whose loved ones had been injured or killed since December 8 because of unexploded ordnance – knew of any way to report the possible presence of explosive remnants of war to authorities. Those interviewed all said that they had not been given any information about the dangers of unexploded ordnance in their area and that lack of knowledge was a key contributor to their relatives being injured or killed.
Between 2011 and December 2024, Syrian government forces, its allies, and armed opposition groups used antipersonnel landmines, cluster munitions, and other explosive weapons extensively, resulting in the contamination of large swaths of the country, some of which have only become accessible since the collapse of the Assad government. Prior to December 8, landmines and explosive remnants of war frequently injured or killed civilians returning home and accessing agricultural land.
Several factors such as the lack of organized information, coordination, and national institutions and bodies, as well as regulatory hurdles, inhibit the ability to address the staggering scale of contamination, members of the mine action community and UN officials said.
A 35-year-old engineer and teacher from Idlib in northwestern Syria, Fahad Walid Al-Ghajar, joined a volunteer demining team to help his neighbors return home. His brother said that on February 21, Al-Ghajar had been helping to clear farmland southwest of Idlib city when a munition he was attempting to move exploded, killing him. Al-Ghajar’s wife and four children have not received any support since then, his brother said.
Landmines and explosive remnants of war result not only in direct loss of life or severe injuries that can cause a permanent disability or life-long scarring, but they also cause psychological trauma, as well as so-called reverberating harm that undermines basic human rights. This includes loss of property, displacement, a reduced standard of living, and impaired access to shelter, health care, education, and basic services such as electricity. Survivors often require long-term medical assistance and specialized treatment, as well as psychosocial and mental health support.
The transitional Syrian government and international donors should prioritize survey, clearance, and risk education, Human Rights Watch said. The transitional government should urgently establish a national civilian-led mine action authority and center, working closely with the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) to coordinate ongoing mine action efforts across the country, develop standards, and revise current registration agreements for humanitarian mine action organizations to facilitate their lifesaving work. The transitional government and donors should also ensure that mine clearance activities are adequately funded and provide adequate payments for victims.
“The explosive remnants of war need to be cleared so that people can return, live safely in their communities, and engage in activities critical to their livelihoods, like agriculture,” Weir said. “The transitional government should work with donors and humanitarian organizations to facilitate this urgent, lifesaving work.”
Human Rights Watch is cofounder of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, 1997 Nobel Peace Co-Laureate, and the Cluster Munition Coalition. It contributes to the campaign’s annual Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor reports.
For more details on contamination across Syria, please see below.Civilian Casualties from Contamination
Human Rights Watch spoke to four parents whose children were injured by unexploded or abandoned ordnance they encountered at abandoned military bases in Daraa, in southern Syria. Three children now have an acquired disability from their injuries. A community leader told Human Rights Watch that only one of the five major military bases in and around the city has a locked gate guarded by soldiers from the transitional government. The others are not closed or secured, even though the community requested assistance from the transitional government. He also said that since December 8, no one had provided community members with information about the dangers of unexploded, abandoned ordnance in their area and that this had been a key contributor to injuries.
On February 14, Rayan Ashraf Swaidan, 14, lost a finger while playing with his friends at a military base on the northern outskirts of Daraa, said his father, Ashraf Isa Swaidan. A volunteer clearance team had done limited work but did not secure the site or warn the community. Swaidan said his son picked up a munition he found on the ground and threw it at the wall. It exploded, slicing off the index finger on his left hand. “We rushed him to the hospital in Daraa to see if they could reattach his finger, but they could not,” Swaidan said. “He is okay now, but he has become much more solitary. He keeps to himself.”
Sahar Mahmoud al-Bidawi said her son Muatassim Kiwan, 12, was playing with his friends at another military base further north of Daraa on January 15, when the boys decided to start a fire and throw in remnants they had found. Kiwan threw some bullets into the fire, which then exploded, spraying metal fragments into his head and shoulder. He lost hearing in his right ear, has nerve damage in his face, and cannot open his right eye because of the incident, and he requires further surgery on his skull in the coming months.
“He has become scared of everything and now has panic attacks,” Al-Bidawi said. Both she and the community leader said that though a volunteer clearance team carried out some clearance activities at the base after Kiwan was injured, nothing had been done to restrict public access to the base.
Contamination of military bases is only part of the problem. Some rural areas are also heavily contaminated. Aghiad Mohammed Khair, 10, was collecting mushrooms on the outskirts of Daraa city on February 19, when he and his friends came across some unexploded ordnance. “They played with them and then the remnants exploded, leading to the severing of my son’s index finger and a fracture in his middle finger,” his father said. “Nine other children also had minor injuries. There are no warning signs in the area, even though we now know it hasn’t been cleared of landmines or war remnants.”
Ahmed Nayef al-Zgheib, 38, said he had been cautiously collecting firewood to heat his home in al-Jneinah, a village in Deir al-Zor, on February 7:
I cut down a relatively large tree and started dragging it along a path by the river: a route I knew and considered relatively safe. However, as I pulled the tree, I stumbled backward and at that moment, I must have stepped on an antipersonnel landmine, which exploded and threw me into the air about two to three meters. At the moment of the explosion, I lost my right foot, almost at the ankle level. When I was taken to the hospital, my bone was visibly burned, and the flesh was severely torn. During surgery, the doctors had to amputate my leg about 10 centimeters below the knee.
Human Rights Watch could not confirm what type of explosive weapon caused the injury resulting in an acquired disability.
A man who asked to remain anonymous leads a volunteer mine clearance team in Palmyra, in central Syria. On February 12, he was in a car with other volunteers escorting a mechanic, Fawzi al-Ali, who was in the car behind him, to repair a vehicle at a base operated by fighters from the transitional government. Al-Ali had brought along his 8-year-old son and a local resident who knew the area well. The team leader said they were driving on a route he thought safe, when suddenly the car behind them hit something and exploded. He said al-Ali died immediately from serious injuries to his whole body. His son lost his left leg during the explosion, and the resident guide lost both legs.
“What happened to Fawzi is, sadly, not at all unique,” he said in late February. “Last week, 21 people in the area died because of explosions like this.” Human Rights Watch did not independently verify the report. He said an 18-year-old member of his team was recently killed during clearance operations. “We need an international team to come with equipment and do an assessment to support us and our work,” he said.
Contaminated FarmlandFarmers said that the contamination was affecting their livelihoods. Mohammed Al-Nazzal, a farmer from the Raqqa countryside, said that his family’s land and his neighbor’s is all contaminated:
We learned about the landmines from residents of nearby villages, who told us that explosions had injured people on our land. We also saw wires in the ground, so we avoid those areas. But there are no warning signs. We are the ones who now have to inform other people about the presence of landmines if they are not from the area. This has affected us. We cannot do what we used to: cultivate the land and benefit from it, and have our livestock graze on it.
Hassan Zakrya Hassan, 43, from Tabqa, 40 kilometers west of Raqqa, said he and his neighbors returned home in 2018 after several years of displacement only to find out that their farmland was heavily contaminated. Nearly seven years later, he said they’re still unable to use the land:
There is water and labor available, but the land remains contaminated. We have reached out to NGOs for demining assistance, and while they promised to help, they never came. There are no warning signs on the land. We only learned about the contamination from the villagers after two incidents in 2018 that left two shepherds injured. We want to farm our land. It would provide job opportunities for 40 families.
Clearance by Community MembersCommunities attempting to return home or restore their livelihoods have turned to volunteers for help to clear land because of the lack of an adequately resourced, coordinated, and effective countrywide response. In many cases, local volunteers and some organizations with little or no specialized equipment and only informal training are responding to pleas from communities.
Human Rights Watch spoke to three residents of Kafr Nabl, a village 35 kilometers south of Idlib, in northern Syria. The mayor said that between 2018 and 2019, the Syrian army forced all of the roughly 450 households from the village out of the area and then turned it into a de facto military base.
The army proceeded to mine the area, he said, which borders on territory that at the time was under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Shams (HTS), an armed group whose members now dominate the Syrian transitional government. Residents said that two or three days after Assad’s government fell, they began to return to the area to see what remained of their homes and agricultural land. They found fields and trees burned down, and many houses heavily damaged.
Soon, some residents came across landmines laid in the fields near the army base. Rizzu Mohammed, 65, a community leader, said that a volunteer team contacted village leaders in early January and offered to come and clear their area of mines. Mohammed said the team spent about a week in the village and successfully cleared at least 70 mines, including 27 mines on his own agricultural land.
That team left, and on January 15, another clearance team of six or seven people with some military experience, who said they had been trained by HTS in demining techniques, came to Kafr Nabl village, residents said. During the clearance operations, the team found a range of additional landmines, including OZM-72, PMN-1, YM-1, POM-2S, and PMN-type antipersonnel mines and YM-2 and YM-3 anti-vehicle mines, a member of the team, Abdo Faisal Hamdi told Human Rights Watch. While Hamdi, 25, was attempting to clear mines in the village of Fatatra, 14 kilometers west of Kufr Nabel, he stepped on one. He lost both his legs, and one eye and has severe damage to the other.
Also in mid-January, Mohammed Sami Sued, 38, a Kafr Nabl resident who said he had demining experience during his military service, reached out to his former neighbors and offered to help them clear their land, so they could start farming again. Zaydan al-Husni, 42, took him up on the offer, having found at least 10 mines on his land.
The two of them returned to the area together, neither wearing any protective equipment, al-Husni said. Al-Husni shared photographs of OZM-72 bounding fragmentation antipersonnel mines, PMN-type antipersonnel mines, and TM-57 and TM-62 anti-vehicle mines with Human Rights Watch, which he said Sued had collected from his land that day.
Al-Husni said he and Sued came across at least six items that Sued wanted to detonate with an explosive charge. He laid the explosive charge but then decided to take a closer look at the items. As Sued was on his knees leaning over them, one of the items detonated. A metal fragment hit his head, and he died immediately, al-Husni said. Al-Husni, who was standing behind him at the time of the explosion, was injured in his right chest, back and left thigh, but survived after neighbors heard the explosion and rushed over to take him to the hospital.
Al-Husni said that since December 8, eight residents of Kafr Nabl had been killed because of explosive remnants of war and at least three more had been killed in neighboring areas.
Need For ActionUrgent steps are needed to improve humanitarian mine action work, which includes clearing landmines and explosive remnants of war and other activities, such as surveys of areas and victim assistance. Members of the mine action sector and UN officials said effective humanitarian mine action work is being inhibited by several factors, including the lack of overall coordination and centralization of information. The years-long fragmentation of governance structures, the sheer scale of contamination, and the lack of a national mine action authority and center have exacerbated the problem. There are also complicated requirements for registration and operation, some of which are inconsistent with the ability of organizations to do their work impartially.
For years, mine action in Syria has been underfunded by donors in comparison to the needs, frustrating efforts to begin new programming or continue basic work, such as mine risk education. Because of these limitations, clearance is often undertaken by local and private groups or individuals with little or no formal training or coordination with national or international mine clearance operators.
In light of these realities, Human Rights Watch is making the following recommendations to the transitional government and international community:
Recommendations to the Transitional Government:Establish and empower independent civilian national mine action institutions, including both a National Mine Action Authority to provide overall strategic direction of mine action work and to link relevant ministries, as well as a National Mine Action Center to help coordinate operational aspects of clearance, including standardization of implementation according to International Mine Action Standards (IMAS), prioritization of response, accreditation, quality assurance, tasking, and information management. United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) should support the authorities in developing these institutions.Centralize and standardize data collection and data sharing from the current and former government agencies and institutions, through the Information Management System for Mine Action.Prioritize clearance efforts and ensure adequate funding for all aspects of humanitarian mine action, technical and nontechnical surveys, risk education, training of additional specialists, and victim assistance.Ensure that adopted standards for clearance and victim assistance follow an integrated approach with clearly defined roles and responsibilities based on the most recent international standards.Eliminate administrative impediments hindering registration of mine action actors in Syria.Facilitate the entry to and movement within Syria of specialists involved in mine action, as well as the use and retention of equipment and materials needed for clearance.Establish and publicize a country-wide system for anonymous reporting of explosive contamination and weapons ownership.Increase risk education activities and make them an integral component of safe return of civilians to residential areas and agricultural land suspected to be contaminated.Enable establishment of a country-wide database of survivors of landmines and explosive remnants of war and persons with disabilities, and remove impediments to mapping services countrywide, for enhanced access to specialized care, physical rehabilitation, psychosocial support, and extensive protection services.Conduct transparent investigations into possible laws-of-war violations by armed groups responsible for using antipersonnel landmines, including victim-activated improvised explosive devices (IEDs).Accede to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty and commit to the comprehensive prohibition of antipersonnel landmines, as well as the destruction of remaining stockpiles.Accede to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions and commit to the comprehensive prohibition of cluster munitions, as well as the destruction of remaining stockpiles.Recommendations to International Donors and Other Governments:Prioritize and increase support for mine clearance activities, risk education to protect people from avoidable deaths and injuries, and survivor assistance programs.Enhance support to the Mine Action Area of Responsibility in the UN’s protection cluster system to boost coordination between government agencies and humanitarian actors.Support information management for centralized data collection and sharing.Urge Syria to accede to the Mine Ban Treaty and Convention on Cluster Munitions.Enable access to multi-year, flexible funding for national and international nongovernmental organizations to address the long-term nature of mine action.Ensure sustained investment in victim assistance programs, including access to physical rehabilitation, mental health and psychosocial support, and prosthetic and orthotic services, as well as education, social inclusion, and livelihood opportunities.‘Disappeared’ Burkina Faso Journalists Feared Unlawfully Conscripted
A video circulated on social media on April 2, 2025, showing three outspoken journalists from Burkina Faso in military uniforms. Guezouma Sanogo, Boukari Ouoba, and Luc Pagbelguem had been forcibly disappeared for 10 days and their reappearance raised concerns that the country’s military junta had unlawfully conscripted them.
Human Rights Watch was unable to verify the video, however, colleagues of the journalists, nongovernmental organizations, and the media said they recognized the three. In the video, the men are interviewed near what appears to be a military base. “What you do is marvelous,” Pagbelguem says in the footage, referring to an apparently successful military operation.
On March 24, authorities arrested Sanogo and Ouoba, respectively president and vice president of Burkina Faso’s Journalists Association (Association des journalistes du Burkina), and Pagbelguem, a journalist at the private television station BF1, for allegedly denouncing the junta’s restrictions on free expression. Requests for information from the journalists’ lawyers and families got no response.
“At least they are still alive,” a Burkinabè journalist in exile told me. “But this doesn’t relieve us from the fears that they might have been tortured, and the concerns that they might take active part in risky security operations.”
It’s not the first time video footage emerged showing illegally conscripted individuals in Burkina Faso. On February 18, 2024, the opposition politician Ablassé Ouédraogo and prominent human rights activist Daouda Diallo, both abducted in December 2023, appeared in footage wearing camouflage uniforms, holding Kalashnikov-style assault rifles, and participating in military exercises, presumably in a conflict zone. They have since been released.
Human Rights Watch has documented that Burkina Faso authorities have used a sweeping emergency law and “general mobilization” decree, part of its strategy to combat Islamist armed groups, to conscript junta critics, journalists, civil society activists, and magistrates into the military and silence them.
While governments are empowered to conscript adult civilians for national defense, conscription should not take place unless it has been authorized and is in accordance with domestic law. Conscription needs to be carried out in a manner that gives the potential conscript notice of the duration of military service and an adequate opportunity to contest being required to serve at that time.
Burkinabè authorities should immediately release the three journalists and stop the use of conscription to repress the media and critics.
Mozambique’s Parliament Approves Inclusive Dialogue Law
Last week, Mozambique’s parliament unanimously passed into law the Political Commitment for an Inclusive Dialogue (Compromisso Político para o Diálogo Nacional Inclusivo), which aims to create platforms to discuss constitutional and political reforms in the country following the post-election violence in October 2024.
Mozambique faced significant political turmoil after the disputed general elections as security forces cracked down on protesters and bystanders during an unprecedented wave of demonstrations. Plataforma Decide, a civil society organization in Mozambique, reported that over 300 people were killed in the violence.
The police and other security agencies were implicated in serious human rights violations, including the use of excessive force, unlawful killing, and arbitrary arrests and detentions. In a public statement, the recently appointed minister of justice criticized the police’s use of lethal force to disperse street protests and urged security forces to avoid further loss of life.
The new law stems from an agreement signed by President Daniel Chapo and nine political parties on March 5. It aims, among other things, to revise the constitution, amend presidential powers, and grant pardons to peaceful demonstrators convicted of unrest after the presidential poll.
Venancio Mondlane, the presidential candidate who had contested the election results, did not sign the agreement but met with Chapo on March 23.
The political commitment opens the door for a broader national dialogue to address the violent post-election unrest. It is critical that the political parties ensure that the dialogue’s participants and the managing committee are drawn from a broad cross-section of Mozambican society.
The discussions should prioritize the rights of victims to redress and justice and clarify a path to accountability for members of the security forces implicated in abuses against protesters and bystanders.
Human Rights Watch Submission to the Universal Periodic Review of Belarus
Summary
Human Rights Watch (HRW) submits the following with respect to Belarus’s implementation of recommendations received during its 2020 Universal Periodic Review (UPR). This submission is neither a complete review of implementation of all recommendations, nor a comprehensive review of Belarus’s respect, protection and fulfillment of human rights in the domestic sphere.Since Belarus’s last UPR cycle in November 2020, the human rights situation has significantly deteriorated. Despite formally supporting recommendations on the protection of peaceful assembly, freedom of opinion and expression, access to information, and the need for accountability for and prevention of torture and ill-treatment in places of detention,[1] the Belarusian government engaged in widespread and systematic violations against critics, rather than implement those recommendations.Between July 2024 and January 2025, the government - by way of an amnesty and presidential pardons - released 240 persons who had been convicted on politically motivated charges (political prisoners for the purpose of this submission).[2] However, at least 1,208 political prisoners remain behind bars, and politically motivated prosecutions continue.[3]Right to Peaceful Assembly and Crackdown on Peaceful Protests
During its previous UPR cycle, Belarus supported several states’ recommendations in relation to ensuring the right to peaceful assembly, including “by ensuring that peaceful demonstrators are not persecuted, intimidated, imprisoned, ill-treated or tortured”[4] and refraining from “the disproportionate use of force against people exercising their right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.”[5]In November 2020, using excessive force, Belarusian authorities detained at least 1,053 people in connection with peaceful protests, mostly in Minsk. Hundreds were charged with breaching public gathering regulations and sentenced to fines or arrest.[6]Belarusian police continued brutally dispersing peaceful protests into early 2021 until they largely wound down. Police arbitrarily detained people for wearing or exhibiting the white-red-white stripe pattern associated with the protest movement and charged them with violating regulations on demonstrations even if they were detained during raids on apartment buildings.[7]Between November 2020 and March 2025, authorities continued prosecutions over the 2020 protests, including against critics returning from abroad. Tens of thousands were sentenced to fines and short-term arrests; many experienced ill-treatment in custody.[8] At least 3,277 faced criminal charges.[9]In March 2021, authorities toughened sanctions for violating public gathering regulations. In June 2021, a set of amendments to the law on demonstrations entered into force, requiring official permission for any public gathering. Later that month, authorities introduced criminal liability for joining at least two unauthorized protests over a year. They also toughened sanctions for calls for participation in unauthorized protests and broadly defined extremist crimes.[10]In February 2022, authorities held a referendum on constitutional amendments, which human rights groups deemed non-transparent and illegitimate.[11] On the day of the referendum police detained hundreds over peaceful protests against the war in Ukraine and subjected them to beatings and other forms of ill-treatment. In the ensuing months, police routinely detained people for anti-war insignia.Recommendations:
Stop prosecutions over participation in peaceful protests; release and rehabilitate all imprisoned protesters;Amend national legislation in line with relevant international standards and lift all undue obstacles to exercising freedom of assembly.Freedom of Opinion and Expression & Access to information
Crackdown on independent journalism
During its last UPR cycle, Belarus supported recommendations on guaranteeing media freedom and independence, including recommendations on ensuring protection and safety of journalists and media workers, including foreign media, as well as refraining from interference and censorship.'[12]Between November 2020 and March 2021, authorities carried out unprecedented violations against independent journalists, subjecting them to arbitrary detentions, ill-treatment, arbitrary fines, and unwarranted prison sentences on politically motivated charges. Authorities also revoked their media credentials and raided their homes and offices.[13] Dozens of journalists were targeted as witnesses and suspects in trumped up criminal cases and subjected to house searches, interrogations, and harassment. At least four reported beatings in custody, inhumane detention conditions and denial of medical assistance.In December 2020, a Minsk court revoked the media license of leading independent online media TUT.BY over allegedly spreading “false information.” In May 2021, police searched TUT.BY’s offices, raided the homes of at least five staff, and detained at least 13 staff on spurious “grand tax evasion” charges.[14] In June 2022, the Supreme Court designated TUT.BY “an extremist organization.” Three TUT.BY’s staff, including the editor-in-chief Maryna Zolatava, were imprisoned on bogus criminal charges; and at least nine more were suspects in a politically motivated criminal case.[15]In February 2021, a Minsk court sentenced journalist Katsiaryna Andreyeva (Bakhvalova) and her colleague Daria Chultsova to two years in prison for “organizing activities violating public order.” The case against them stemmed from their live stream of a protest in Minsk in November 2020.[16] In July 2022, a Homieĺ court found also Andreyeva guilty of high treason, increasing her total imprisonment sentence to eight years and three months.[17]In March 2021, TUT.BY’s correspondent Katsiaryna Barysevich and medical doctor Artsiom Sarokin were sentenced to six months and two years (with one-year suspended), respectively, for “disclosing medical data” in an article about the death of a peaceful protester, Raman Bandarenka, as a result of a severe beating by police.[18]In June 2021, a set of amendments to the media law entered into force, further expanding official grounds for revoking accreditations and blocking media websites. Amendments prohibited livestreams of unauthorized mass protests and outlawed publications that “discredit” the state.[19]Authorities labeled independent media outlets and social media channels as "extremist" and used charges of “dissemination of extremist materials” to prosecute people for sharing and commenting on their publications.”[20]Freedom to express dissenting opinion
During the last UPR cycle, Belarus supported several recommendations on ensuring the freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of speech and access to information.[21]Over the past five years, authorities have used a variety of charges to prosecute their critics, including “defamation” charges for insulting the Belarusian president, government or state symbols, and charges of “inciting enmity” against the “social group of law enforcement officers” or “violent acts or threat of violence against law enforcement officers.” Authorities widely used charges related to “extremism” and “terrorism” against critics for actions such as leaving critical comments on social media, following “extremist” Telegram channels, or having a white-red-white tattoo.[22]After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Belarusian authorities systematically prosecuted war critics.[23]Internet shutdowns and blockings
Despite supporting Norway’s recommendation to ensure “unfettered access to the Internet,”[24] Belarus continued hindering access to the internet in response to the protests in 2020 and carried out illegitimate blockings of independent sources.In November 2020, Internet service providers notified their users in Minsk that internet access would be restricted, as ordered by the government amidst mass protests.[25]Authorities blocked dozens of independent media,[26] including, at least two TUT.BY websites in May 2021.[27]In December 2021, a court in Homiel designated the website and social media pages of Viasna, a leading human rights group, as “extremist,” which led to their blocking. Authorities also blocked the website of another prominent rights group Human Constanta.[28] In April 2022, Belarus’s Prosecutor General announced the blocking of Human Rights Watch’s website.[29]In April 2024, Operation and Analysis Center under the president of Belarus was authorized to disconnect “extremist” websites from the country’s national domain system (.by), effectively shutting them down.[30]Recommendations:
Ensure access to information without arbitrary censorship of legitimate information, including online.Ensure that people can express their opinions online freely and without fear of retaliation.Ensure that journalists can do their work without fear of retaliation, including by bringing national legislation in line with international standards.Harassment of Human Rights Defenders, Opposition Activists, Civil Society Groups, and Lawyers
Human Rights Defenders
In its previous UPR cycle, Belarus supported recommendations calling on the government to respect the rights of and protect human rights defenders.[31]In February 2021, authorities rounded up at least 40 human rights defenders and journalists and searched their homes and offices.[32] In July 2021, police in at least ten cities searched homes and offices of the country’s leading rights organizations and their staff, detaining and interrogating at least 11 human rights defenders and journalists as a part of the criminal investigation into 2020 protests.[33]In July 2021, Aliaksandr Lukashenka announced a “purge” on Belarusian civil society.[34] Authorities moved to shut-down over a thousand independent organizations.[35] In January 2022, new legislation entered into force, reintroducing criminal liability for participation in activities of unregistered organizations, punishable with up to two years in prison.[36]Seven Viasna staff faced criminal prosecution and five remained behind bars in March 2025, including the group’s leader Ales Bialiatski (ten years in prison), vice-chair Valentin Stefanovich (9 years), lawyer Uladzimir Labkovich (7 years), volunteer Andrei Chapiuk (six years) and volunteers network coordinator Marfa Rabkova (15 years).[37]In February 2021, leading disabilities rights activist Siarhei Drazdouski and lawyer Aleh Hrableuski spent six months under house arrest and in jail, respectively, on spurious fraud charges.In March 2023, a court in Minsk sentenced policy analyst Tatiana Kouzina to ten years in prison on politically motivated charges.[38]In June 2023, the Minsk City Court sentenced human rights defender Nasta (Anastasia) Loika to seven years in prison for “inciting enmity” for her report documenting rights violations perpetrated by police. Loika had served six arbitrary administrative arrest sentences prior to facing criminal charges. Authorities subjected her to torture and other forms of inhumane treatment, forced her to record “confession” videos, vilified her in smear campaigns, searched her mother’s home, and disbarred her lawyers.[39]In September 2021, the Supreme Court upheld the government’s move to liquidate the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, one of the country’s oldest rights groups.[40]In March 2023, authorities designated the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) and staff an “extremist formation.”[41] On August 27, the Supreme Court ruled to strip BAJ of its official registration.[42]Trade Unions
In April 2022, authorities raided offices of several independent trade unions, detaining at least 14 activists over “activities gravely violating public order.” In July, the Supreme Court shut down four major independent trade unions and the Belarusian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions.[43] Between October 2022 and October 2023, authorities prosecuted at least 24 trade union members on politically motivated charges.[44]Opposition Politicians
In July 2021, the Supreme Court sentenced Viktar Babarika, one of the former presidential contenders, to 14 years in prison on charges of “grand bribery” and “large-scale laundering of illicit funds.” In July 2023, Eduard Babaryka his son Eduard Babaryka, who worked for his campaign, was sentenced to eight years in prison for “tax evasion,” “enmity incitement,” and “aiding activities gravely violating public order.”[45]In December 2021, a court in Homiel sentenced former presidential contender Siarhei Tsikhanouski to 18 years in prison over “organizing mass protests.” The other five defendants in the case, including opposition politician Mikalay Statkevich and Radio Free Europe consultant Ihar Losik, received 14-to-16-year prison sentences.[46]In February 2023, a court in Zhodino handed down an additional one-and-a-half-year sentence to Tsikhanouski.[47]In September 2021, a Minsk court sentenced Maryia Kalesnikava and Maksim Znak, members of the presidium of the opposition’s Coordination Council, to 11 and 10 years’ in prison, respectively, on charges of “conspiracy to seize power” and “calls for actions aimed at harming national security.” [48] While in pretrial detention, Kalesnikava reported threats and ill-treatment.[49]In November 2023, law enforcement officers carried out over100 raids in connection with elections to the opposition’s Coordination Council. Following the raids, 20 exiled activists, journalists, and academics were sentenced in absentia for purported affiliation with the opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. In May, when the election to the Council took place, authorities opened criminal cases against 257 people whose names were on the list of candidates.[50]Lawyers
Over the past five years, Belarusian lawyers representing clients in politically motivated cases or speaking out on rights abuses faced systematic repression as the government took control over the legal profession.[51]More than 140 lawyers lost their license following politically motivated disbarment by the regional bar associations or license revocation by the Justice Ministry.[52]Authorities denied lawyers access to their clients and recorded confidential attorney-client conversations. Authorities also forced lawyers to sign broad nondisclosure agreements and arbitrarily closed trials to the public, preventing lawyers from sharing case materials with independent experts or exposing abuses against their clients.[53]Between September 2020 and May 2024, authorities arbitrarily arrested at least 23 lawyers and used those arrests as a pretext to suspend them from representing their clients and to revoke their licenses. Many lawyers suffered arbitrarily detentions, interrogations and other forms of harassment.[54]In March 2025, at least six human rights lawyers—Maksim Znak, Aliaksandr Danilevich, Vital Brahinets, Anastasiya Lazarenka, Yuliya Yurhilevich, and Aliaksei Barodka—were serving politically motivated six-to-ten-year prison sentences.In some cases, lawyers experienced beatings, other ill-treatment and torture, including threats of sexual assault, law enforcement officials, including riot police, security agents, and officers at local police precincts.In November 2021, amendments to the law on the bar entered into force, requiring all practicing lawyers to be employed by regional bar associations controlled by the Justice Ministry.Recommendations:
Release immediately and unconditionally human rights defenders, lawyers, trade union members, opposition politicians, journalists, and others convicted in retaliation for exercising their civil and political rights and guarantee that they can carry out their work without fear of reprisal.Torture, Ill-treatment and Accountability
In November, 2020, a group of apparent plain-clothed law enforcement officers severely beat Raman Bandarenka, when he was trying to protect a mural, a local symbol of peaceful protest movement, from government sponsored assailants.[55] One day later, Bandarenka died of severe brain injuries.[56] Authorities denied the police involvement, claiming Bandarenka had been found drunk on the street.In August 2021, the Belarusian Investigative Committee completed their preliminary inquiry into the allegations of torture and other ill-treatment of peaceful protesters by law enforcement officers in August 2020 and stated that they found no grounds for launching criminal investigations into the 4,644 claims.[57]Since November 2020, political prisoners continued to face torture and ill-treatment, including in pre-trial custody and penal colonies.[58] Law enforcement officers routinely forced detainees in politically motivated cases to “repent” for their “crimes” on camera.[59]At least seven political prisoners, including Babaryka, Tsikhanouski, and Losik, have been held incommunicado since February-April 2023. Kalesnikava was held incommunicado for extended periods of time.[60]Prison officials restricted political prisoners’ access to correspondence, calls, parcels, and meetings with lawyers and family. Prisoners faced isolation in punishment cells and arbitrarily harsh confinement regime. Dozens of political prisoners in 2024 faced new trumped-up charges, which served to prolong their sentences.Recommendations:
Ensure absolute prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment, immediately cease the practice of incommunicado detention, and bring detention conditions in line with international standards.Issue a standing invitation to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture to visit places of detention under conditions set out the by the Special Rapporteur and cooperate fully on all visits and recommendations.Ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture and Other Inhuman or Dergrading Treatment or Punishment and establish an independent national prevention mechanism and cooperate fully with the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture. Ratify the Rome Statute and implement the statute in national legislation, including by incorporating provisions to cooperate promptly and fully with the International Criminal Court.Crackdown on Belarusians in Exile
Since September 2022, authorities initiated scores of “special procedure” criminal cases against opposition politicians, human rights defenders, and other critics. The “special procedure” is applicable to crimes under 43 different articles of the criminal code and allows for trials in absentia.[61]In July 2022, amendments to the citizenship law entered into force, allowing the president to strip Belarusians abroad of their citizenship if convicted, including in absentia, of “participation in an extremist organization” or “grave harm to the interests of Belarus.”[62]In September 2022, Lukashenka signed a decree abolishing the authority of consulates and diplomatic missions to issue, replace, or extend passports or identification cards of Belarusians abroad.[63]In June and July 2023, law enforcement officers raided the homes of 21 exiled independent journalists and forced their family members to record videos condemning them.[64]Recommendations:
Stop the practice of politically motivated prosecutions and other acts of repression against activists in exile and their family members.Humanitarian Crisis and Violence at Belarus-Poland Border
In 2021, Belarusian authorities orchestrated a humanitarian crisis by facilitating tourist visas to thousands of migrants to encourage them to travel to the European Union borders. Pushed back to Belarus at the EU borders, migrants suffered serious abuses, including beatings and at least one instance of rape by Belarusian border guards and other security agents. Belarusian authorities prevented them from leaving the border areas, forcing them to repeatedly attempt crossing into the EU. Hundreds were stuck in limbo for weeks and months in circumstances that put their lives at risk.[65]In the following years, the humanitarian crisis at the European Union borders continued. Migrants, including children, continued to be stuck on the Belarusian side of the border, facing abuses by officials and risk of death.[66]Recommendations:
Stop instrumentalizing migrants and end their ill-treatment at the border.
[1] UN Human Rights Council, Addendum to the Report of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review Belarus, A/HRC/46/5/Add.1, March 5, 2021, https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/46/5/Add.1 (accessed April 3, 2025).
[2] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2025 (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2025), Belarus chapter, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2025/country-chapters/belarus (accessed April 3, 2025).
[3] “Viasna” Human Rights Center, Political prisoners in Belarus, https://prisoners.spring96.org/en, (accessed April 3, 2025).
[4] UN Human Rights Council, Report of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review Belarus, A/HRC/46/5, January 4, 2021, Recommendation 138.159 https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/46/5, (accessed April 3, 2025).
[5] Ibid, Recommendation 138.143.
[6] Anastasiia Kruope (Human Rights Watch), Crackdown on Peaceful Protesters Escalates in Belarus, November 9, 2020, https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/11/09/crackdown-peaceful-protesters-escalates-belarus, (accessed April 3, 2025).
[7] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2022 (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2022), Belarus chapter, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2022/country-chapters/belarus (accessed April 3, 2025).
[8] “Viasna” Human Rights Center, At least 46,700 detained: administrative persecution in numbers three years after post-election protests (Не менее 46 700 задержанных: административное преследование в цифрах за три года послевыборных протестов), August 9, 2023, https://spring96.org/ru/news/112439 (accessed April 3, 2025).
[9] “Viasna” Human Rights Center, More than 3,270 people sentenced for participatingin protests against falcified election results in 2020 (Более 3270 человек осудили за участие в протестах против фальсифицированных результатов выборов в 2020 году), January 22, 2025, https://spring96.org/ru/news/117222, (accessed April 3, 2025).
[10] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2022. Belarus chapter, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2022/country-chapters/belarus.
[11] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2023 (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2023), Belarus chapter, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/belarus (accessed April 3, 2025).
[12] UN Human Rights Council, Addendum to the Report of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review Belarus, A/HRC/46/5/Add.1, March 5, 2021, https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/46/5/Add.1.
[13] Human Rights Watch, Belarus: Crackdown on Independent Journalism, March 29, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/03/29/belarus-crackdown-independent-journalism (Accessed April 3, 2025).
[14] Anastasiia Kruope (Human Rights Watch), Belarusian Authorities Move to Silence Leading Media Outlet, May 19, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/05/19/belarusian-authorities-move-silence-leading-media-outlet Accessed April 3, 2025).
[15] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2023, Belarus chapter.
[16] Anastasiia Kruope (Human Rights Watch), Two Journalists in Belarus Jailed in Retaliation for Their Work, February 18, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/02/18/two-journalists-belarus-jailed-retaliation-their-work (Accessed April 3, 2025).
[17] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2023, Belarus chapter, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/belarus.
[18] Viasna” Human Rights Center, “Zero promile” case: Sentence delievered to journalist Barysevich and doctor Sorokin (Дело "ноль промилле": Вынесли приговоры журналистке Борисевич и врачу Сорокину), March 2, 2021, https://spring96.org/ru/news/102226 (Accessed April 3, 2025).
[19] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2022. Belarus chapter, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2022/country-chapters/belarus.
[20] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2023, Belarus chapter; Human Rights Watch, Belarusian Association of Human Rights Lawyers, Right to Defence (defendersbelarus.org), “I Swear to Fulfill the Duties of Defense Lawyer Honestly and Faithfully,” May 27, 2024, https://www.hrw.org/report/2024/05/27/i-swear-fulfill-duties-defense-lawyer-honestly-and-faithfully/politically (Accessed April 3, 2025).
[21] UN Human Rights Council, Addendum to the Report of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review Belarus, A/HRC/46/5/Add.1, March 5, 2021, https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/46/5/Add.1 (accessed April 3, 2025).
[22] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2024 (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2024), Belarus chapter, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024/country-chapters/belarus (accessed April 3, 2025).
[23] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2024, Belarus chapter.
[24] UN Human Rights Council, Report of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review Belarus, A/HRC/46/5, January 4, 2021, Recommendation 138.172 https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/46/5, (accessed April 3, 2025).
[25] Anastasiia Kruope (human Rights Watch), Crackdown on Peaceful Protesters Escalates in Belarus, November 9, 2020, https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/11/09/crackdown-peaceful-protesters-escalates-belarus (Accessed April 3, 2025).
[26] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2023, Belarus chapter.
[27] Anastasiia Kruope (Human Rights Watch), Belarusian Authorities Move to Silence Leading Media Outlet.
[28] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2023, Belarus chapter.
[29] Anastasiia Kruope (Human Rights Watch), Belarus Blocks Human Rights Watch Website, April 6, 2022, https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/04/06/belarus-blocks-human-rights-watch-website (Accessed April 3, 2025).
[30] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2025, Belarus chapter.
[31] UN Human Rights Council, Addendum to the Report of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review Belarus, March 5, 2021, Recommendations 138.146; 138.162, https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/46/5/Add.1 (accessed April 3, 2025).
[32] Human Rights Watch, Belarus: Crackdown Escalates, February 17, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/02/17/belarus-crackdown-escalates (Accessed April 3, 2025).
[33] Human Rights Watch, Belarus: Unprecedented Raids on Human Rights Defenders, July 15, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/07/15/belarus-unprecedented-raids-human-rights-defenders (Accessed April 3, 2025).
[34] Tanya Lokshina, Rachel Denber (Human Rights Watch), Belarus Authorities Launch Purge of Civic Groups, July 23, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/07/23/belarus-authorities-launch-purge-civic-groups (Accessed April 3, 2025).
[35] Lawtrend, Forcible liquidation of NGOs 2021-2025 (Принудительная ликвидация НКО 2021-2025), https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qHDjDaoq1Fz9TnVsbTIh-sFbWP_4U1faraytI8AuKXM/edit?gid=0#gid=0 (Accessed April 3, 2025).
[36] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2023, Belarus chapter.
[37] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2022, Belarus chapter.
[38] Tanya Lokshina, Another Critic Detained in Belarus on Undisclosed Charges, July 8, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/07/08/another-critic-detained-belarus-undisclosed-charges (Accessed April 3, 2025); “Viasna” Human Rights Center, Tatsiana Kouzina, https://prisoners.spring96.org/en/person/taccjana-kuzina (Accessed April 3, 2025).
[39] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2024, Belarus chapter.
[40] Human Rights Watch, Belarus: Authorities Target Top Human Rights Group, September 29, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/09/29/belarus-authorities-target-top-human-rights-group (Accessed April 3, 2025).
[41] Anastasiia Kruope (Human Rights Watch), Belarus Equates Rights Protection to Extremism, March 10, 2023, https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/03/10/belarus-equates-rights-protection-extremism (Accessed April 3, 2025).
[42] Anastasiia Kruope (human Rights Watch), Belarusian Authorities “Liquidate” Leading Media Freedom Organization, August 30, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/08/30/belarusian-authorities-liquidate-leading-media-freedom-organization (Accessed April 3, 2025).
[43] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2023, Belarus chapter.
[44] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2024, Belarus chapter.
[45] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2024, Belarus chapter.
[46] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2023, Belarus chapter.
[47] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2024, Belarus chapter.
[48] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2022. Belarus chapter.
[49] Human Rights Watch, Belarus: Stop Ill-Treatment of Opposition Politician, June 12, 2023, https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/06/12/belarus-stop-ill-treatment-opposition-politician (Accessed April 3, 2025).
[50] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2025, Belarus chapter.
[51] Human Rights Watch, Belarusian Association of Human Rights Lawyers, Right to Defence (defendersbelarus.org), “I Swear to Fulfill the Duties of Defense Lawyer Honestly and Faithfully.”
[52] Human Rights Watch, Belarusian Association of Human Rights Lawyers, Right to Defence (defendersbelarus.org), “I Swear to Fulfill the Duties of Defense Lawyer Honestly and Faithfully.”
[53] Ibid.
[54] Ibid.
[55] “Viasna” Human Rights Center, Ales Bialiatski: “MIA is responsible for death of Raman Bandarenka” (Алесь Беляцкий: "Ответственность за смерть Романа Бондаренко лежит на МВД"), November 12, 2020, https://spring96.org/ru/news/100384 (Accessed April 3, 2025).
[56] Anastasiia Kruope (Human Rights Watch), Man Killed for Protecting Symbols of Peaceful Protests in Belarus, November 13, 2020, https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/11/13/man-killed-protecting-symbols-peaceful-protests-belarus (Accessed April 3, 2025).
[57] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2022. Belarus chapter.
[58] Human Rights Watch, Belarusian Association of Human Rights Lawyers, Right to Defence (defendersbelarus.org), “I Swear to Fulfill the Duties of Defense Lawyer Honestly and Faithfully”;“Viasna” Human Rights Center, Criminal prosecution for political reasons Belarus 2021-2022 (Minsk, 2022), https://spring96.org/files/book/en/2022_politically_motivated_criminal_prosecutions_en.pdf (Accessed April 3, 2025); “Viasna” Human Rights Center, Detention and penitentiary facilities of Belarus: 2020-2021 (Minsk, 2022), https://spring96.org/files/book/en/detention_and_penitentiasry_2020_2021.pdf (Accessed April 3, 2025).
[59] Human Rights Watch, Belarusian Association of Human Rights Lawyers, Right to Defence (defendersbelarus.org), “I Swear to Fulfill the Duties of Defense Lawyer Honestly and Faithfully.”
[60] Ibid; Human Rights Watch, Belarus: Stop Ill-Treatment of Opposition Politician.
[61] Human Rights Watch, Belarus: New Laws Target Critics in Exile, December 22, 2022, https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/12/22/belarus-new-laws-target-critics-exile, (Accessed April 3, 2025).
[62] Ibid.
[63] Human Rights Watch, Belarus: Decree Puts Exiled Citizens at Risk, September 8, 2023, https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/09/08/belarus-decree-puts-exiled-citizens-risk (Accessed April 3, 2025).
[64] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2025, Belarus chapter.
[65] Human Rights Watch, “Die Here or Go to Poland,” November 24, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/11/24/die-here-or-go-poland/belarus-and-polands-shared-responsibility-border-abuses (Accessed April 3, 2025).
[66] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2023, Belarus chapter.
China: Free Imprisoned Taiwan Publisher
(Taipei) – The Chinese authorities should urgently quash the conviction and free the Taiwan publisher Li Yanhe (李延賀), known by his pen name Fu Cha (富察), Human Rights Watch said today. Fu Cha, who has been detained in China since 2023, was secretly sentenced in February 2025 to three years in prison on charges of “inciting secession.” The government has provided little information about his trial or his condition in detention.
Fu Cha, 54, is editor-in-chief of the Taiwanese firm Gūsa Publishing, which has published translated works on global affairs, politics, and history, including some critical of the Chinese government. Originally from China, he became a Taiwanese citizen in early 2023 after living there for over a decade. In March 2023, Fu Cha visited Shanghai, apparently to rescind his Chinese household registration to comply with Taiwanese citizenship requirements. Chinese police then detained him on national security charges.
“The Chinese authorities have imprisoned Fu Cha for daring to publish books on China that they don’t like,” said Maya Wang, associate China director at Human Rights Watch. “The groundless case against Fu Cha is an apparent attempt to muffle freedom of expression outside its borders and intimidate Taiwan’s vibrant publishing industry.”
On March 17, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office publicly stated that Fu Cha had been convicted following an “open trial” in February. But it did not announce his sentence until the following week, when a foreign journalist asked about it during a routine news conference.
The Chinese authorities have yet to specify which of Fu Cha’s actions were considered criminal, nor release any legal documents or evidence despite insisting that due process rights were respected. Taiwanese media reported that the Chinese authorities had pressured Fu Cha’s family not to speak publicly about his case. There is no indication that Fu Cha had access to lawyers or family members as required by international law.
Taiwan authorities have condemned the lack of transparency surrounding Fu Cha’s case. Because Chinese authorities do not recognize Taiwan or Taiwanese nationality, it did not allow Taiwanese authorities access to Fu Cha. The Chinese government should release Fu Cha and allow him to leave China, Human Rights Watch said.
In February, the Chinese Supreme People’s Procuratorate held a news conference listing Fu Cha’s case and the case of Yang Chih-yuan, a Taiwanese political activist, as “major cases involving the endangering of national security.” Yang was sentenced to nine years in prison for “separatism” in August 2024. Singling out these two cases appears to be part of the Chinese government’s increasing efforts to intimidate Taiwanese people and reinforce its claims of sovereignty over Taiwan, including by using legal tools.
In recent months, cases of Taiwanese citizens detained in China have been rising, according to data compiled by Taiwan authorities. In October 2024, three Taiwanese members of the religious group I-Kuan Tao were arrested in Guangdong province for “organizing and using secret societies to undermine law enforcement,” a crime under article 300 of the Chinese Criminal Law. In early 2025, two Taiwanese members of the Unification Church were arrested in Xiamen City, Guangdong province, for “using cult organizations to destroy the law,” also a crime under article 300, allegedly for preaching.
Taiwan has been the last major hub for Chinese-language thought and writing outside the control of the Chinese Communist Party since the Chinese government’s repression of fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong. The freewheeling publishing industry in Hong Kong ended after the Chinese government disappeared five Causeway Bay booksellers in 2015, and when it imposed the draconian National Security Law on the city in 2020. Fu Cha’s arrest and conviction, an act of Chinese government transnational repression, has had a chilling effect on Taiwan’s publishing industry.
“The Chinese government’s wrongful imprisonment of Fu Cha has global implications, affecting every writer who wishes to publish in Chinese and reach Chinese readers throughout the world,” Wang said. “Foreign governments should speak out about Fu’s case and help protect this crucial refuge for Chinese language readers around the world.”
Romania: Dangerous Rollback of Reproductive Rights
(Berlin) – The sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls, including the right to abortion and family planning methods, have been significantly eroded in Romania, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
The 73-page report, “‘It’s Happening Even Without You Noticing’: Increasing Barriers to Accessing Sexual and Reproductive Health Care in Romania,” documents that, although these rights are partially protected under Romanian law, in practice women and girls are regularly and systematically thwarted in their efforts to exercise these rights.
April 7, 2025 “It’s Happening Even Without You Noticing”“Women and girls in Romania face an increasingly hostile landscape, as they seek to make decisions about their own bodies and health care,” said Song Ah Lee, former Finberg Fellow at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “The Romanian authorities are not only failing to uphold sexual and reproductive health rights but are often enabling efforts to block women and girls from exercising these rights.”
The report is based on 64 interviews, with women who discussed their experiences of seeking sexual and reproductive health care, healthcare providers, and activists fighting for reproductive rights in Romania. Human Rights Watch also met with state officials and religious leaders, reached out to 11 anti-abortion groups operating in Romania, and reviewed documents from government, courts, media, and activists.
Abortion on request is legal until 14 weeks of pregnancy in Romania, but Human Rights Watch found that a growing number of doctors and public hospitals no longer provide the service. Doctors frequently invoke conscientious objection—their own religious beliefs—to turn away patients requiring abortion care. They often do so without referring patients to colleagues or other hospitals, in violation of the patients’ rights. Some entire healthcare facilities refuse to provide abortion care, through formal or informal policies.
Romanian authorities facilitate the work of anti-abortion activists and so-called crisis pregnancy centers that seek to dissuade or prevent women and girls from accessing abortion, using means that are sometimes deceptive and unethical.
Doctors are sometimes mistaken about, or misapply laws and guidelines concerning abortions on request, such as the legal time limit for medication abortion, Human Rights Watch found. Some doctors inappropriately require any patient under age 18 to obtain consent from a parent or guardian, even though adolescents aged 16 and over can legally access sexual and reproductive health care without such consent. These barriers further reduce access to services for women and girls. Some doctors also allege that they can’t secure medical malpractice insurance as a reason to refuse to provide abortions on request, further affecting access to care.
“Being in this situation, it was like all my dreams went out of the window,” Nina said. When she became pregnant at 19, Nina wanted an abortion. Her family doctor told her that his hospital did not provide abortions on request, so she should search online for a provider. When she Googled “abortion,” the first result was “avort.ro.” Not knowing the organization was one that promotes anti-abortion rhetoric and works to prevent pregnant women and girls from going through with having an abortion, Nina called it. “They told me things that sounded sci-fi,” she recalled. “That doctors don’t use anesthesia, that the fetus would be handed to me all sliced up.”
The woman who she spoke to assured Nina that the state and church would help her if she kept the baby. But Nina still wanted an abortion, so the woman scheduled two appointments for her at the Giulesti Maternity Hospital in Bucharest. The doctor did not show up for either appointment. By then, Nina was already 12 weeks pregnant. Nina tried calling the woman again, but she never answered. After her son was born in 2020, Nina had to postpone her university education, quit her job, and leave the capital due to financial difficulties, she said. “I experienced a major break in the perception that I could do anything. Maybe that is why I can’t bond with my son as well. It was really painful, and it still is.”
Women and girls also face illegal barriers to accessing contraception, and children and young people are harmed by the failure by state authorities to provide age-appropriate, scientifically accurate and comprehensive sexuality education in schools. Women and girls living in rural areas, and people from marginalized communities or with limited financial means, face even greater barriers.
In failing to tackle obstacles to accessing safe abortion, contraception, and sexual and reproductive health information, Romania is violating its human rights obligations under European and international law. Romania should take all necessary steps, including legislative reform, to ensure that comprehensive sexuality education is provided to all students, and that women and girls can exercise their rights to access safe and legal abortion services and contraception in practice.
Romanian authorities should especially focus on ensuring that unmonitored and unregulated processes in the healthcare system, lack of information, availability, or affordability are not impeding women and girls from making informed decisions about their health, Human Rights Watch said.
Romania has a grim history when it comes to sexual and reproductive health rights. In 1966, the then-government adopted Decree 770 which, in the name of driving population growth, imposed draconian bans on access to contraception and abortion. To ensure compliance with Decree 770, that government monitored women’s reproductive status by recruiting informants, usually current or former medical workers or students, to spy on them, and by subjecting them to invasive and humiliating medical checkups in the presence of police.
Because of the regulation and its abusive implementation, women and girls with unwanted pregnancies often had unsafe abortions, leading to the deaths of an estimated 10,000 women and girls, although some experts believe the number to be much higher. By the time Decree 770 was repealed in 1989, Romania had the highest maternal mortality rate in Europe.
“Activists in Romania have fought for decades to restore sexual and reproductive rights in their country,” Song Ah Lee said. “Today they are confronted with an alarming level of backsliding. Romania should remember its own destructive history and fully respect the rights of women and girls.”
Saudi Arabia: Dozens Freed But Arrests Continue
(Beirut) – Saudi authorities have released dozens of people serving long prison terms for peacefully exercising their rights yet continue to imprison and arbitrarily detain many more, Human Rights Watch said today.
Between December 2024 and February 2025, Saudi authorities released at least 44 prisoners, relatives and rights organizations reported. They include Mohammed al-Qahtani, a 59-year-old rights activist; Salma al-Shehab, a doctoral student at Leeds University; and Asaad al-Ghamdi, brother of a well-known rights activist living in exile. The Saudi government should end its wholesale repression of freedom of association, expression, and belief.
“The release of dozens of prisoners is a positive development, but the Saudi government should free everyone else who has been arbitrarily detained,” said Joey Shea, Saudi Arabia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “This positive gesture is not a substitute for ending oppressive policies in the country.”
Released prisoners continue to face restrictions, such as arbitrary travel bans and having to wear an ankle monitor. Those still being held for exercising their basic rights continue to face systematic violations of due process and fair trial rights, based on reports from family members and lawyers. Saudi authorities continue to detain and imprison individuals on the basis of freedom of expression, assembly, association, and belief. High profile detainees such as Salman al-Odah, a prominent cleric and religious scholar; Waleed Abu al-Khair, an award-winning Saudi human rights defender and lawyer; and Abdulrahman al-Sadhan, an aid worker, remain imprisoned.
There is little indication that these releases signal a fundamental policy shift, Human Rights Watch said. Many more people remain imprisoned for the peaceful exercise of their rights.
Al-Qahtani, co-founder of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association, was released on January 7. Saudi authorities convicted him on charges including “setting up an unlicensed organization” and “disseminating false information to foreign groups”on March 9, 2013, and sentenced him to 10 years in prison followed by a 10-year travel ban. Al-Qahtani was due to be released in 2022 but had been held beyond his expected release date and forcibly disappeared for two years and 10 days, ALQST, a Saudi human rights organization, reported.
Saudi authorities detained al-Shehab in 2021 and sentenced her to 34 years in prison based solely on her peaceful social media activity related to women’s rights issues in the country. A Saudi court reduced her prison sentence to 27 years in 2023 and then to 4 years in September 2024, with that term ending in December 2024. Saudi authorities released al-Shehab in February 2025.
Saudi Arabia’s notorious terrorism court, the Specialized Criminal Court, sentenced al-Ghamdi in May 2024 to 20 years in prison on terrorism charges for his peaceful social media activity. Relatives said he was released in February.
Saudi authorities have not issued a list of the released prisoners nor detailed their terms of release.
On March 2, Abdulaziz al-Howairini, the head of Saudi Arabia’s Presidency of State Security, a security agency that has committed repeated rights violations, invited exiled dissidents to return to Saudi Arabia without consequences under an amnesty offer directed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Al-Howairini told state-owned media that “the kingdom welcomes the return of those who call themselves opposition abroad.” However, al-Howairini extended the invitation “to those who were misled and manipulated for ulterior motives” rather than indicating a government policy shift toward tolerance of freedom of expression, assembly, association, and belief.
Many remain imprisoned in Saudi Arabia based on charges that are not recognizable crimes in international law. They include people like Sabri Shalabi, a psychiatrist falsely accused of terrorism, high-profile human rights defenders like Waleed Abu al-Khair and Manahel al-Otaibi, and the relatives of political dissidents like al-Ghamdi.
In some cases, Saudi authorities have doubled down and expanded violations against human rights defenders. Among those still held are al-Otaibi, a Saudi fitness instructor, who was forcibly disappeared on December 15. She was allowed to call her sister on March 16, a relative told Human Rights Watch. She had been arrested in Riyadh in November 2022 under Saudi’s anti-cybercrime law for supporting women’s rights on X, formerly Twitter, and posting photos of herself without an abaya, a long loose-fitting robe worn by Muslim women, on Snapchat, the relative said.
Asaad al-Ghamdi’s brother, Mohammed al-Ghamdi, a retired teacher, was arrested in June 2022 and sentenced to death in July 2023 on terrorism charges based on his peaceful activity on X and YouTube; he remains in prison.
Asaad and Mohammed al-Ghamdi’s brother, Saeed bin Nasser al-Ghamdi, is a high-profile government critic and Islamic scholar living in exile in the United Kingdom. The Saudi government is known to retaliate against the family members of dissidents abroad to coerce them to return to Saudi Arabia.
Shalabi was originally sentenced in August 2022 to 20 years in prison, reduced in December 2022 to 10 years, on false terrorism charges. His health has deteriorated, and he has repeatedly been refused specialized medical treatment.
Saudi authorities continue to target and arbitrarily arrest perceived government critics or those with perceived connections with government critics.
Saudi authorities arrested Ahmed al-Doush, a British national and father of four, on August 31, 2024, at the airport in Riyadh as he was on his way back to the UK, a family member told Human Rights Watch. He was apparently arrested in relation to his social media activity. The UK consulate told al-Doush’s family that he was interrogated about posts on X.
Al-Doush was held in incommunicado solitary detention for two weeks before he was allowed to call his brother-in-law in Saudi Arabia to tell him that he was in detention but not where or why, the family member said. He was only allowed a longer phone call to his wife two months later, on November 17.
Saudi authorities held al-Doush without charge for over five months, during which he was repeatedly interrogated without a lawyer. On January 27, the judge informed al-Doush of the charges against him during his first hearing. The hearing was scheduled without prior notice and al-Doush had no legal representation at the hearing, a family member said. He learned then that the charges were based on deleted social media activity on his X account that dates back six years and an alleged association with an unidentified individual in the UK who is critical of Saudi Arabia, his lawyer in the UK told Human Rights Watch.
Human Rights Watch continues to document rampant abuses in Saudi Arabia’s criminal justice system, including long periods of detention without charge or trial, denial of legal assistance, reliance on torture-tainted confessions as the sole basis for conviction, and other systematic violations of due process and fair trial rights.
Saudi Arabia lacks a formal penal code, and a forthcoming penal code should fully comply with international human rights standards, Human Rights Watch said. Saudi authorities use overbroad and vague provisions of the counterterrorism law to silence dissent and persecute religious minorities. The law violates due process and fair trial rights by granting authorities wide powers to arrest and detain people without judicial oversight.
“Saudi Arabia’s allies and the international community should not be fooled by the recent releases,” Shea said. “Saudi authorities need to genuinely commit to reform by addressing systematic abuses within the country’s criminal justice system and to release all those imprisoned for the mere exercise of their rights.”
China: Free Imprisoned Taiwan Publisher
(Taipei) – The Chinese authorities should urgently quash the conviction and free the Taiwan publisher Li Yanhe (李延賀), known by his pen name Fu Cha (富察), Human Rights Watch said today. Fu, who has been detained in China since 2023, was secretly sentenced in February 2025 to three years in prison on charges of “inciting secession.” The government has provided little information about his trial or his condition in detention.
Fu, 54, is editor-in-chief of the Taiwanese firm Gūsa Publishing, which has published translated works on global affairs, politics, and history, including some critical of the Chinese government. Originally from China, he became a Taiwanese citizen in early 2023 after living there for over a decade. In March 2023, Fu visited Shanghai, apparently to rescind his Chinese household registration to comply with Taiwanese citizenship requirements. Chinese national security police detained him for publishing works “not in line with the Chinese Community Party’s view of history,” Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council reported.
“The Chinese authorities have imprisoned Fu Cha for daring to publish books on China that they don’t like,” said Maya Wang, associate China director at Human Rights Watch. “The groundless case against Fu Cha is an apparent attempt to muffle freedom of expression outside its borders and intimidate Taiwan’s vibrant publishing industry.”
The Chinese government’s treatment of Fu violates his human rights protections, including the rights to freedom of expression, access to information, and to a fair trial. Fu was held under “designated residential surveillance,” a form of pretrial detention under Chinese law that allows police to hold suspects incommunicado in secret locations for up to six months in certain kinds of cases. At the end of those six months, suspects must either be formally arrested or released, yet Fu appeared to have been held under such conditions for two years.
On March 17, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office publicly stated that Fu had been convicted following an “open trial” in February. But it did not announce his sentence until the following week, when a foreign journalist asked about it during a routine news conference.
The Chinese authorities have yet to specify which of Fu’s actions were considered criminal, nor release any legal documents or evidence despite insisting that due process rights were respected. Taiwanese media reported that the Chinese authorities had pressured Fu’s family not to speak publicly about his case. There is no indication that Fu had access to lawyers or family members as required by international law.
Taiwan authorities have condemned the lack of transparency surrounding Fu’s case. Because Chinese authorities do not recognize Taiwan or Taiwanese nationality, it did not allow Taiwanese authorities access to Fu. The Chinese government should release Fu and allow him to leave China, Human Rights Watch said.
In February, the Chinese Supreme People’s Procuratorate held a news conference listing Fu’s case and the case of Yang Chih-yuan, a Taiwanese political activist, as “major cases involving the endangering of national security.” Yang was sentenced to nine years in prison for “separatism” in August 2024. Singling out these two cases appears to be part of the Chinese government’s increasing efforts to intimidate Taiwanese people and reinforce its claims of sovereignty over Taiwan, including by using legal tools.
In recent months, cases of Taiwanese citizens detained in China have been rising, according to data compiled by Taiwan authorities. In October 2024, three Taiwanese members of the religious group I-Kuan Tao were arrested in Guangdong province for “organizing and using secret societies to undermine law enforcement,” a crime under article 300 of the Chinese Criminal Law. In early 2025, two Taiwanese members of the Unification Church were arrested in Xiamen City, Guangdong province, for “using cult organizations to destroy the law,” also a crime under article 300, allegedly for preaching.
Taiwan has been the last major hub for Chinese-language thought and writing outside the control of the Chinese Communist Party since the Chinese government’s repression of fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong. The freewheeling publishing industry in Hong Kong ended after the Chinese government disappeared five Causeway Bay booksellers in 2015, and when it imposed the draconian National Security Law on the city in 2020. Fu’s arrest and conviction, an act of Chinese government transnational repression, has had a chilling effect on Taiwan’s publishing industry.
“The Chinese government’s wrongful imprisonment of Fu Cha has global implications, affecting every writer who wishes to publish in Chinese and reach Chinese readers throughout the world,” Wang said. “Foreign governments should speak out about Fu’s case and help protect this crucial refuge for Chinese language readers around the world.”
US Health Funding Freeze Harms Low-Income Households
On Tuesday, the Trump administration froze federal funding for several organizations across the United States that provide lifesaving cervical cancer screenings, contraception, family planning, and other health care services to low-income people.
Since 1970, the Title X Family Planning program, or Title X, has provided organizations with federal funding for comprehensive family planning and related health services. In 2023 alone, the program provided services – including more than 460,000 cervical cancer screenings – to more than 2.8 million people.
But now, the program’s future is unclear.
Human Rights Watch research on cervical cancer in the US states of Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, mostly done together with the human rights organization Southern Rural Black Women’s Initiative, revealed that inequalities between white and Black women in cervical cancer mortality rates are caused by unequal access to quality, nondiscriminatory care, including diagnostic testing.
Nationally, the cervical cancer mortality rate for Black women is approximately 65 percent higher than that of white women, according to the American Cancer Society.
Cervical cancer is highly preventable and treatable, if diagnosed early. The Title X funding is essential for providing safe, timely care. The funding also helps tackle both racial and health disparities, playing a critical role in reducing inequities in cervical cancer prevention and care, particularly in underserved areas like the Mississippi Delta region.
Planned Parenthood and its affiliates make up 9 of the 16 providers affected by the Title X freeze, and the organization has more than 300 centers funded by the program.
“We know what happens when health care providers cannot use Title X funding: People across the country suffer, cancers go undetected, access to birth control is severely reduced, and the nation’s STI crisis worsens,” Planned Parenthood’s president and CEO stated.
Everyone has the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, which requires universal access to quality health services, including reproductive health services. The Title X funding freeze will make lifesaving health care services less accessible for US households, undermining people’s right to health, failing to prevent illnesses, and worsening health injustices that have long plagued the US. The Trump administration and the US Department of Health and Human Services should reverse this decision and release these funds to ensure people can access essential reproductive health services that are vital for their right to health.
The Lonely Death of a Rwandan General
Retired Brig. Gen. Frank Rusagara died last week in Rwanda. He had spent 11 years behind bars, without being allowed to speak to his wife, who died in the United Kingdom in 2016. His family last heard his voice in 2014, in the days before he was arrested. After he died, Rusagara’s family was told he had been ill with cancer.
Rusagara was forced into retirement in 2013 against a backdrop of growing repression by Rwanda’s ruling party. He was arrested in August 2014 with his brother-in-law, Col. Tom Byabagamba, the former head of the presidential guard. Their arrests formed part of a pattern of government repression, both inside and outside the country, of people critical of the Rwandan government or suspected of having links with opposition groups.
A few days before Rusagara’s arrest, a senior military official accused him in a private meeting of having links with an opposition group in exile and of inciting insurrection. During his trial, the prosecution alleged he criticized President Paul Kagame and complained about the lack of freedom of expression and economic progress in Rwanda, allegedly calling the country a “police state” and a “banana republic.”
In a private correspondence with friends and family, Rusagara asserted that his arrest also stemmed from other times he criticized state policies, including when he said the M23 rebellion in the Congo in 2012 and 2013 was in fact being coordinated by the Rwandan military.
Rusagara and Byabagamba were convicted in a flawed trial in 2016, despite serious allegations of torture and witness tampering that emerged. Byabagamba remains in detention. In 2017, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that their detention was arbitrary.
The rebel group that Rusagara dared to discuss more than 10 years ago—the M23—has again been wreaking havoc in eastern Congo, once more with Rwandan logistics and armed support, causing a humanitarian crisis. According to the UN and Human Rights Watch’s own research, thousands of Rwandan forces are helping the M23 take territory, including major cities.
Frank Rusagara’s death should serve as a reminder of the heavy price paid by those inside the system who dare to challenge the government’s actions. As partners re-evaluate bilateral support to Rwanda in light of its support for the M23, they shouldn’t forget those who tried to challenge state actions and paid the price.