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Mexico: Electoral Process Undermines Judicial Independence
(Washington, DC) – A constitutional change replacing half of the federal judiciary with judges elected by popular vote has undermined judicial independence in Mexico, Human Rights Watch said today as the new judges take office.
The new judges, including six of the Supreme Court’s nine members, are set to take office on September 1, 2025, following a popular election carried out on June 1. In September 2024, congressmen and senators from the political coalition led by former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo approved a constitutional change eliminating judicial tenure and establishing that judges would be elected periodically. Under the new framework, judicial elections are to be held in each judicial district, from candidates drawn from lists defined by three different evaluation committees appointed by the president, the Senate, and the Supreme Court.
“Far from being an effort to make the judiciary more democratic and efficient, the judicial reform is likely to make it more loyal to the government,” said Juanita Goebertus Estrada, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “We will closely monitor whether the new Supreme Court fulfills its responsibility to uphold the constitution and hold the government accountable to the law.”
According to the Organization of American States (OAS), Mexico is the only country in the world were “the totality of the judges are elected through universal vote.”
The process to select candidates for the judicial elections in June was marked by multiple flaws and irregularities, Human Rights Watch said.
In January, the Evaluation Committee of the Federal Judiciary appointed by the Federal Judiciary resigned following a court order to suspend its work. The Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary then transferred its power to shortlist candidates to the Senate. In practice, that meant that all the candidates were shortlisted by selection committees in the executive branch and the Senate, where the ruling party, Morena, and its allies have a two-thirds majority.
The constitutional change established vague criteria to shortlist candidates, such as honesty, reputation, and competence. It provided that the evaluation committees should choose the candidates on the basis of a short motivation letter and five “reference letters” from “neighbors, colleagues or other people.”
The evaluation committees did not approve bylaws to clarify how they would assess candidates and determine whether they were fit to serve as judges or to ensure that the committees are using similar criteria. The evaluation committees also had to shortlist the candidates on a very short timeline. According to the Observatory of Judicial Reform, a coalition of human rights groups observing the process, this meant that the executive and legislative commissions had to examine 40 applications per day, including during weekends.
Authorities then conducted a purportedly random draw to determine which of the candidates selected by the committees were able to run for office.
Only 13 percent of the people eligible to vote took to the ballots, in what observers with the OAS described as “one of the lowest levels of electoral participation in the region.” The elections resulted in the appointment of 6 supreme court justices, 800 federal justices, and 1,800 local judges.
OAS observers identified a range of shortcomings in the election, including lack of transparency on the financing and expense of campaigns.
The six elected members of the Supreme Court were shortlisted by the executive branch committee, though some had also been included by Congress. They will join three others who had been appointed by former President López Obrador. The OAS observers found that the six elected members had been included in “cheat sheets” (known in Mexico as “acordeones”) that unspecified actors distributed physically and online to urge people to vote for a particular slate of candidates.
The constitutional change and subsequent implementing legislation also created a Judicial Discipline Tribunal with broad powers to sanction and remove judges from office. The five members of the tribunal, who were also popularly elected, are empowered to sanction judges if they “rule, in a clear way, against the constitution, applicable law, or the interpretation established in the case-law,” “decide against the facts of the case,” or transgress other criteria.
Under international standards, judges should have guaranteed tenure and be protected from political influence to ensure that they can make decisions based solely on the facts of the case and in accordance with the law. The United Nations special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers has highlighted the importance of adopting “non-political appointment processes, linked strictly to the quality and professional merit” of judicial candidates.
While half of the Federal Judiciary will take office on September 1, the other half is set to be elected in 2027. Mexico’s authorities should learn from the serious flaws in its 2025 judicial elections and abrogate this constitutional change or, at the very least, provide serious safeguards to ensure the integrity of the next round of judicial elections in 2027, Human Rights Watch said.
Colombia: Don’t Cut Ombudsperson’s Office Budget
(Bogotá) – Proposed budget cuts to Colombia’s Ombudsperson’s Office would be a blow to the protection of human rights in the country, Human Rights Watch said today.
The Ombudsperson’s Office requested a very modest budget increase for 2026, partly to keep pace with the roughly 5 percent annual inflation rate and partly to allow for an expansion of work that is sorely needed in light of Colombia’s evolving human rights concerns. Instead, the budget proposed by the government of Gustavo Petro would slash funding to 3 percent below its 2025 level. This would create a US$32.3 million shortfall, which is 9.7 percent of the amount the Ombudsperson’s Office believes it requires for effective operations in 2026. It would also slash 30 percent of the office’s “investment resources,” meaning, those required to expand operations.
“Amid an increase in violence by armed groups and aid cuts by foreign governments, and with critical elections fast approaching, it is essential for the Ombudsperson’s Office to receive the resources it needs to carry out its work,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “By reducing the Ombudsperson’s Office capacity at this critical time, the Colombian government and Congress are weakening the State’s tools to protect people from human rights violations.”
The Ombudsperson’s Office was established in 1991 as an independent body charged with promoting and protecting human rights.
Iris Marín, the current Ombudsperson, told the House of Representatives that the proposed budget cut would prevent the institution from increasing its capacity to monitor human rights threats related to the 2026 elections and lead to a reduction in monitoring killings of human rights defenders. She also said that it would hinder the Early Warning System, a unit within the Ombudsman’s Office charged with monitoring risks to civilians in connection with armed conflict, and weaken efforts to prevent abuses.
In 2026, Colombia will hold legislative and presidential elections. The run-up to those elections has already been marred by the killing of congressman and would-be presidential candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay. In the most recent local elections, in 2023, the Electoral Observation Mission documented 176 acts of violence against candidates, including 6 killings.
Colombia is one of the countries with the highest number of human rights defenders killed worldwide, with at least 1,500 killed since 2016, according to the Ombudsperson’s Office. The office monitors risks and violations against human rights defenders and facilitates efforts to improve protection policies.
Security conditions in the country are deteriorating due to the escalation of armed conflict and organized crime, Human Rights Watch said.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 1.45 million people were affected by violence in Colombia during the first half of 2025, four times as many as during the same period in 2024. Over 70,200 people have been forcibly displaced, 30 percent more than in all of 2024. Confinements, that is, restrictions on people’s movement due to fighting or threats, increased by 44 percent in the first half of 2025 from the same period in 2024. According to the National Defense Ministry, homicides increased by 3.1 percent and kidnappings rose by 53 percent during the same period.
At the same time, UN bodies and civil society organizations that promote human rights and monitor conflict-related violence have been severely affected by cuts in assistance, primarily from the United States.
In June 2025, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia announced the dismissal of nearly half of its staff and the closure of three offices in areas affected by armed conflict. US Agency for International Development (USAID) programs such as InspiraPaz, a US$20 million initiative to prevent and address human rights violations in conflict areas, have been shut down since the US government largely wound down that agency’s work.
“Weakening the Ombudsperson’s Office at this moment would undermine Colombia’s ability to protect its population and respond to growing human rights challenges,” Goebertus said. “If the defense of human rights is a priority for the Colombian government, it should be reflected in its budget allocation.”
UK: Rights Protections Needed in Gulf Trade Pact
(Beirut) – The United Kingdom government should publicly pledge to incorporate strong human rights conditions before a Free Trade Agreement between the UK and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is signed, a coalition of 14 human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, and trade unions said in a letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer today.
“Without strong rights protections in the forthcoming Gulf trade pact, the UK risks further contributing to pervasive abuses against migrant workers that are entrenched within the state economies of Gulf countries” said Joey Shea, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The UK government’s enthusiasm to sign post-Brexit trade agreements should not come at the expense of human rights standards.”
For decades, rights groups have documented systematic human rights violations against migrant workers in all six Gulf Cooperation Council countries: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Gulf states have systematically failed to prevent or remedy widespread labor violations against the millions of migrant workers who make up a significant proportion of these countries’ workforces.
A trade agreement with these countries risks contributing to abuses against migrant workers by further facilitating wage abuse, employer exploitation, and situations that amount to forced labor. The UK has itself failed to protect migrant workers’ rights in the UK, including by failing to ratify the international Migrant Workers Convention.
The coalition of rights groups and trade unions expressed deep concern around the lack of transparency and rights protections in the forthcoming agreement. An agreement without explicit rights protections heightens the risks that UK businesses would become complicit in grave human rights abuses, the groups said.
Belarus Intensifies Crackdown on Human Rights Lawyers
Last week, Belarusian authorities declared the Belarusian Association of Human Rights Lawyers (BAHRL) an “extremist formation.” The action against the group, which works to protect the rights to a defense and a fair trial, is the latest attack on the country’s legal profession.
Since its formation by exiled Belarusian lawyers arbitrarily deprived of their right to practice law, BAHRL has been promoting the independence of the legal profession, shedding light on repression against their colleagues in Belarus and showcasing violations of fair trial rights.
After the State Security Committee (KGB) imposed the “extremist formation” label on BAHRL, the Ministry of Internal Affairs added the organization and six lawyers seen by the state as associated with it to the national list of organizations and individuals involved in “extremist activities.” Some of the six lawyers named, including Belarus-resident Dmitri Laevski, aren’t even members of BAHRL.
Naming an organization an “extremist formation” carries the risk of criminal prosecution for its alleged members, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Since the mass protests against rigged presidential elections in 2020, Belarusian authorities have increased repression against political dissent across the country.
As part of this campaign, the authorities have targeted lawyers who represent clients in politically motivated cases or denounce human rights abuses. Dozens of such lawyers have faced arbitrary revocation of their licenses, searches, administrative fines, and arrests. Seven lawyers are currently behind bars on fabricated charges.
Over the past five years, the Ministry of Justice has subjugated the legal profession in Belarus, diluting the bar’s independence and seeking to turn the bar into an instrument promoting the government’s agenda.
Belarusian authorities should stop their crackdown on the country’s lawyers and ensure they can carry out their duties without fear of government reprisal.
US Barriers to Disaster Aid Challenge Human Rights Principles
The Washington Post reports that the US government is requiring organizations receiving federal funding, including from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), not to “operate any program that benefits illegal immigrants” in the aftermath of disasters.
But the foundational principle of human rights is that everyone, regardless of race, religion, nationality, or legal status, is entitled, by virtue of their shared humanity, to be treated according to the same basic precepts. This moral code is especially critical during crises when “us versus them” instincts often prevail.
The practical implications of these new contract requirements are still unclear, but they raise alarming questions. Will the Red Cross and the Salvation Army have to check documents before providing food and shelter to disaster-displaced people? Out of fear that they will lose their jobs and their organizations their funding, will humanitarian workers avoid the darker-skinned person who asks for help in a foreign language?
In the aftermath of the Holocaust and World War II, the nations of the world, including the United States, agreed to a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognized “the inherent dignity and … the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family.”
At issue is a core values question: Is there any universal humanitarian principle that takes precedence over the raw animus toward undocumented people that now seems to be a bedrock principle of US government policy?
My work centers on refugees worldwide, whose own governments have persecuted them or otherwise failed in the core obligation to protect them. They seek asylum based not on their claim to citizenship but rather on their claim to a common humanity. Governments have recognized their obligation not to return them to places where their lives or freedom would be threatened, a universal principle that has saved countless lives.
Rising flood waters, wildfires, and earthquakes not only cause enormous hardship to the survivors but also take and threaten lives. The Washington Post cited an anonymous former FEMA official saying the new standards are not limited to nonprofits but could apply to all agencies that work with FEMA, including search-and-rescue groups. Do Americans really want emergency responders to check IDs before throwing a lifeline? Americans need to decide when “humanity first” should be the most relevant principle to guide US policy.
Sudan: UN Should Act to Protect Starving Civilians
(New York) – United Nations Security Council members should urgently act to protect civilians in western parts of Sudan from unlawful attacks and starvation, Human Rights Watch said today.
The Security Council should pressure the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to end their unlawful attacks against civilians, including on displaced persons camps, in parts of western Sudan and both warring parties to stop blocking humanitarian aid. The Security Council should renew and expand the arms embargo on Darfur to cover the entire country and impose sanctions against the warring parties’ leadership, especially the RSF, for serious violations of international humanitarian law. UN officials have warned that civilians trapped amid fighting between Sudan’s warring parties – the RSF, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and forces allied to both in areas in North Darfur and the Kordofan region – face starvation.
“The Security Council needs to confront the Rapid Support Forces over their ongoing siege and deliberate and indiscriminate attacks on civilians, and press both warring parties over blocking access to aid,” said Laetitia Bader, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Council members should expand the arms embargo and impose targeted actions against warring parties’ leadership, while setting a clear time frame for action.”
On August 11, 2025, the RSF again attacked a camp for displaced people in the North Darfur state capital, El Fasher, which its forces have besieged for over a year. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said the RSF killed at least 57 civilians on that day and at least 32 more in attacks between August 16 and 20. Most of the civilians killed on August 11 were in the Abu Shouk displacement camp, one of the last remaining civilian enclaves.
On August 13, the UN Security Council issued a statement demanding an end to the siege and access for aid. But the council did not commit to concrete measures against parties who continue to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law.
In early August, the World Food Programme warned that it had not been able to enter El Fasher for over a year and that its cash transfers could not meet people’s needs given the massive price increases because of the siege. Civilians in the city told Human Rights Watch in mid-August that they had resorted to eating animal fodder. Several soup kitchens – a lifeline for many – have been forced to close over the last month. On August 20, a drone attacked a UN World Food Programme convoy heading to Melit, 60 kilometers north of El Fasher, destroying three trucks.
The RSF has been imposing a siege on El Fasher since April 2024, preventing both suppliers and humanitarian aid groups from accessing the city. While international humanitarian law does not prohibit sieges of opposition forces, a siege cannot include deliberate attacks on civilians or starvation of the civilian population, both of which are war crimes. The RSF has failed to respect the fundamental requirement under international humanitarian law to distinguish between civilians and fighters and between civilian and military objects, which applies at all times.
The Sudanese Armed Forces and its allied joint forces present in different parts of El Fasher, including in and around Abu Shouk, also have an obligation to take all feasible measures to protect civilians, including by not locating military targets near or within densely populated areas.
In mid-April, the RSF carried out a large-scale attack on the Zamzam displacement camp, south of El Fasher. The forces indiscriminately killed and executed civilians, including health care workers, burned civilian buildings, detained civilians, and carried out widespread pillage, forcing hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee.
In July, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders or MSF) reported that civilians in El Fasher and in Zamzam had faced “systematic patterns of violence that includes looting, mass killings, sexual violence, abductions, starvation and attacks against markets, health facilities, and other civilian infrastructure” since April 2024. MSF found that the RSF and their allies systematically targeted non-Arab communities, particularly ethnic Zaghawa.
Civilians who fled these attacks told Human Rights Watch that they had to dig foxholes to shelter from incessant shelling and bombings. They said the warring sides subjected them to more abuse as they fled. A young man who fled El Fasher on August 11 said he saw two men shot dead and three injured as they fled the city.
Others interviewed said that on the road to Tawila, a town 60 kilometers away where hundreds of thousands have fled, RSF fighters and allied armed Arab militia manning checkpoints pillaged their belongings, water, food, and means of transport. Several said that forces at the checkpoints raped women and girls.
A 45-year-old woman who fled with her 11 children in May said that two of her daughters, ages 13 and 15, were among 30 women and girls the militia fighters took away at a checkpoint in RSF-controlled territory. “When they brought my daughters back, one was bleeding,” she said. “They were raped not far from us. We saw it. They shot at my neighbor, so I couldn’t get up [to intervene].”
On August 12, the Sudan International Nongovernmental Organizations Forum warned that there is “no safe passage out of the city, with roads blocked and those attempting to flee facing attacks, taxation at checkpoints, community-based discrimination and death.”
A local volunteer who fled El Fasher on August 11 said: “The most important is to find ways to evacuate people from this place. And then make sure food and medical supplies can go in.”
There is also fierce fighting in the Kordofan region, where SAF airstrikes have killed civilians and hit civilian infrastructure, including sites hosting displaced people. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and other groups reported a large-scale RSF attack on villages in North Kordofan state in mid-July, saying it killed “at least 300 people – including children and pregnant women.” Both sides have harassed and detained local responders.
In July, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the leading body that monitors food insecurity, warned that the fighting in these areas is causing ongoing severe food shortages, with communities in El Fasher and in the Nuba mountains, in Southern Kordofan state, continuing to face starvation.
The UN Security Council should assess to what extent the UN has bolstered civilian protection since an October 2024 report by UN Secretary-General António Guterres. This assessment should include a public briefing to the council by the UN and African Union fact-finding missions and special envoys on preventing genocide regarding the ongoing violations against civilians ahead of the UN General Assembly’s annual gathering of heads of state in New York.
The council is expected to decide on the renewal of the arms embargo on September 12; it should renew the Sudan sanctions regime and its restrictions on the Darfur region to all of Sudan and hold violators to account, Human Rights Watch said. Council members should also consider the extent to which the warring parties and governments that are supporting and arming them have undermined UN efforts to deliver aid and protect civilians. The council should also revisit the idea of deploying a protection-of-civilians mission to Sudan, a long-overdue step that Guterres has been unwilling to endorse.
“For over a year, civilians in North Darfur have faced starvation and deliberate attacks while at the same time violence is surging in the Kordofan region,” Bader said. “As the warring parties repeatedly flout international law, UN Security Council members should commit to concrete, time-bound measures, including targeted sanctions and concerted action against those violating the Darfur arms embargo.”
EU-US Trade Deal Threatens EU Corporate Accountability Law
The European Parliament should ensure that the European Union’s flagship corporate accountability law, the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), does not become a victim of the EU-US trade deal.
The framework of the deal, released August 21, 2025, includes language committing the EU to ensure the law “does not pose undue restrictions on transatlantic trade.” EU and US governments have begun negotiations to carry out the agreement.
The EU’s corporate accountability law, which entered into force in July 2024, requires large companies operating in the EU to mitigate climate impacts and to tackle human rights and environmental harm in their supply chains.
US companies have lobbied President Donald Trump to weaken the law as part of trade negotiations with the EU, with fossil fuel companies particularly criticizing the impact of the law’s climate obligations on their businesses.
EU member states, as part of an existing “Omnibus proposal” that undermines key aspects of the law, have already proposed diluting the law’s climate requirements. The framework of the trade deal also states that the EU will propose changes to the law’s “climate-related transition obligations.”
Following the publication of the framework, the American Petroleum Institute, an oil and gas industry lobby group, thanked the Trump administration “for standing up against the EU’s CSDDD” and stated that, “as negotiations continue, protecting U.S. interests from burdensome regulations must remain a priority.” As part of the trade deal, the EU also agreed to procure US fossil fuel and nuclear energy products worth $750 billion through 2028, a major blow to the EU’s climate goals.
The EU’s planned revisions to the due diligence directive will soon be up for a vote at the European Parliament.
EU lawmakers should make it clear that they will fight to keep the key elements of the EU’s flagship corporate accountability law. Pressure from the US government and the fossil industry should not compromise a law vital to EU citizens’ right to a healthy environment and to providing redress to victims of corporate abuses.
US: Migrants Face Abuse in Guantánamo
(Washington DC) – The United States should immediately halt the transfer of immigrant detainees to the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, where they face abusive and inhumane detention conditions that may amount to ill-treatment, Human Rights Watch said today.
Human Rights Watch interviewed 20 Venezuelan immigrants who were transferred there in early February and detained for between 11 and 16 days before being deported to Venezuela. The people interviewed said that US officials never informed them they would be taken to Guantánamo, nor were their families notified. Most said that they were held incommunicado in unsanitary conditions and denied access to information about their legal status or possible future.
“The US government has taken immigrants to Guantánamo and subjected them to incommunicado detention in appalling conditions,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “No immigrant or asylum seeker who leaves their country in search of protection should be taken to a place like this.”
Some detainees said they attempted suicide. “I was so desperate that I tried to cut my wrists with the edges of plastic water bottles, but they weren’t sharp enough,” one said. “The second time, I tried to bite my tongue and hit my head against the wall, but it didn’t work.”
The US government should not transfer any immigrants from the US to Guantánamo, Human Rights Watch said. Any who are detained there should be guaranteed due process in the US and a meaningful opportunity to challenge their removal.
Most of the people deported said that US immigration authorities detained them after they crossed the southern border, accusing them of belonging to the Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal group, based solely on their tattoos and nationality. Others said they had been living in the US for several months and were detained after attending scheduled appointments with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). All of them had spent days or months in immigration detention centers in Texas before being transferred to Guantánamo.
A 30-year-old man said he had gone to a scheduled appointment with Customs and Border Protection at an ICE facility in El Paso, Texas, on January 19 to apply for asylum. However, when an immigration official saw his tattoos and learned his nationality, the officer accused him of belonging to Tren de Aragua and sent him to detention. On February 4 he was shackled and placed on a plane with other Venezuelans. “After the plane landed, I saw lots of barbed wire and fences,” he said. “One immigration official said to me, ‘Welcome to Guantánamo.’ I was in shock.”
Most of the people interviewed said that once in Guantánamo, they were placed in a high-security detention unit known as Camp 6, where they were held in solitary confinement in individual cells measuring approximately two by three meters, with concrete and steel walls, a single concrete bed, and a combination sink-toilet. They said guards provided only a sheet and a pillow. Only a few reported receiving a mattress; and most said they slept on the concrete bed for most of their time in detention.
“The worst part was the confinement, isolated, not knowing what would happen to us,” said a 35-year-old man.
The people interviewed said that guards kept them isolated in their cells for up to 23 hours a day and only allowed them out for about one hour or less – not every day – into a fenced recreation yard, where they were warned not to speak with others.
“We weren’t allowed to talk, so at night we shouted through the cracks in the doors to let each other know we were still alive,” a 30-year-old deportee said.
Some deportees said they had protested because the authorities denied them information about their legal situation and told them nothing about what might happen to them. “One day, I was so desperate that I started banging on the door and shouting that I wanted to speak to my family,” said a 25-year-old barber. “Two guards came in, handcuffed me behind my back, shackled my feet, and tied me to a chair in another cell, facing the wall, where they left me for hours.”
In Camp 6, as well as in another building where some people said they were held in small rooms, they described unsanitary conditions, lack of hygiene, and deteriorating infrastructure. They said there were no windows or natural light, which caused them to lose all sense of time. Most said they only had access to showers every three days, for just a few minutes, and were taken out of their cells or rooms in shackles.
A 38-year-old construction worker said that his cell was filthy and smelled strongly of sewage. “The water was yellow, parts of the sink were rusty, the ceiling and walls were damp, and there were insects and cobwebs everywhere” he said. “It was completely filthy, and I got sick because of it.”
All of those interviewed said that although they received three meals a day, the food was insufficient and of poor quality. A 33-year-old deportee said meals were passed through a small slot in the door and often consisted of undercooked or spoiled rice and beans. “I was hungry all the time, and my stomach hurt,” he said. “I arrived there weighing 78 kilos and returned to Venezuela weighing 52.”
Eight people interviewed said that they became ill due to unsanitary conditions, and that officers then denied them medical care. Some said that when they asked for medical assistance, guards only offered or gave them sleeping pills.
On February 20, the Trump administration transferred 177 Venezuelan nationals detained in Guantánamo to Honduras, where they were received by a Venezuelan government aircraft and returned to their country of origin. Among them were the individuals interviewed by Human Rights Watch. Upon arrival in Venezuela, they reported receiving temporary medical care, shelter, and food for three days while authorities conducted background checks and issued identification documents. Government officials subsequently transported them to their homes, where they are currently residing with their families and attempting to reintegrate into their communities.
International human rights law prohibits arbitrary detention, torture, and other ill- treatment.
None of the people interviewed reported being physically assaulted by Guantánamo security personnel. However, the inhumane detention conditions, solitary confinement – and in some cases, prolonged solitary confinement – combined with the denial of information, and uncertainty about their legal situation and future, may amount to ill-treatment prohibited under international law.
“Everyone in immigration detention should be treated with basic humanity, which includes the right to meaningful human contact,” Goebertus said. “This isn’t a privilege. It’s a fundamental right.”
Kenya: Police Harass Human Rights Watch Staff Member
(Washington, DC) – The Kenyan police should end its apparent harassment of Otsieno Namwaya, associate Africa director at Human Rights Watch, over his work documenting serious rights abuses in Kenya, Human Rights Watch said today.
Between August 23 and 25, 2025, security officials conducted surveillance at Namwaya’s house. The incidents followed weeks of attempts by individuals believed to be from the Operation Support Unit, which is based within the Directorate of Criminal Investigations of the National Police Service, to clandestinely get access to Namwaya.
“The surveillance of a Human Rights Watch staff member is a stark reminder of the ongoing threats and repression facing rights activists in Kenya today,” said Federico Borello, interim executive director at Human Rights Watch. “Instead of allowing police units to target activists, Kenyan authorities should be working to improve the space in which civil society operates.”
Three contacts in Namwaya’s neighborhood told him that on the evening of August 23, a group of six men, who appeared to be plainclothes officers, parked their three vehicles at a local police station. They then walked toward and around Namwaya’s neighborhood.
The sources said six men, apparently the same officers, returned on the morning of August 25, again parking apparently the same three vehicles at the nearby police station. Witnesses saw the six talking briefly with officers in the station which was open and then walked to Namwaya’s house, with one of them constantly on his phone.
Another contact in the vicinity at the time said the team of six, one of whom witnesses said seemed to be taking pictures of the house using his phone, stood around the house for a few hours while also talking on his phone. Then they returned to the police station, where witnesses again saw them talking briefly with the officers inside the station, and then drove off in the afternoon.
The surveillance of Namwaya’s house follows months of efforts by government security officials to locate and access Namwaya through people known to him. Unofficial police sources told Human Rights Watch that the team monitoring Namwaya is led by a senior member of the Operation Support Unit, which is based within the Directorate of Criminal Investigations.
Namwaya has led Human Rights Watch work in Kenya for over 13 years, during which he has documented the use of excessive force and other abuses by the Kenyan security forces, including the police, in the context of protests. He documented recent abuses during the 2024 and 2025 protests, as well as ongoing repression against human rights advocates in the country.
Research by Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations show that, together with the National Intelligence Service and other security formations, such as the Operation Action Team, officials of the Operation Support Unit have been implicated in the ongoing abduction and disappearance of protesters since 2024.
On August 27, Human Rights Watch wrote to the inspector general of police, Douglas Kanja Kirocho, asking if a court has issued a warrant for Namwaya’s arrest and, if so, for clarification regarding the allegations against him. The letter also requested specific security guarantees for Namwaya and his family within 24 hours. The inspector general has not responded.
Since the June 2024 protests against a controversial tax law, Kenyan authorities have targeted civil society organizations and rights activists. In mid-July 2024, President William Ruto accused the Ford Foundation of sponsoring the “violence and mayhem” but offered no evidence. A few days later, in an apparent effort to link the Ford Foundation to the protests, Kenyan authorities accused most of 16 human rights organizations funded by the Ford Foundation of being behind the protests.
The president later backtracked on the unfounded allegations against the Ford Foundation. The government has continued to target activists and social media influencers with abductions and disappearances. In one instance, on August 19, 2024, plainclothes officers abducted three human rights activists—Bob Njagi, Aslam Longton, and Jamil Longton—and detained them incommunicado for 32 days.
The activists told Human Rights Watch that their abductors threatened, beat, and starved them in detention, accusing them of leading and funding protests.
The whereabouts of many other protesters, activists, and social media influencers, whose friends and family have informed Human Rights Watch that they had been abducted by uniformed police officers and, in other instances, unidentified individuals, since June 2024, remain unknown.
Kenyan authorities should provide Namwaya the legal basis for surveillance and clarify why they have not used legally appropriate procedures to summon him or serve him a warrant, Human Rights Watch said. Kenyan authorities should ensure that Namwaya and his family are protected from arbitrary or unlawful legal action and immediately end all harassment against them.
Kenya’s international partners should press Kenya to end its ongoing harassment of civil society and human rights activists and, most importantly, to ensure accountability for serious human rights abuses, including abductions and disappearances.
“Targeting staff working with international organizations clearly highlights the lack of accountability by Kenyan police for their ongoing ruthless attacks on civic and rights actors in the country,” Borello said. “The police leadership should publicly guarantee to protect activists and hold to account those responsible for the abusive practices.”
India: Scores of Rohingya Refugees Expelled
Indian authorities have expelled scores of ethnic Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh and Myanmar without rights protections since May 2025, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities have arbitrarily detained several hundred more, mistreating some of them.
In May, states in India governed by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) initiated a campaign to expel Rohingya and Bengali-speaking Muslims for being “illegal immigrants.” Those expelled to Bangladesh included at least 192 Rohingya refugees despite being registered with the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR). The authorities also put 40 Rohingya refugees on a ship near the Myanmar coast and forced them to swim ashore. Dozens more have fled to Bangladesh to avoid the crackdown.
“The Indian government’s expulsion of Rohingya refugees shows an utter disregard for human life and international law,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The actions taken against these refugees, who have fled atrocities and persecution in Myanmar, reflects the ruling BJP’s policy to demonize Muslims as ‘illegal’ migrants.”
Human Rights Watch interviewed nine Rohingya men and women in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps in Bangladesh who had recently arrived from India. Six who had been expelled in May alleged that Indian authorities assaulted them and seized their money, mobile phones, and UNHCR registration cards. The other three fled to Bangladesh, one each from Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, and Delhi, fearing arbitrary detention after police threatened them.
An estimated 40,000 Rohingya live in India, at least 20,000 of whom are registered with the UN refugee agency. Although India is not a party to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol, India is bound by the customary international law principle of nonrefoulement, which prohibits countries from returning or expelling people to places where they face threats to their lives or freedom.
A 37-year-old Rohingya woman who had been detained in Goalpara district in India’s Assam State, said that Indian Border Security Force officials forced her, her husband, and their three children into Bangladesh at gunpoint on the night of May 6. “When my husband asked the officials where we should go, as we had no money and didn’t know the area, they were forcing us to cross, they slapped him so hard he still can’t hear properly,” she said. “They threatened to kill us if we spoke further.”
The family had fled Myanmar in 2012 to escape the military’s ethnic cleansing campaign against the Rohingya in Rakhine State, but ended up detained for over a decade in jails in Assam.
On May 6, Indian authorities arbitrarily detained 40 Muslim and Christian Rohingya refugees, including 13 women, in Delhi under the pretext of collecting data needed to identify them. The authorities flew the Rohingya to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and forced them to board an Indian naval vessel there, which set sail. The ship’s crew allegedly beat and interrogated them. A Rohingya Christian man in Delhi whose brother was among those expelled told Human Rights Watch that once the ship was close to the Myanmar coast, the crew gave the refugees life jackets and then tossed them into the sea.
The refugees swam ashore, reaching Launglon township in Myanmar’s Tanintharyi Region. One used a fisherman’s phone to contact family members. “We were treated like the worst criminals,” he told a relative. “One officer said, ‘No one will speak for you. No one will hold us accountable if we kill you all.’ Some of us could swim and helped those who could not reach the shore.” The UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, said the incident demonstrated “blatant disregard for the lives and safety of those who require international protection.”
Fearing arbitrary arrests, some Rohingya families decided to flee India for Bangladesh. They said police beat and violently mistreated those fleeing. A Rohingya man, 40, a UNHCR-registered refugee who lived in Hyderabad, set out on May 15 with his wife and two children by train with a Rohingya group. However, the police detained the group at a railway station in Tripura State, took information needed to identify them, and then beat them. “They even beat my 4-year-old daughter,” he said. “They insulted the women, too. They took our phones and my 20,000 Indian rupees [US$230]. They took everything, even a school bag my child used.”
The man said that the police handed them over to border officials, who beat the men in the group with lathis (batons), compelled them to make a video, and then forced them across the border into Bangladesh. “They made us say that we were from Bangladesh, that we were trying to enter India, and that the Indian government had arrested us and was sending us back,” he said, “They told us that if the Bangladeshi border guards sent us back to India, we would be shot.”
In March, the UN special rapporteur wrote to the Indian government raising concerns about widespread, arbitrary, and indefinite detention of refugees and asylum seekers, including Rohingya, from Myanmar. He also raised concerns about detention conditions, including allegations of ill-treatment and beatings, lack of access to adequate medical treatment, deaths in custody, and deportations.
Rohingya refugees previously had some access to education and livelihoods in India, but that policy changed in 2017 when the BJP government “issued detailed instructions for deportation of illegal foreign nationals including Rohingyas.”
The expulsions have made the Rohingya refugees who remain in India very insecure, Human Rights Watch said. In Jammu in May, authorities vandalized refugee shelters and arbitrarily arrested at least 30 refugees, said a Rohingya woman, 40, who fled with her two children to Bangladesh that month after the police threatened them. “They accused us of being ‘Bengalis,’ ignoring both our UNHCR cards and Myanmar nationality documents.”
A 29-year-old Rohingya man whom Indian border guards forced into Bangladesh on June 20, said: “From one place to another place, from one country to another country, we are fleeing and searching for hope which is never going to be found.”
India’s Supreme Court announced that it will decide whether the Rohingya are “refugees” or “illegal entrants,” and the rights and protections to which they are entitled. The next hearing is scheduled for September 23. In May, the court refused to halt the deportations and summarily dismissed the account of Rohingya refugees being abandoned at sea, calling it a “beautifully crafted story.”
“The Indian government should immediately end the intimidation, arbitrary detention, and unlawful expulsions of all Rohingya refugees and impartially investigate allegations that they were ill-treated,” Pearson said. “Indian authorities should recognize Rohingya as refugees and work with the UN refugee agency to protect their rights.”
India: Scores of Rohingya Refugees Expelled
Indian authorities have expelled scores of ethnic Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh and Myanmar without rights protections since May 2025, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities have arbitrarily detained several hundred more, mistreating some of them.
In May, states in India governed by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) initiated a campaign to expel Rohingya and Bengali-speaking Muslims for being “illegal immigrants.” Those expelled to Bangladesh included at least 192 Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh despite being registered with the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR). The authorities also put 40 Rohingya refugees on a ship near the Myanmar coast and forced them to swim ashore. Dozens more have fled to Bangladesh to avoid the crackdown.
“The Indian government’s expulsion of Rohingya refugees shows an utter disregard for human life and international law,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The actions taken against these refugees, who have fled atrocities and persecution in Myanmar, reflects the ruling BJP’s policy to demonize Muslims as ‘illegal’ migrants.”
Human Rights Watch interviewed nine Rohingya men and women in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps in Bangladesh who had recently arrived from India. Six who had been expelled in May alleged that Indian authorities assaulted them and seized their money, mobile phones, and UNHCR registration cards. The other three fled to Bangladesh, one each from Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, and Delhi, fearing arbitrary detention after police threatened them.
An estimated 40,000 Rohingya live in India, at least 20,000 of whom are registered with the UN refugee agency. Although India is not a party to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol, India is bound by the customary international law principle of nonrefoulement, which prohibits countries from returning or expelling people to places where they face threats to their lives or freedom.
A 37-year-old Rohingya woman who had been detained in Goalpara district in India’s Assam State, said that Indian Border Security Force officials forced her, her husband, and their three children into Bangladesh at gunpoint on the night of May 6. “When my husband asked the officials where we should go, as we had no money and didn’t know the area, they were forcing us to cross, they slapped him so hard he still can’t hear properly,” she said. “They threatened to kill us if we spoke further.”
The family had fled Myanmar in 2012 to escape the military’s ethnic cleansing campaign against the Rohingya in Rakhine State, but ended up detained for over a decade in jails in Assam.
On May 6, Indian authorities arbitrarily detained 40 Muslim and Christian Rohingya refugees, including 13 women, in Delhi under the pretext of collecting data needed to identify them. The authorities flew the Rohingya to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and forced them to board an Indian naval vessel there, which set sail. The ship’s crew allegedly beat and interrogated them. A Rohingya Christian man in Delhi whose brother was among those expelled told Human Rights Watch that once the ship was close to the Myanmar coast, the crew gave the refugees life jackets and then tossed them into the sea.
The refugees swam ashore, reaching Launglon township in Myanmar’s Tanintharyi Region. One used a fisherman’s phone to contact family members. “We were treated like the worst criminals,” he told a relative. “One officer said, ‘No one will speak for you. No one will hold us accountable if we kill you all.’ Some of us could swim and helped those who could not reach the shore.” The UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, said the incident demonstrated “blatant disregard for the lives and safety of those who require international protection.”
Fearing arbitrary arrests, some Rohingya families decided to flee India for Bangladesh. They said police beat and violently mistreated those fleeing. A Rohingya man, 40, a UNHCR-registered refugee who lived in Hyderabad, set out on May 15 with his wife and two children by train with a Rohingya group. However, the police detained the group at a railway station in Tripura State, took information needed to identify them, and then beat them. “They even beat my 4-year-old daughter,” he said. “They insulted the women, too. They took our phones and my 20,000 Indian rupees [US$230]. They took everything, even a school bag my child used.”
The man said that the police handed them over to border officials, who beat the men in the group with lathis (batons), compelled them to make a video, and then forced them across the border into Bangladesh. “They made us say that we were from Bangladesh, that we were trying to enter India, and that the Indian government had arrested us and was sending us back,” he said, “They told us that if the Bangladeshi border guards sent us back to India, we would be shot.”
In March, the UN special rapporteur wrote to the Indian government raising concerns about widespread, arbitrary, and indefinite detention of refugees and asylum seekers, including Rohingya, from Myanmar. He also raised concerns about detention conditions, including allegations of ill-treatment and beatings, lack of access to adequate medical treatment, deaths in custody, and deportations.
Rohingya refugees previously had some access to education and livelihoods in India, but that policy changed in 2017 when the BJP government “issued detailed instructions for deportation of illegal foreign nationals including Rohingyas.”
The expulsions have made the Rohingya refugees who remain in India very insecure, Human Rights Watch said. In Jammu in May, authorities vandalized refugee shelters and arbitrarily arrested at least 30 refugees, said a Rohingya woman, 40, who fled with her two children to Bangladesh that month after the police threatened them. “They accused us of being ‘Bengalis,’ ignoring both our UNHCR cards and Myanmar nationality documents.”
A 29-year-old Rohingya man whom Indian border guards forced into Bangladesh on June 20, said: “From one place to another place, from one country to another country, we are fleeing and searching for hope which is never going to be found.”
India’s Supreme Court announced that it will decide whether the Rohingya are “refugees” or “illegal entrants,” and the rights and protections to which they are entitled. The next hearing is scheduled for September 23. In May, the court refused to halt the deportations and summarily dismissed the account of Rohingya refugees being abandoned at sea, calling it a “beautifully crafted story.”
“The Indian government should immediately end the intimidation, arbitrary detention, and unlawful expulsions of all Rohingya refugees and impartially investigate allegations that they were ill-treated,” Pearson said. “Indian authorities should recognize Rohingya as refugees and work with the UN refugee agency to protect their rights.”
Children around the World Speak out for Free Education
Children from across the globe have expressed support for expanding an international human rights treaty to require countries to provide free pre-primary and secondary education. More than 8,000 children from 40 countries responded to a United Nations survey requesting their views. Their message was loud and clear: education should be free, inclusive, and available for everyone throughout childhood.
Play Video“If I were the boss of all the schools in the world,” one preschooler responded, “I’d make it so all children could go to pre-school for free … and all the teachers in every school are kind, give hugs, and help.”
Country delegates will meet at the UN in Geneva in early September to decide whether to draft a fourth optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In a historic first, five children – from Croatia, Indonesia, Liberia, Mexico, and the United Kingdom – will also participate in the negotiations.
If adopted, the new optional protocol would require countries to provide free public pre-primary education, beginning with at least one year, as well as free public secondary education. Many countries already do.
Children surveyed said this was important. Many said pre-primary education is out of reach for many children because of unaffordable fees. “It is not fair that access to [education] depends on how much money parents have,” a preschooler in France said in a message.
Teenagers identified multiple barriers to universal free secondary education, notably school fees and hidden costs. Blaming high registration fees “which parents cannot afford,” a group of children from Madagascar said that “[i]n our community, almost none of the children go to school because of poverty.”
But the children didn’t just highlight problems, they proposed solutions. Australian students responded that the optional protocol “represents a powerful opportunity to redefine education not just as a basic service, but as a foundation for democracy, dignity, and full societal participation.” They said that a new treaty that “embeds inclusive, accessible, and free education from early childhood through secondary schooling is a critical step toward a world where no child is left behind—not because of who they are, where they live, or what they need to thrive.”
Children have spoken with clarity and urgency. Adults should show they’re listening.
Maldives: Authorities Tighten Grip on Media
(Bangkok) – The Maldives parliament is considering a new law that could silence independent media amid an escalating crackdown on basic rights, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities should withdraw the Maldives Media and Broadcasting Regulation Bill, which would provide the Maldives government broad discretionary powers to control and regulate the media.
The draft media law is part of a broader effort by the administration of President Mohamed Muizzu to stifle dissent. The government has also proposed laws to reinstate the death penalty for drug-related crimes and to strip island councils of their administrative powers, undoing a central component of Maldives democratic governance established during the country’s democratic transition in 2008.
“President Muizzu has been chipping away at human rights since taking office in 2023, with media freedom being first in the crosshairs,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The Maldives government should abandon its thinly disguised attempts to quash dissent and instead focus on improving respect for basic rights.”
On August 18, Abdul Hannan Abubakr – a parliament member who, despite being a registered independent, is closely affiliated with the government – submitted the media bill to the People’s Majlis, the Maldives parliament. Under the legislation, the current Maldives Media Council and Maldives Broadcasting Commission would be replaced with a standalone media commission. This new body would be comprised of seven members, three of whom would be appointed by the president to oversee media operations. The parliament would have the power to remove commission members elected by media outlets at any time with a no-confidence vote, fueling fears about the commissions’ independence.
The commission would be empowered to order media outlets to issue correction notices on online content and impose fines from 5,000 Maldivian rufiyaa to 25,000 Maldivian rufiyaa (US$325 to $1,623) on journalists and media workers who fail to comply with their orders. The commission could suspend media outlets at will and block newspaper websites and halt broadcasts while complaints are investigated.
The government has moved quickly to adopt the measure. On August 24, Maldivian National Day, President Muizzu used his annual address to promote the media bill. Although Muizzu said that he has no intention of controlling the media, the law includes provisions that would make the vaguely worded “spreading fake news” a criminal offense.
On August 27, the People’s Majlis, which had been in recess, held an extraordinary parliamentary session to discuss the media bill, for which a majority of members voted in favor.
However, on August 28, a parliamentary oversight committee decided to open a 10-day window for public opinion, including three days of consultations with media outlets starting August 31. The same day President Muizzu met with a group of leading journalists to discuss their concerns with the bill.
Since the bill was submitted, local journalists have staged protests outside the People’s Majlis, saying the law would “dismantle free press” in the country. The demonstrations escalated on August 27. Police forcibly removed journalists peacefully protesting outside the President’s Office building by dragging them into police vehicles. Journalists told Human Rights Watch that the police arrested five of the protesters and read them their rights before releasing them with a warning. The Maldives Police Service issued a statement later that day denying that any protesters were arrested.
Mohamed Junayd, a member of the Maldives Journalists Association’s executive committee, told Human Rights Watch that the bill, if enacted, would “take the Maldives back to the pre-democratic era, as it would completely dismantle the self-regulatory framework enacted after the first democratic elections.” He said that the law appears designed “to usher in an unchecked executive power that can run amok without any criticism or dissent, including the power to amend the country’s constitution in a day.”
The 2025 World Press Freedom Index ranked Maldives 104th, dropping in recent years from 72nd in 2021. Journalists and media outlets in the Maldives already exercise significant self-censorship, particularly on sensitive topics due to concerns about physical and online violence, including receiving death threats for their reporting. Junayd expressed concern that the draft media law would push journalists to further self-censor out of fear of being prosecuted under the bill’s “vague provisions.”
The government’s efforts to crack down on independent media appears part of a wider agenda by the ruling People’s National Congress, which holds a supermajority in parliament, to restrict fundamental rights and freedoms in the Maldives. On July 28, the parliament proposed amendments to the Decentralization Act that would effectively strip island councils of their administrative powers to address local issues.
On July 30, President Muizzu announced on social media that he had requested cabinet members to review proposed amendments to the Drug Act “with a view to imposing the death penalty for those convicted of smuggling or trafficking drugs.” The amendments were initially proposed in December 2024 and have since been discussed by the Judiciary Committee on August 5 and 6, with the parliamentary proceeding expected to resume after the recess. Maldives has had a de facto moratorium on the use of the death penalty since 1954.
Imposing the death penalty for drug trafficking would violate the Maldives’ obligations under international human rights law, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which obligates countries that have not abolished the death penalty to reserve its use “only for the most serious crimes,” which United Nations experts widely agree do not include drug-related offenses. Rights groups including Human Rights Watch have called on the Maldives government to reject the introduction of the death penalty and to abolish the inhumane practice.
“The Maldivian government should immediately withdraw the media bill and abandon efforts to reinstate the death penalty and strip island councils of their administrative powers,” Pearson said. “President Muizzu should reverse his administration’s increasingly authoritarian direction and instead commit to promoting and protecting human rights, including a free and independent media.”
UN Rights Council Should Support Justice in Afghanistan
In a new joint letter, 107 organizations reiterated their call for the United Nations Human Rights Council to act where it has long failed and establish an independent investigative mechanism for Afghanistan to advance accountability for past and ongoing grave crimes.
The Taliban’s oppressive rule continues as they enter their fifth year in power, including their systematic assault on the rights of women and girls, which Human Rights Watch has called the crime against humanity of gender persecution, and UN experts have described as “gender apartheid.” Taliban authorities have also increasingly restricted civic space, committing arbitrary punishment and violent reprisals against anyone deemed a threat.
Afghan and international rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, the UN expert on human rights in Afghanistan, and the UN Human Rights Office have all emphasized the need for further action to address the entrenched impunity at the heart of the crisis. The UN expert warned earlier this year that “the international community’s failure to hold the Taliban accountable has emboldened them.”
A dedicated investigative mechanism – like those for Syria and Myanmar – would be a key tool in advancing accountability, ensuring evidence is collected and preserved for future prosecutions, identifying alleged perpetrators, and preparing case files to support proceedings before national and international courts.
It would be distinct from, but complementary to, the UN expert on Afghanistan, whose vital work –documenting and reporting on abuses, supporting civil society, and advocating for victims and survivors – is a lifeline that needs to continue.
Some countries have cited concerns about the mechanism’s scope or costs. But several cost-saving options exist, and momentum to establish the mechanism is growing. In March, a cross-regional group of countries joined the call urging for the mechanism’s creation, and earlier this month, 24 more UN human rights experts added their voice to the appeal.
In addition to increasing support for the International Criminal Court’s ongoing Afghanistan investigations, the European Union – “penholder” on Afghanistan at the Human Rights Council – has a crucial role to play for justice.
The EU has faced well-founded criticism over perceived double standards in its human rights policies. By putting forward a resolution to establish this mechanism, the bloc has a chance to demonstrate principled leadership and advance the prospect of justice for decades of egregious crimes in Afghanistan. It shouldn’t miss it.
Lebanon: Immediately Release Gaddafi’s Son
(Beirut) – Lebanese authorities should immediately release the son of Libya’s former leader Muammar Gaddafi, Hannibal Gaddafi, whom they have wrongly imprisoned for nearly a decade, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities should provide Gaddafi with appropriate compensation for holding him arbitrarily and investigate and hold to account those responsible for his ordeal.
Hannibal Gaddafi remains in long-term, arbitrary, pretrial detention since his arrest by Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces in December 2015 on apparently unsubstantiated allegations that he was withholding information about the disappearance of Lebanese cleric Moussa al-Sadr, who was disappeared in Libya in 1978 along with two companions. Al-Sadr’s fate remains a sensitive political issue in Lebanon. Judicial authorities have not taken any steps to bring Gaddafi to trial or provided a legal justification for his continued detention.
“Gaddafi’s case is emblematic of a fractured judicial system that has lacked independence and is susceptible to political interference by Lebanon’s powerful factions,” said Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Lebanese authorities should put an end to Gaddafi’s near decade-long detention and release him immediately.”
A Human Rights Watch researcher visited Gaddafi on August 12, 2025, at the General Directorate of Internal Security Forces' Information Branch Headquarters in Beirut, where he is being held. It was the first visit to Gaddafi by an international human rights organization while in Lebanese detention.
One of Gaddafi’s lawyers, Nassib Chedid, who organized the visit, was present during the one-hour meeting, which took place in an office. No prison authorities or guards were present, but Human Rights Watch was unable to verify whether prison authorities were surveilling or electronically monitoring the meeting, and Gaddafi was aware that Human Rights Watch would publish the information he provided. Human Rights Watch had previously made inquiries about the case but received no response from the government.
The researcher did not tour the prison or visit Gaddafi’s cell, which according to Gaddafi is a windowless but ventilated room underground. Gaddafi said he receives enough food and has been able to get basic health care but that he experiences “systemic weakness due to malnutrition and vitamin deficiency.” He also said that he has suffered mental health consequences due to his long-term isolation in a cell below ground, without natural sunlight, and lack of regular access to his family.
Gaddafi said that his physical health has also deteriorated in recent years, including back pain, a broken nose, and severe head pain from a skull fracture he sustained while being tortured by the armed people who initially kidnapped him along the Syrian border in late 2015.
Prior to his detention, Gaddafi had been primarily living in Syria with his family after fleeing Libya in 2011, during the uprising against his father’s government. But in 2015, armed men kidnapped Gaddafi in Syria near the Lebanese border after reportedly luring him to what he believed was a newspaper interview. Instead, the men transferred him to Lebanon, where they tortured him, demanded information on Sadr’s disappearance, and demanded a ransom, one of Gaddafi’s lawyers previously stated. Lebanese authorities freed Gaddafi from his captors but reportedly arrested him within days.
In December 2015, a Lebanese judicial investigator, Judge Zaher Hamadeh, issued an arrest warrant for Gaddafi, accusing him of concealing information about al-Sadr and his two companions’ 1978 disappearance in Libya, when Hannibal was 2 years old. Hamadeh formally charged Gaddafi in 2016, accusing him of concealing information on the disappearance, according to two of his lawyers.
Gaddafi told Human Rights Watch that he has access to his legal team, including a French lawyer. But his wife and children were denied entry to Lebanon and deprived of contact with him for the first seven years after his arrest, until 2022, when authorities granted them access. Currently, family visits are permitted, but “heavily restricted,” and there is “no regular or guaranteed schedule or access,” Gaddafi said. Additionally, Gaddafi said that requests to access his legal team and family “are often denied, delayed for days, or ignored without justification.”
Detention conditions in Lebanon are dismal. The prison system is severely overcrowded, with occupancy levels over 300 percent in some facilities, according to a 2024 report by the Beirut Bar Association’s Prisons Committee. More than 80 percent of prisoners have yet to be sentenced, according to the same report.
Human Rights Watch wrote in April 2025 to Lebanon’s Interior Minister Ahmed al-Hajjar, Justice Minister Adel Nassar, and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, requesting detailed information on Gaddafi’s judicial status, and calling for his release. Human Rights Watch had previously written to the Lebanese Internal Security Forces director-general, Major General Imad Othman, and to Judge Zaher Hamadeh, the judicial investigator in charge of the case, in July 2023, requesting detailed information on Gaddafi’s judicial status and health. Human Rights Watch did not receive a response to any of the letters.
Judge Zaher Hamadeh, who remains in charge of the case, has not acted upon calls to release Gaddafi despite repeated requests, most recently by one of his lawyers, Charbel Milad el-Khoury, on June 9.
The Lebanese justice minister and investigative judge should urgently respond to the release requests and end Gaddafi’s continued unlawful detention, Human Rights Watch said.
In July, the justice minister of Libya’s Government of National Unity reportedly accused Lebanese political officials of not cooperating on his case. In a response to a letter sent by Libyan authorities, Judge Hamadeh reportedly stated that any considerations about Hannibal’s release should be predicated on Lebanon receiving information and the results of investigations by Libyan authorities into the disappearance of Imam Sadr. Gaddafi said that he has not been in contact with Libyan authorities or mediators.
The recent adoption by Lebanon’s parliament of a law organizing the judiciary promises wide-ranging judicial reforms, yet unaddressed gaps continue to threaten the independence of the judiciary and make it susceptible to continued political interference, Human Rights Watch said.
Under international law, detention is subject to strict due process. Officials must inform the detained person about the reasons for their arrest, base detention on clear domestic law, promptly take the person before a judge, and charge or release them. Officials must provide regular judicial rulings on the legality of detention, respect the right to a speedy trial or release from detention, and provide regular opportunities to challenge the lawfulness of a long-term detention. Failure to respect such procedural safeguards makes a detention arbitrary. Under international law, pretrial detention should be the exception, not the rule.
Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Lebanon ratified in 1972, specifies that “[n]o one shall be deprived of his liberty except on such grounds and in accordance with such procedure as are established by law.” Article 8 of Lebanon’s Constitution states that “No one may be arrested, imprisoned, or kept in custody except according to the provisions of the law.” Lebanon’s penal code also prohibits arbitrary detention and stipulates prison terms for officials who do not comply with conditions for lawful detention.
“Gaddafi’s unlawful detention needs to end,” Kaiss said. “He and all other detainees and prisoners should be granted their rights in accordance with the law.”
Thailand Allows Myanmar Refugees in Camps to Work Legally
On August 26, Thailand’s cabinet approved measures allowing Myanmar refugees living in camps along the border to work legally. For many, it will be the first formal employment of their lives.
About 108,000 refugees live in the nine camps that have sheltered people fleeing Myanmar military abuses since the 1980s. Nearly half were born there.
The new work permits will only be available to about 80,000 refugees registered with the Thai government, an estimated 42,000 of whom are working age. Refugees will be required to apply for permission to leave the camps and for work permits valid up to one year.
For decades, the Thai government barred camp refugees from working legally, moving freely, or accessing public services, leaving them largely dependent on foreign aid. Desperation in the camps soared this year following drastic US government aid cuts to core food and healthcare services, with monthly rations slashed first to US$2.30, then to zero.
In July, I spoke with eight refugees who described feeling hopeless and forgotten after decades restricted to the camps. All were eager to work outside them if allowed. “If we could have some sort of status to grant us protection, to live and work freely and make money, then we wouldn’t be a burden on Thailand or the international community,” one refugee said.
The cabinet decision comes at a critical juncture not only for the refugees, but also for the Thai labor force, which is facing shortages due to an aging population and the exodus of at least 100,000 Cambodian migrant workers following recent border clashes.
Thai authorities should ensure the permit application process is transparent, accessible, and prompt, with protections in place to avoid exploitation or extortion by brokers. If properly implemented, the work policy will build refugees’ self-reliance and independence, boost local economies, and be a rights-respecting, prosperous model for refugee populations elsewhere in Thailand and in the region.
“As young people, we want to make a living, we want to use our knowledge and skills,” another refugee told me. “If there’s any chance for us to leave the camp to work, to get a job and provide for our families, I would take it.”
Brazil One Step Away from Protecting Children Online
Today, Brazil’s Senate passed a long-awaited bill to protect children’s rights online. The bill now heads for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s signature into law.
If enacted, this legislation would impose sweeping digital safety and privacy safeguards for children. It would compel tech companies to design products with young users’ best interests in mind and provide children with the highest levels of privacy by default.
Two of the bill’s strongest provisions respond to concerns directly raised in recent Human Rights Watch investigations. One provision prohibits online services from using children’s personal data in ways that “cause, facilitate, or contribute to the violation of their privacy or any other rights guaranteed to them by law … and the[ir] best interests.” In June 2024, we documented how children’s personal photos had been used to build powerful artificial intelligence tools later exploited to create abusive deepfakes of other children.
Another safeguard in the bill bans profiling children – tracking children’s online behavior to predict their characteristics, behaviors, and interests – to target them with behavioral advertising. This reflects recommendations in April 2023 and May 2022 Human Rights Watch investigations, which documented that children in Brazil and around the world had been secretly surveilled in their online classrooms and across the internet through invasive profiling and behavioral advertising techniques.
Passage of this bill reflects strong political will to protect children online. Before being approved by the Senate today, the bill had unanimously passed the Senate in December 2024 and cleared the Chamber of Deputies last week with support from all but one political party, Novo.
This broad support enabled the bill’s passage despite fierce opposition from tech companies, which successfully weakened some of the legislation’s original proposals. These include banning “loot boxes” in video games – features that encourage children to spend money for randomized rewards – and requiring companies to exercise a duty of care towards children. It is also unclear how one provision – mandating that children’s social media accounts be linked to their guardians’ accounts – might be implemented in a way that preserves children’s privacy and their right to seek information.
President Lula should sign the bill without delay and provide Brazilian children the protections they need to learn, explore, and play safely online.
The High Cost of Dissent in India
This month the Indian government banned 25 books on the Himalayan region of Jammu and Kashmir, saying they “excite secessionism.”
The action by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi reflects a wider attempt to silence dissent in response to unusually sharp criticisms over its policies. After the news outlet Wire and others questioned the government’s handling of a deadly militant attack in Jammu and Kashmir in April, Modi supporters in Assam state filed criminal complaints against the website for its reporting.
Assam police then filed two cases against Wire, including under a vaguely worded criminal law provision that replicates the British colonial-era sedition law, which the Supreme Court suspended in 2023 because of its rampant misuse to silence government critics. Several journalist organizations condemned the charges and the Supreme Court stepped in to protect Wire journalists from arrest.
The court also protected the well-known political analyst Sanjay Kumar after police in Maharashtra state accused him of defamation and forgery, a day after he had publicly apologized for data error while evaluating election fraud. The political opposition has criticized the Election Commission of India for alleged partisan actions.
Indian authorities have long used vague legal provisions as a political tool to silence critics, but since the BJP took office in 2014, the crackdown on freedom of expression has escalated. Comedians, artists, and students have been among those targeted, while human rights activists and outspoken academics remain particularly vulnerable. An independent report released in May, examining over 400 criminal cases against journalists between 2012 and 2022, found “widespread misuse of vague and overly broad criminal laws” such as defamation, sedition, and public order provisions, mostly to target any criticism of public officials.
Religious minorities are especially at risk. Assam’s BJP chief minister described the police’s arrest of 97 people for their social media comments on the Kashmir attack as taking action against “anti-national and anti-Hindu culprits.” The news website Scroll reported that over 90 percent of those detained were Muslim.
BJP leaders have frequently evoked nationalism when confronted with their deteriorating rights record. The government needs to refocus its efforts on protecting fundamental rights instead of clamping down on them.
Mauritania: Years of Migration Control Abuses
(Nairobi) – Mauritanian security forces committed serious human rights violations between 2020 and early 2025 against largely West and Central African migrants and asylum seekers, often when they were seeking to leave or transit the country, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. However, recent steps and commitments by the Mauritanian government may improve protection for migrants and their rights.
August 27, 2025 “They Accused Me of Trying to Go to Europe”The 142-page report, “‘They Accused Me of Trying to Go to Europe’: Migration Control Abuses and EU Externalization in Mauritania,” documents abuses by the Mauritanian police, coast guard, navy, gendarmerie, and army during border and migration control, including torture, rape, and other violence; sexual harassment; arbitrary arrests and detention; inhumane detention conditions; racist treatment; extortion and theft; and summary and collective expulsions. The crackdowns and rights violations were exacerbated by the European Union and Spain, bilaterally, continuing to outsource migration management to Mauritania, including through years of support to Mauritania’s border and migration control authorities.
“For years, Mauritanian authorities followed an abusive migration control playbook – sadly common across North Africa – by violating the rights of African migrants from other regions,” said Lauren Seibert, refugee and migrant rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “But Mauritania’s recent reforms show that a new approach is possible. The government should build on these efforts, scale up monitoring of security forces, and halt collective expulsions.”
Between 2020 and mid-2025, Human Rights Watch interviewed 223 people by phone and in person during visits to Mauritania, Mali, Senegal, and EU institutions in Brussels. In addition to 102 migrants and asylum seekers from Senegal, Guinea, Mali, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, Human Rights Watch interviewed government, United Nations, and EU officials; members of nongovernmental and civil society organizations; relatives of abuse victims; witnesses; experts; lawyers; community members; and others.
Human Rights Watch examined injuries from alleged abuse; collected photos, videos, and documents to corroborate accounts; and, in 2022 and 2023 in Mauritania, visited migrant detention centers and Dar Naïm prison, which held people on migrant smuggling charges.
Human Rights Watch documented violations by Mauritanian security forces between 2020 and 2025 against 77 migrants and asylum seekers – men, women, and children – and a Mauritanian man, who said police tortured him during migrant-smuggling-related interrogations in 2022.
Click to expand Image © 2025 Human Rights WatchIncreasing numbers of migrants and asylum seekers between 2020 and 2024 attempted the “Atlantic Route” by boat from northwest Africa to Spain’s Canary Islands, with many departing from Mauritania. Some have fled conflict or persecution in their countries – including many from Mali, where armed conflict has worsened alongside government repression – while others aimed to escape poverty and find work. In 2024, a record 46,843 people arrived by boat in the Canaries. About 11,500 people arrived between January and July 2025.
Mauritania has also long attracted West and Central Africans seeking work, and it hosts about 176,000 registered asylum seekers and refugees, the majority from Mali. Some migrants seek to transit Mauritania toward Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara, Morocco, or Algeria.
In 2024, Mauritania signed a new migration partnership with the EU in exchange for €210 million in funding to reduce irregular migration, comparable to other EU deals with Tunisia and Egypt. Spain increased its bilateral support to the same end, while maintaining deployment of Spanish police and civil guard in Mauritania to assist authorities with migration control.
Click to expand Image Men from Senegal and Niger held at the police-run migrant detention center in Le Ksar district, Nouakchott, Mauritania, September 2, 2023. Multiple West and Central African migrants detained at the Ksar center between 2020 and 2024 described mistreatment including insufficient food, overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, and being forced to sleep on the floor. In July 2025, the government said the Ksar center was temporarily closed for “rehabilitation” to improve conditions. © 2023 Lauren Seibert/Human Rights WatchDozens of people who had been held in Mauritania’s police-run migrant detention centers described inhumane conditions and treatment, including lack of food, poor sanitation, adolescent children at times detained with unrelated adults, and some beatings by guards.
Between 2020 and mid-2025, Mauritanian police expelled tens of thousands of African foreigners of multiple nationalities – generally without formal legal procedures or an opportunity to challenge their expulsion – to remote locations along the borders with Mali and Senegal, where limited aid, plus worsening insecurity in Mali’s Kayes region, has put people at risk. In the first half of 2025, Mauritania expelled over 28,000 people, the government said.
Marco Gibson, a Liberian man, said Mauritania’s military arrested him with a group of over 40 migrants near Mauritania’s northern border in December 2024, as they were leaving toward Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara: “The Mauritanian army … beat us with sticks … [and] a rubber whip…. I’ve never seen such a brutal attitude.” Following detention, police expelled him and around 20 others, including children, to Mali’s border town of Gogui, in the Nioro du Sahel area of Kayes region, he said. Days later, an Islamist armed group attacked Nioro.
Human Rights Watch has documented police use of prolonged, painful restraints, limited food and water, and other mistreatment during expulsions, as well as cases of children, asylum seekers, and people with valid legal status in Mauritania among those expelled.
The report also highlights the negative impacts of Mauritania’s interceptions and forced returns of migrant boats, supported by the EU and Spain, while search-and-rescue in the Atlantic remains insufficient, contributing to ongoing deaths.
By funding, equipping, and collaborating with Mauritanian forces for years to bolster border and migration controls without ensuring adequate human rights safeguards, the EU and Spain incentivized repression of migration and share responsibility for abuses in Mauritania, Human Rights Watch said. In some cases, Spanish forces were present during abusive arrests and detention of migrants by Mauritanian authorities. The EU also funded renovations of two former migrant detention centers, set to open this year to receive migrants intercepted or rescued at sea.
In a reply to questions from Human Rights Watch, the Mauritanian government said it “reject[s] allegations of torture, racial discrimination, or systematic violations of migrants’ rights.” It cited recent steps to improve respect for rights, including a “ban on collective expulsions” and new standard operating procedures (SOPs) adopted in May 2025 to regulate disembarkations and “management” of migrants, with strong rights and protection guarantees.
The European Commission, in its reply to Human Rights Watch, said its partnership with Mauritania was “solidly anchored” in respect for rights and cited EU support for the SOPs and other rights-focused initiatives.
“The Mauritanian government’s steps to improve respect for migrant rights are much needed,” Seibert said. “By going further to end abuses, Mauritania could potentially lead the way toward rights-respecting migration management in North Africa. For their part, the EU and Spain should ensure that their migration cooperation with Mauritania prioritizes rights and saving lives, instead of supporting security crackdowns that lead to abuses.”
Gaza: US Forces Can Be Liable for Assisting Israeli War Crimes
(Washington, DC) – US military personnel could face legal liability for assisting Israeli forces who commit war crimes in Gaza, Human Rights Watch said today.
Direct participation by US forces in military operations in Gaza since October 2023, including by providing intelligence for Israeli strikes and conducting extensive coordination and planning, has made the United States a party to the conflict between Israel and Palestinian armed groups. As a warring party, US forces could be jointly responsible for participating in laws-of-war violations by Israeli forces, and US personnel implicated could be held individually responsible for war crimes.
“The direct US participation in military operations with Israeli forces means that as a matter of international law, the United States has been and currently is a party to the armed conflict in Gaza,” said Sarah Yager, Washington director at Human Rights Watch. “US military and intelligence personnel and contractors assisting Israeli forces who commit war crimes may at some point find themselves facing criminal prosecution for atrocities in Gaza.”
Under international humanitarian law, the ongoing hostilities between Israel and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza is a non-international armed conflict. International law does not set out specific criteria for determining when a country assisting another country in a non-international armed conflict itself becomes a party to that conflict, though direct participation in combat operations is a clear example.
US officials have acknowledged that since hostilities between Palestinian armed groups and Israel began on October 7, 2023, the United States has provided Israel with extensive actionable intelligence used to strike targets in Gaza, along with extensive coordination, planning, and intelligence gathering with Israeli forces to target Hamas leaders.
US administrations have indicated publicly that the US has been involved in the hostilities. In October 2024, then-President Joe Biden said that he had “directed Special Operations personnel and our intelligence professionals to work side-by-side with their Israeli counterparts to help locate and track [Yahya] Sinwar and other Hamas leaders hiding in Gaza. With our intelligence help, the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] relentlessly pursued Hamas’s leaders.”
After Israeli forces resumed airstrikes across Gaza on March 18, 2025, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told the media in an interview that “the Trump administration and the White House were consulted by the Israelis on their attacks in Gaza tonight.” The Gaza Health Ministry reported that more than 400 people were killed that night, mostly children and women.
Under international humanitarian law, each party to an armed conflict has an obligation to respect and ensure respect for the laws of war by its armed forces and others acting on its instructions or under its control. Governments must exert their influence—to the degree possible—to stop violations of the laws of war, investigate alleged war crimes by their forces, and appropriately prosecute those responsible.
During the hostilities, Israeli forces have carried out a range of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide in Gaza. Since taking office in January, the administration of President Donald Trump, instead of pressing to stop laws-of-war violations, has issued statements or taken actions that indicate support for or complicity in unlawful acts by Israeli forces.
On January 25, President Trump proposed that regarding Gaza, he would “just clean out that whole thing,” effectively endorsing the mass forcible deportation of the Palestinian population from Gaza, a war crime, crime against humanity, and ethnic cleansing.
The Trump administration has fully backed the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), whose aid distributions have resulted in near-daily mass casualty incidents. The GHF system is run by two US private subcontracted companies and claims to be independent of any government. Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire on Palestinian civilians seeking assistance at these sites, causing hundreds of casualties, including in acts that amount to war crimes.
In addition to being a party to the conflict, the United States has responsibilities under international law for internationally wrongful acts. The International Law Commission, a United Nations expert body mandated to advance the development of international law, in 2001 adopted the Draft Articles on State Responsibility for Internationally Wrongful Acts. The draft articles, which are widely accepted as reflecting customary international law, provide that a state bears responsibility under international law if it “aids or assists” another state to commit an internationally wrongful act “with knowledge of the circumstances.”
The commission’s explanatory notes to article 16 of the Draft Articles clarify that assistance alone can trigger state responsibility if it contributes “significantly” to the commission of a wrongful act and when a state provides material aid subsequently used to commit human rights violations. The sale and supply of arms from one state to another, completed with the requisite “knowledge of the circumstances” of the internationally wrongful act, is a recognized article 16 violation.
Both the Biden and second Trump administrations have provided massive arms sales and other security assistance to Israel. According to the Center for International Policy’s Security Assistance Monitor, the United States has transferred at least $4.17 billion in arms to Israel between October 2023 and May 2025. The Security Assistance Monitor also assessed, based on State Department reports, that there had been, as of April 2025, 751 active Foreign Military Sales cases with Israel, valued at $39.2 billion. This was despite being aware that Israeli forces were repeatedly committing serious laws-of-war violations, including war crimes.
In December 2023, Biden referred to Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing,” yet the administration continued its military assistance, providing at least $17.9 billion in the ensuing year. By March 2024, the United States had approved more than 100 military sales, including of thousands of small-diameter bombs, precision-guided munitions, bunker-buster bombs, and other munitions and materiel. In early January 2025, the Biden administration informed Congress of plans to sell Israel an additional $8 billion in weapons.
The Trump administration has ramped up military support, including approving the release of a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs that Biden had temporarily withheld. On March 1, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that the Trump administration had approved nearly $12 billion in security assistance to Israel and that he was using emergency authority to expedite the delivery of $4 billion of this assistance.
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and dozens of media reports—including by the New York Times, the Washington Post, AFP, CNN, and NPR—have identified US weapons being used in Israeli attacks.
The US government’s provision of arms to Israel, which have repeatedly been used to carry out apparent war crimes, has made the United States complicit in their unlawful use.
Human Rights Watch has long called on the United States and other governments to do more to prevent further atrocities by the Israeli government, including by ending arms sales and military assistance, imposing targeted sanctions on Israeli officials, and suspending preferential trade agreements.
“International law holds a country legally complicit when it knowingly assists another nation to commit serious laws-of-war violations and other abuses,” Yager said. “The US public should know that US weapons provided to Israel are directly enabling atrocities in Gaza, deeply entangling the United States in the laws-of-war violations that Human Rights Watch and others are documenting.”
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