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Click to expand Image A home near a coal-fired power plant in Cheshire, Ohio, US, April 14, 2025. © 2025 Joshua A. Bickel/AP Photo

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on January 12 that it will no longer ascribe an economic value to saving lives and improving public health when considering whether to curb harmful air pollutants. This move could weaken emissions standards and imperil communities exposed to toxic pollution. 

The EPA, which enforces federal environmental laws, said it would stop estimating the economic value of health benefits from reducing ozone and fine particulate matter, even though it acknowledges that they contribute to pulmonary disease, heart attacks, and premature deaths. 

The EPA has historically estimated both economic costs borne by industry to ensure compliance with a regulation as well as economic costs borne by the public in the absence of such a regulation, including lives lost, illnesses avoided, and productivity gained from reduced sick leave.  

When the EPA limited the emission of particulate matter in 2024, it projected that the new rule would prevent 4,500 early deaths, 290,000 lost workdays, and yield up to $46 billion in net health benefits by 2032. It estimated that every $1 spent to meet the tighter standard could return up to $77 in reduced health costs. 

In announcing the change, the EPA cited uncertainty about the values assigned to the economic benefits of reducing pollutants. While the EPA has used different dollar amounts for different factors since the 1990s, it has never totally done away with calculating their value. While far from perfectly capturing the full benefits of pollution controls, these calculations form a basis from which the agency has assessed benefits to people’s lives and well-being, in addition to increased costs on industry. An agency spokesperson told the New York Times that it would still consider the pollutants’ impact on health without further details. 

Human Rights Watch has documented that fossil fuel operations in particular contribute to elevated levels of these pollutants.  

In a Louisiana region known as Cancer Alley, nearly 90 percent of particulate matter caused by industry comes from about 200 nearby fossil fuel and petrochemical operations. These operations also emit hazardous pollutants called volatile organic compounds, which can form ozone. 

The disproportionately Black residents living on the fencelines of these plants have faced increased risks of cancer, respiratory ailments, and reproductive health harm. Under President Donald Trump, the EPA has closed its environmental justice offices, which were set up to help these communities. 

By calculating the economic costs of compliance without the corresponding benefits, the EPA is severely restricting its mission to protect public health and the environment.

Click to expand Image Protesters, lawyers, and aid workers outside a court in Mytilene, on the northeastern Aegean island of Lesbos, Greece, January 13, 2023. © 2023 Panagiotis Balaskas/AP Photo

After a seven-year legal ordeal, humanitarian workers wept with relief today when a court on the Greek island of Lesbos acquitted all 24 defendants who had been baselessly charged with felonies for saving lives at sea. The courtroom erupted in cheers, shouts, and tears as the verdict was read. “Saving lives is not a crime,” said Sara Mardini, one of the acquitted. 

In August 2018, police on Lesbos arrested Sara Mardini and Séan Binder, volunteers with a small search and rescue group, who spent more than 100 days in pretrial detention. Two Greek nationals were also detained. Prosecutors ultimately charged 24 people associated with the group, Emergency Response Center International, in a case that distorted lifesaving support for migrants and asylum seekers into felonies carrying 20 years in prison.

Greek law on migration-related crimes exempts people helping asylum seekers from any penalty. Yet the prosecution charged that the search and rescue group was facilitating illegal migration and was a criminal smuggling organization. It also charged that fundraising for the group was money laundering. The prosecution also asserted that several defendants participated in smuggling on dates when they were not in Greece.

The full acquittal of all defendants in “the largest case of criminalization of solidarity in Europe,” as the European Parliament called it, is significant yet likely insufficient. The prosecution chose to pursue the felony charges after another court had dismissed bogus misdemeanor charges in the same case. Greek courts had already thrown out similar cases.

These prosecutions have had a significant chilling effect. Search and rescue groups have closed their operations in the Aegean Sea. Scores of people have drowned, including a 7-year-old girl whose body was recovered on January 8.

The Greek government should prioritize saving lives. It could apologize to the defendants and make clear that it will no longer pursue prosecutions that criminalize solidarity. It should also throw out a proposed migration bill that would impose restrictive registration requirements and harsh penalties on nongovernmental groups and their members. It should end its abusive crackdown against human rights defenders. Most importantly, the government should immediately halt abusive pushbacks at its borders, and ensure that no one is illegally returned to danger.

Click to expand Image A member of the Ugandan police force gives instructions to supporters of Uganda's incumbent president and National Resistance Movement (NRM) presidential candidate Yoweri Museveni entering the rally grounds ahead of the party's closing campaign rally ahead of the 2026 Ugandan general elections, in Kampala on January 13, 2026. © 2026 AFP via Getty Images

(Nairobi) – Ugandan authorities should immediately restore internet access and refrain from imposing blanket shutdowns that undermine fundamental rights and threaten election integrity, Human Rights Watch said today.

“Uganda’s constitution and international human rights obligations guarantee access to information and freedom of expression, rights that are especially critical to protect during election periods,” said Tomiwa Ilori, senior technology, rights and investigations researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Immediate restoration of full connectivity, together with clear commitments against future shutdowns, is essential to safeguard transparency and the integrity of the vote in Uganda.”

On January 13, 2026, Uganda’s telecommunications regulator, the Uganda Communications Commission, ordered all mobile network operators and internet service providers to suspend public internet access nationwide starting at 6 p.m., two days before the general elections. The directive cited concerns about “online misinformation,” “electoral fraud,” and “preventing … incitement of violence that could affect public confidence and national security during the election period.”

The directive blocked social media platforms, web browsing, video streaming, personal email services, messaging applications, and most online services, leaving only a narrow list for critical services such as hospital systems, banking networks, tax platforms, utilities, and the electoral commission portal. It also halted SIM card sales and disabled outbound data roaming to One Network Area countries.

Multiple network measurement sources, including Cloudflare Radar and Internet Outage Detection Analysis, have confirmed a drop in internet traffic in Uganda.

The internet shutdown is part of a broader crackdown on rights. The government, on January 12, ordered at least 10 non-governmental organizations to immediately cease their operations indefinitely, and on December 30, 2025, arrested a prominent human rights activist and critic, Sarah Bireete.

This move follows a troubling pattern of election-related internet shutdowns in 2016 and 2021 by Ugandan authorities, blocking access to information and undermining transparency and public confidence in the electoral process.

Previous shutdowns in Uganda, including a five-day internet blackout during the 2021 elections, led to a ban on Facebook, which is still in effect. Previous shutdowns are estimated to have caused billions of Ugandan shillings in economic losses that harm livelihoods, particularly small businesses and informal traders who rely on the internet for survival.

Ugandan authorities have disregarded repeated calls from international and regional bodies to end this practice.

Blanket internet shutdowns during elections severely restrict communication and access to information at a critical moment for democracy, obstruct election monitoring, and silence the electorates’ voices. They fail the tests of legality, necessity, and proportionality and “can never be justified,” according to international human rights law.

These shutdowns also violate the provisions of article 9 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information in Africa also provides that states shall not interfere with an individual’s right to internet access.

Ugandan authorities should restore internet access immediately and commit to refraining from future disruptions in line with Uganda’s Constitution and international human rights obligations, Human Rights Watch said. The authorities should ensure transparency and accountability during the electoral process, including protection for journalists, election observers, and human rights defenders.

Telecommunications companies should respect human rights and align their practices with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. They should do everything within their power to push back against unjustified internet shutdowns, including demanding a legal basis for any shutdown order and interpreting requests to cause the least intrusive restrictions.

“Ugandan authorities’ repeated internet shutdowns during elections blatantly violate human rights,” Ilori said. “Uganda’s international partners, including the African Union and East African Community, should urge compliance with human rights standards and support independent monitoring during and after the election period.”

Click to expand Image Family members and neighbor (far right) of Alimnur Turganbay, a Kazakhstan citizen detained in China, outside their house in Uzynagash village, located outside Almaty, Kazakhstan on August 4, 2025. © 2025 Chris Rickleton

(London, January 15, 2026) – Kazakh authorities should drop charges against 18 Kazakh activists who peacefully protested against Chinese government abuses in Xinjiang, Human Rights Watch said today. The activists, from the Nagyz Atajurt Volunteers group, face up to 10 years in prison for exercising their freedom of expression. Thirteen are in pretrial detention, while the rest are under house arrest. The trial is expected to begin on January 21 in the city of Taldykorgan.

“Kazakh authorities should withdraw the criminal charges against the Atajurt activists and release those in detention immediately,” said Maya Wang, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Instead of aiding China’s repression, the Kazakh government should press the Chinese government to stop its crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.”

The charges of “inciting national discord” stem from a November 13, 2025 demonstration in Qalzhat, Almaty’s Uyghur District, where activists burned three Chinese flags and a portrait of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Protesters demanded that the Chinese authorities release Alimnur Turganbay as they were chanting slogans such as “Stop the pressure and injustice against Kazakh and Uyghur peoples” and “Down with the Communist Party! Down with Xi Jinping!” A Kazakhstan citizen originally from Xinjiang, Turganbay has been detained on unknown grounds by Chinese authorities since July 2025. 

This is the first time Kazakh authorities have sought to criminally prosecute in a single case such a large group of activists advocating for human rights in Xinjiang, Human Rights Watch said.

According to the indictment, the activists “premeditatively gathered … using mass media, with the aim of inciting national discord, as well as insulting the national dignity and honor of representatives of the Chinese nationality.” State-ordered forensic examinations of the protest video—which demonstrators had posted on social media after the event—allegedly found “signs of incitement to interethnic discord or national enmity.”

Evidence suggests Kazakh authorities may be acting at China’s request. Kazakh police initially detained the protesting activists on November 13, and an administrative court convicted them of “hooliganism,” imposing sanctions ranging from fines to 15 days’ detention. 

On November 14, the Chinese Consulate in Almaty sent a diplomatic note to Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs calling the protest a “deliberately planned … open provocation” and urged authorities to “take appropriate measures.” Kazakh authorities then opened a criminal investigation into the activists.

Authorities have also targeted other Atajurt activists in recent months. On November 15, authorities arbitrarily detained four other Atajurt volunteers in Astana and held them for ten days for administrative offences. On December 23, a Kazakhstan citizen in the capital city of Astana was fined for sharing information about the protest on Facebook. Officials have warned other Atajurt activists not to provide video or financial support to Atajurt. 

Authorities in Kazakhstan have long misused the vague and overly broad offence of “inciting discord” (article 174 of the criminal code) to silence individuals for actions and speech that are protected under international human rights law. 

International human rights bodies have repeatedly called on Kazakhstan to amend the law, including at Kazakhstan’s last Universal Periodic Review, where the government received and supported at least six recommendations to amend the “inciting discord” offence. Yet, authorities persist in using the law to silence government critics. 

Kazakhstan shares a long border with China and is home to a sizable Uyghur and Kazakh diaspora from Xinjiang, where the Chinese government has carried out severe repression against these Turkic Muslim communities since late 2016. The Chinese government’s abuses in Xinjiang, including those constituting crimes against humanity, have been a point of contention in Kazakhstan-China relations. These abuses include mass arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearances, mass surveillance, cultural and religious persecution, separation of families, and forced labor. Since 2016, Chinese authorities have punished Uyghurs and ethnic Kazakhs who have foreign ties by detaining and imprisoning those with family in, or who have visited, any of the “26 sensitive countries,” including Kazakhstan.

In recent years, the Chinese government has also escalated its harassment of critics abroad, known as “transnational repression.” While Kazakhstan has refrained from extraditing ethnic Kazakhs or Uyghurs wanted by the Chinese government, the Kazakh government has sacrificed respect for human rights in an apparent effort to maintain good relations with the Chinese government, Human Rights Watch said. 

In recent years, Kazakh authorities have barred researchers and prosecuted activists exposing Xinjiang abuses from entering the country. In May 2025, Kazakh authorities denied entry to Danish anthropologist Rune Steenberg. Similarly, in 2021, Kazakh authorities barred Gene Bunin, founder of Xinjiang Victims Database, from entering the country for five years. 

In 2019, authorities charged Kazakhstan citizen and Atajurt activist Serikzhan Bilash for “inciting discord.” Bilash was released only after he agreed to cease his Xinjiang activism; he is currently in exile in the United States. Other Kazakh nationals who have intermittently protested the Chinese government’s abuses in Xinjiang have also faced arrest and short-term detention.

Kazakhstan’s international partners should urge the government to drop these unfounded charges, release the Atajurt activists, and uphold freedom of expression. 

“The Chinese government should end its crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and stop intimidating peaceful critics abroad,” said Wang. “Kazakh authorities should protect its citizens from Chinese government repression, not prosecute peaceful activists for speaking out against it.”

Syrian government forces and local Bedouin and Druze armed groups all carried out grave abuses during clashes in Syria’s southern Sweida governorate in July 2025.Abuses included summary killings, outrages on personal dignity, and abductions. As many as 187,000 people have been displaced.The Syrian authorities need to demonstrate they are a government for all Syrians by pursuing accountability for atrocities in Sweida at the highest levels and for all involved parties.

(Beirut) – Syrian government forces and local Bedouin and Druze armed groups are responsible for grave abuses during clashes in Syria’s southern Sweida governorate in July 2025, Human Rights Watch said today. Syrian authorities should hold those responsible for abuses on all sides accountable, including by appropriately prosecuting military commanders and senior officials who ordered abuses or are liable as a matter of command responsibility for war crimes.

A checkpoint confrontation between Bedouin and Druze armed groups on July 12 in Sweida governorate escalated into several days of armed clashes. On July 14, government security forces shelled Druze positions in support of Bedouin armed groups, while the Druze responded with attacks against government and Bedouin forces. Hundreds of civilians were killed and injured, and tens of thousands were displaced. While the situation has improved, those displaced still face difficult living conditions.

“The Syrian authorities need to demonstrate they are a government for all Syrians by pursuing accountability for atrocities in Sweida at the highest levels and for all involved parties,” said Adam Coogle, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Without full accountability for these abuses, the horrors of the past will be repeated.”

Sweida governorate’s population is predominantly Druze with a Bedouin minority. While these groups have coexisted for decades, the checkpoint confrontation on July 12 triggered fighting between the groups. Government forces intervened to support Bedouin groups, escalating tensions between the government and the Druze community.

Human Rights Watch interviewed 19 victims and witnesses of abuses, including 14 Druze and 5 Bedouin residents of Sweida, and verified corroborating photographs and videos. Researchers also spoke with three local activists, a Syrian journalist who entered Sweida alongside government forces, and three sources with direct knowledge of aid restrictions. 

Witnesses said that government security forces committed summary killings and destroyed civilian property, while allied Bedouin armed groups carried out kidnappings and looting. Druze armed groups attacked and arbitrarily detained civilians. Human Rights Watch documented 86 apparently unlawful killings, including 67 Druze and 19 Bedouin civilians.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated that over 93,000 people were displaced within a week of the clashes, and 187,000 by late July, causing critical shortages of food, shelter, and medicine.

Syria’s interim government has failed to take adequate steps to impartially investigate abuses by all sides during the fighting, Human Rights Watch said. On July 16, Syrian authorities condemned the Sweida “violations” as “criminal and unlawful” and pledged to investigate. Between July 17 and 22, the Syrian presidency, military police, and Defense Ministry issued statements promising accountability and announced a committee to investigate “shocking violations” by an “unknown group in military attire.”

A government body was tasked with reporting within three months. On November 16, the committee announced that it had requested a two-month extension and would publish the report by the end of the year. The investigation has yet to conclude.

Since the clashes, humanitarian support for civilians in need has been severely impeded due to government restrictions on access and continuing insecurity. Though access restrictions have since been reduced, bureaucratic delays and obstacles to distribution and coordination within the governorate persist, two informed sources reported. An aid worker said that dozens of people remain missing or abducted, with families having received no information about their whereabouts or condition.

On August 21, UN experts reported that attacks by local militia, transitional authorities and affiliated armed groups on just three villages in Sweida resulted in the killing of about 1,000 people, including 539 identified Druze civilians. The full extent of civilian casualties has not been reported because a significant number of bodies may remain in houses where recovery teams have not had authorization to enter.

On October 2, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria entered Sweida to investigate the July abuses, the first visit by international human rights experts. They have since made further visits to the area.

International humanitarian law, known as the laws of war, is applicable to the fighting between government forces and armed groups in Sweida. Common article 3 to the 1949 Geneva Conventions and customary laws of war prohibit attacks on civilians, summary executions, outrages upon personal dignity, and destruction and looting of civilian property. Serious laws of war violations committed with criminal intent are war crimes.

Military forces under the Syria’s transitional government have previously been implicated in grave abuses against minority populations, notably Alawi Syrians in March 2025. Government investigations into alleged crimes absolved top officials due to lack of evidence of direct orders to commit abuses. However, commanders and senior officials may be criminally liable as a matter of command responsibility for war crimes committed by their subordinates if they knew or should have known about such crimes and did not prevent them or punish those responsible.

The Syrian government should ensure impartial investigations into the July as well as the March clashes of senior military and civilian officials, not just low-level personnel as has been the case thus far. In January 2026, renewed clashes between government forces and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces resulted in 23 deaths, and the displacement of over 100,000 people. These latest clashes between government forces and minority-led armed groups underscore the need for comprehensive security sector reform and accountability for grave abuses.

If the authorities are unwilling or unable to conduct prosecutions that meet international fair trial standards, the UN and concerned governments should step in to support accountability efforts. Syrian authorities should pursue genuine security sector reform by vetting abusive personnel, enforcing discipline, and bringing armed groups under accountable state authority or by demobilizing them.

“The government’s acknowledgment of atrocities isn’t enough if those leading and directing abusive forces are shielded from justice,” Coogle said. “Without senior-level accountability and structural reform of the security sector, Syria will continue to face cycles of violence and reprisals.”

Following the clashes on July 12-14, on July 15, Syrian Defense Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra said military units would begin handing over neighborhoods to Internal Security Forces, the country’s security and intelligence agencies, once “combing operations” ended and that military police had been deployed across the city to monitor troop conduct. Syrian government forces began withdrawing from Sweida on July 16.

Meanwhile, Bedouin armed groups from across Syria mobilized on Sweida’s eastern and southern edges. The Syrian presidency referred to Druze fighters as “outlaw groups” and praised the nationwide mobilization of Bedouin fighters around Sweida. On July 19, the presidency thanked the Bedouin forces but called on them to withdraw.

On July 16, Israeli forces conducted airstrikes against Syrian military positions. Under an agreement announced by the Syrian government on July 20, Bedouin fighters and families were relocated outside the governorate, increasing displacement and tensions over prospects for safe return. On August 23, about 30 Druze factions in Sweida united under the National Guard Forces, pledging allegiance to Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, the Druze community’s spiritual leader.

Abductions of humanitarian workers have disrupted relief efforts. The media reported that on July 16, unidentified armed men abducted Hamza al-Amareen, the head of a White Helmets emergency center, while he was responding to a call for assistance in Sweida city; his whereabouts remain unknown. On August 13, five aid workers were kidnapped in eastern Daraa governorate while transporting assistance to Sweida. The Interior Ministry later said the men were freed but gave no details about those responsible or any action taken. 

Abuses by Syrian Government Forces and Bedouin Armed Groups

Clashes between Bedouin and Druze armed groups in early July prompted the government to deploy units from the Defense and Interior Ministries to Sweida governorate on July 14. Human Rights Watch documented abuses by government forces and Bedouin armed groups against Druze civilians.

A local journalist who entered Sweida with Syrian forces said that Bedouin armed groups entered the city first, followed by army units, and then General Security police forces, including units from neighboring Daraa. He said he witnessed looting, theft, and arson, including by General Security personnel, soldiers beating a detainee, and five arrests of unarmed people in civilian clothing. He also saw about 15 bodies that did not appear to be security force personnel. The journalist also said he saw non-Syrian fighters in civilian clothing moving through Sweida city. One of them threatened to shoot him if he filmed, he said.

Summary Killings

Human Rights Watch documented seven incidents of summary killings between July 14 and 19 in which government forces and affiliated militia killed at least 54 Druze civilians, including children. Many of these killings took place in or near the victims’ homes. 

Abu Saadeh-Baayni Family

On July 15, armed men in military and security uniforms stormed the home of Manar Abu Saadeh, a lawyer, her husband, Abdullah Ismail al-Baayni, and their sons Mazen and Omar, both university students in Sweida city. Her brother, Emad Hamad Abu Saadeh, said that Manar had called him earlier that day and said that armed men had come to their home demanding 20 million Syrian pounds (US$2,000), and threatened to kill them when they did not pay.

Around 11:00 p.m., Emad said, he received a call from his nephew, whom he quoted as saying, “Uncle, they broke the door and are coming for us, if anyone can help, please come.” The line cut off. Emad said he immediately tried to reach local contacts for help, but no one could approach the area because of heavy shelling, checkpoints, and armed clashes.

The next morning, at about 10:00 a.m., Emad said, Manar phoned him, saying the attackers had returned, killed her husband, and set the house on fire. “We’re inside. We can’t breathe, there’s too much smoke,” he quoted her as saying before the line went dead. 

When Emad finally reached the house the following day, he found it partially destroyed and still smoldering. “The house was burned and clearly hit by medium-caliber shells, you could tell from the large holes in the walls,” he said. “They burned it with car tires and grenades; we even found one unexploded. The scene was horrific.” Inside, he discovered the charred remains of Manar, Abdullah, and their two sons. Human Rights Watch could not determine whether they died as a result of the fire or were killed beforehand.

Human Rights Watch verified and geolocated multiple videos consistent with Emad’s account. Footage filmed by the Horan Free League, a news organization in Daraa governate, and shared on social media on July 16 shows military vehicles and armed men in Syrian military-style uniforms in Tishreen Square in the center of Sweida city, and, in another video clip, men in military uniforms and black uniforms repeatedly firing at the family’s home from close range.

In the video, journalists accompany the uniformed men as they access the grounds of the building, where flames and smoke are visible. A shoulder badge showing the seal of the Prophet Mohammed, usually indicative of the Islamic State, is visible on the black uniform of one of the men carrying an AK-style assault rifle. The video also shows a man in military uniform with a blue seal identical to the old insignia of the Islamist armed group Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham, the group that now controls the Syrian government. One video recorded by Emad shows the immediate aftermath of the attack, including the charred remains of at least two people inside the destroyed home. Human Rights Watch was unable to confirm their identities.

Emad said that no emergency services could reach the site due to armed clashes and road closures, and that the family’s bodies remained in the house for four days before relatives buried them there. Witnesses said the attackers spoke in Syrian accents, identified themselves as Ministry of Defense and General Security, and appeared in videos uploaded that same night wearing matching uniforms and using the same vehicles and weapons visible in the footage of the assault.

Badr Guesthouse 

On July 16, armed men stormed the Badr family guesthouse in central Sweida city, killing at least 16 people, including members of the Badr, al-Shaqqi, and al-Lous families, and wounding several others.

A witness, Anwar Asaad al-Awaj, said that about 30 women, 19 men, and 10 children had taken shelter in the guesthouse amid heavy shelling when the attackers, some wearing military uniforms, entered shouting religious slogans and calling the Druze “infidels” and “pigs.” He said the gunmen threw grenades inside before entering and firing. They then forced the men outside, beat and insulted them, and executed them one by one at close range.

Al-Awaj said he saw the gunmen attack those inside the guesthouse. They shot his cousin Ziyad Badr, his neighbor Jawad al-Shaqqi, and a guest in the house, Kinan al-Lous, killing them all. The gunmen stabbed and shot others at close range, including his nephew Omar al-Shaqi, who had an intellectual disability. When the gunmen turned to Anwar al-Awaj, one of the attackers demanded his identification, calling him a “pig” and threatening to kill him, then stabbing him in the chest with a bayonet. “I wished for death to come quickly,” he said. He said the attackers beat his 16-year-old son until he collapsed, but he survived.

In one video from the site, shared on social media on July 24 and that Human Rights Watch verified and geolocated, eight unarmed men, including some older men, are sitting and talking to the camera. One of the men says, “We want life to be not about killing people.” A man dressed in a black uniform holding an AK-style assault rifle is visible. A second verified video from the same location shows the bodies of eight men dead on the floor surrounded by pools of blood, some lying face down with their arms over their heads. Three of the men are evident in both videos. Witnesses said the bodies remained overnight before neighbors dared to retrieve them the following morning.

Salim and Madaya Abu Fakher

On July 19, near al-Omran Roundabout in Sweida city, Bedouin fighters from a nearby neighborhood killed two Druze civilians. A resident, whose name is withheld for safety, said that according to his sister-in-law, Bedouin attackers shot dead his brother, Salim Majdi Abu Fakher, 50, and their mother, Madaya Abu Fakher, 75, inside the brother’s home after the attackers broke in three times demanding gold. The resident said the fighters entered the neighborhood chanting sectarian slogans, while General Security forces simultaneously combed through nearby homes. 

The resident said the attackers also tried to abduct two children during the attack but left them behind when Druze armed groups counterattacked. He later found his mother’s and brother’s bodies, the bullets appearing to have passed through her body into his. A video posted on Facebook on July 22 by Suwayda News has a man taking the video saying it shows the bodies of Salim and Madaya. While the video showing the bodies is blurred, it appears to show a dead man with a chest wound and a dead woman next to him on the ground. 

Shuheib Family

A woman, name withheld for safety, said that armed men stormed the Shuheib family’s home in Sweida city on July 19, separated the men from the women, and summarily killed the seven men in the garden while filming. She said the attackers identified themselves as members of General Security, wore black headbands, and insulted the victims with sectarian slurs such as “Druze pigs.”

Among those killed were her husband, 60, her two sons, 30 and 27, her brother-in-law, 59, and his two teenage sons. She said the attackers forced her and her sister-in-law to walk past the bodies before they took the two women toward Izra’, where they were later evacuated by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent. She said her family members were killed “only because they were Druze. … My heart went numb from the shock and pain for my sons.” 

Arnous Family

On July 16, armed men in military-style uniforms summarily killed four members of the al-Arnous family in central Sweida city. A verified video shows the brothers Muaz and Baraa Arnous, and their cousin Osama Arnous forced through the living room of an apartment onto the balcony. The gunmen order the men to jump from the balcony from the multi-story building, and then shot them as they jumped, while another man filmed. Muaz and Baraa’s father, Bashar Qasim Arnous, was also found dead. A relative and two residents said that multiple armed groups entered the apartment building throughout the day, looting valuables, threatening residents, and firing indiscriminately. One witness said some assailants were masked, spoke with foreign accents, and claimed to be from General Security.

Radwan Guesthouse

On July 15, armed men stormed the Radwan guesthouse west of Sweida city, killing at least 14 men and wounding others. A wounded survivor said that more than 20 people were inside when the attackers entered, smashing furniture, destroying religious artifacts, and calling the victims “Druze infidels” then shooting them at close range.

A video circulated on social media that day and later verified by Human Rights Watch shows 10 bodies of men in civilian clothing lying in pools of blood in the guesthouse. Witnesses said the dead included Radwan family members and others who had sought shelter there.

Saraya Family

On July 16, government forces and affiliated fighters killed at least seven unarmed men, six of them members of the Saraya family, in Sweida’s Tishreen Square after storming their home. A verified video shows the men, some in pajamas, being led into the square by armed men in military and security uniforms. One of the gunmen films himself selfie style, saying “God is great,” as another uniformed man next to him smiles, as they lead the men away.

A second video shows the same seven men kneeling in the square with their hands on their heads as the assailants open fire in a sustained burst. A relative said the attackers had promised the men safety before taking them away. The victims, she said, included a farmer, a mill owner, and a university student, as well as Hussam Saraya, a dual Syrian and American citizen. They then looted the house, she said, and threatened the women and children with violence and sexual assault. 

Attacks on Civilian Vehicles 

Human Rights Watch documented three incidents in which government and allied fighters fired on civilian vehicles attempting to flee or pass checkpoints. At least 13 people were killed in these incidents.

In one incident, a Druze man from Sweida city said gunmen opened fire without warning on his family’s car as they drove toward al-Urman on July 16. The vehicle came under fire from multiple directions, then crashed. The attack killed four members of his family—his father, wife, five-year-old son, and a cousin—and wounded several others. “I couldn’t see how many people were shooting because the car’s glass was shattering around us,” he said. “My vision was blurred, and I was in shock.”

In another case, a relative of a Druze family killed near the Rasas junction said she learned that government and General Security forces fired on two cars carrying her relatives as they tried to reach safety on July 16. Both vehicles were hit and caught fire, killing nine people, including children. Photographs reviewed by Human Rights Watch show the burned vehicles and an injured child receiving treatment in a hospital.

Looting and Destruction of Civilian Property 

Eight residents said that security units and armed groups raided homes and businesses, looting valuables, and burning or destroying property, then withdrawing. Some reported that entire neighborhoods were ransacked, with civilians returning to find their homes stripped bare. UN experts reported over 33 villages burned.

A resident of the village of al-Mazraa, northwest of Sweida city, described widespread destruction following repeated assaults by government-affiliated forces and allied armed groups. “In our village, the shelling began from the outskirts, then they stormed houses, looted them, and set them on fire, especially the homes near the edges of the village,” he said. “Someone I know went down to the village and told me that my house and shop had been burned.” He said that at least 30 villagers he personally knew were killed, including two older relatives.

A Damascus resident whose displaced family lived also lived in al-Mazraa said, “I never imagined seeing my childhood home, my grandparents’ home, turned to ash. The walls are black from the fire. They didn’t leave us anything, not even our memories. They burned the olive groves, the grapevines. Everything we lived from.” Photos showed her grandparents’ empty, burned home. 

Outrages Upon Personal Dignity

Human Rights Watch documented acts that amounted to identity-based outrages upon personal dignity. These included forced shaving of Druze men’s mustaches and abusive language referencing Druze identity. Particularly among older or more traditional Druze men in Syria, mustaches have historically carried cultural and symbolic significance.

One video, verified by Human Rights Watch, showed a man in a beige uniform and a flak jacket cutting another man’s mustache with scissors. Behind him, a man dressed in a similar uniform but with the red insignia of the military police, is looking on.

Participating Units

On July 14, the Syrian Defense Ministry circulated a statement on social media saying it had deployed “specialized military units” in coordination with the Interior Ministry responding to “bloody developments” in Sweida. Human Rights Watch obtained information from an informed source and analyzed open-source video material indicating that several Syrian military and security units participated in the military operation in Sweida.

Geolocated video footage shows a reported senior member of the 42nd Armored Brigade filming armored vehicles and troops in Sweida city on July 14. A verified photograph posted on Facebook on July 16 shows reported commanders of the 42nd Armored Brigade taken outside of a café in Sweida. Additionally, a video shared on Facebook on July 16 and analyzed by Human Rights Watch shows a uniformed soldier with the seal of the Prophet Mohammed on his uniform, who says he’s part of the “Ansar al-Tawhid Brigades of the 82nd Division.” He says they are about to enter Sweida to “cleanse” it of Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri and his “followers.”

Another video, posted on Facebook by a Syrian freelance journalist on July 14 and analyzed by Human Rights Watch, shows a convoy of pickup trucks and military vehicles with uniformed soldiers, including at least four vehicles marked by “52nd Division” on the front and “Special Forces” on the side. “Toward Sweida to eliminate outlaw groups,” he posted in Arabic. Another video on social media that same day analyzed by Human Rights Watch shows the same vehicles stopped on a road, with the man filming saying, “may the pigs come to Sweida.”

An informed source also identified the deployment of the 40th Division, based in southern Daraa, the 76th Division, under the command of former Hamzat division leader Saif al-Din Boulad, and the 80th Armored Division, led by Ahmad Rizq. The source said that other security agencies known to have participated include the 105th Brigade of the Republican Guard, the Military Police, and Internal Security forces (including General Security) under the Interior Ministry.

Abuses by Druze Armed Groups Summary Killings

Human Rights Watch documented two mass killings apparently by Druze armed groups in the city of Shahba, north of Sweida city, on July 17. The victims were 19 Syrian Bedouin civilians, including children. Witnesses said that after the withdrawal of Syrian government forces, fighters affiliated with Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri’s armed groups surrounded the area, issued a short deadline for residents to leave, and then opened fire.

Al-Qadees Family

One resident, Atif Rayan, said that when he returned home to evacuate his family, he found his wife, Nibal Mousa al-Qadees, 37, shot dead, and his three-year-old son, Ali, decapitated, most likely by an explosive weapon fragmentation.

He later located two of his daughters alive and found a third wounded by fragments. He said Druze fighters detained his family and other residents in a mosque for several days with minimal food and water, while fighters looted homes and prevented families from burying their dead until the following day.

Human Rights Watch reviewed one video and a photograph apparently showing the bodies of Nibal and Ali found in a rocky area. They show the bloodied bodies of a person in women’s clothing and a small child. Both bodies lay in pools of apparently fresh blood. The child’s decapitated head lies close by. While researchers could not geolocate the video, experts in media forensics and AI detection from the Deepfakes Rapid Response Force, an initiative of WITNESS, a nongovernmental organization, analyzed the video file and concluded that there was no evidence of artificial intelligence manipulation.

Al-Hawarin Family

An 18-year-old woman from the al-Hawarin family said her family’s home came under fire from al-Hijri-aligned Druze fighters using rifles with optics and heavy machine guns. When she and her relatives tried to flee, the attackers opened fire, killing five family members, including her mother, 50, uncle, 49, aunt, 44, and two cousins, 15 and 5. She said she survived by pretending to be dead until local residents rescued her and took her to a hospital.

“After they [the fighters] left, I tried to move and smelled smoke,” she said. “I found my mother’s body burning. My uncle had been shot in the head, hand, waist, and face. My mother was wounded in her back and chest. My cousin’s five-year-old daughter, and my uncle’s wife had been shot in the back. They all died instantly.”

Altogether, residents identified 19 Bedouin civilians killed in Shahba that day.

Desecration of Bodies

Human Rights Watch also documented cases of the desecration of bodies, acts that constitute outrages upon personal dignity.

Human Rights Watch analyzed photographic evidence of two incidents of apparent desecration of bodies by Druze armed groups in Sweida governorate. In one, two photographs show the bodies of two men who appear to have been hanged from the gate marking the entrance to Jneineh village. One of the photographs appears to have been posted to the social media account of a Druze fighter, who is seen wearing a uniform with a Druze patch.

In the other, Human Rights Watch verified and geolocated a video posted on social media on July 18 from the predominantly Druze village of Maf’aleh that shows a convoy of vehicles driving down a street in the village with the bodies of two partially clothed men on the front of two vehicles, including one tan pickup with an anti-aircraft cannon mounted on the back. That same type of vehicle, with a Druze militia insignia, is seen in a photograph posted to Facebook the previous day from outside a clinic in Maf’aleh, with a Druze militia insignia, with men celebrating an apparent military victory.

Additionally, a video shared on social media on July 26, verified and geolocated by researchers, apparently filmed from inside a vehicle shows the body of an apparently dead fighter in camouflage clothing on the front of the vehicle driving south through Umm al Zaytoun, a town in Sweida. The driver celebrates, saying that Umm al Zaytoun is free of Bedouins, referring to them with a derogatory term.

Hostage-Taking and Arbitrary Detentions

Both Druze and Bedouin armed groups abducted and arbitrarily detained people during and after the Sweida clashes, unlawfully targeting civilians for revenge, leverage, or exchange.

A Bedouin man from the Salakha area said that local Druze fighters abducted him and about 20 relatives and neighbors, including his 85-year-old mother and a newborn baby, as they tried to flee Sweida on July 15. The group had been travelling with Druze acquaintances who had offered to escort them to Daraa, but they were stopped in Zibin village, where he said residents surrounded their cars, opened fire, and beat them with rifle butts and metal rods. “They pulled us out of the cars and beat us severely,” he said. “They took all our gold, money, and IDs, and kept shouting, ‘Let’s kill them, kill them.’”

He said their Druze captors moved the group among several detention sites—a local party office, a warehouse, and a school—and held them for about 10 days. “The torture was daily.” He said. “Beatings with sticks, insults, and constant threats.” Their captors showed no regard for the vulnerable, he said, including his mother and his daughter-in-law, who had given birth a week earlier. After local older people intervened, the detainees were handed over to forces reportedly aligned with Sheikh al-Hijri and later transferred via the Syrian Arab Red Crescent to safety in Daraa on July 25.

The abductions occurred amid broader population movements coordinated by Syrian authorities. On July 21, government and Red Crescent convoys evacuated 1,500 Bedouins from Sweida to Daraa as part of a fragile ceasefire that also required Bedouin groups to release Druze women they were holding. Despite these arrangements, kidnappings and retaliatory detentions persisted, underscoring the failure of the parties to protect civilians.

Click to expand Image Families mourn victims of Sri Lanka’s 1983-2009 civil war on the beach at Mullivaikal where the final battle took place, May 17, 2024. © 2024 Eranga Jayawardena/AP Photo

(Geneva) – A new United Nations report about sexual violence related to Sri Lanka’s civil war is another step forward in the struggle for accountability for crimes under international law that were committed in Sri Lanka, Human Rights Watch said today. The UN report, issued on January 13, 2025, finds that sexual violence was “part of a deliberate, widespread, and systemic pattern of violations” by state security forces, and “may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

The findings, based on survivors’ accounts of crimes committed against both women and men, underline the urgent need for the Sri Lankan government to provide relief and justice to survivors and to hold those responsible to account. Foreign governments should assist efforts to promote accountability, including through targeted sanctions, criminal investigations, and prosecutions, Human Rights Watch said.

“While the appalling rape and murder of Tamil women by Sri Lankan soldiers at the war’s end has long been known, the UN report shows that systematic sexual abuse was ignored, concealed, and even justified by Sri Lankan governments unwilling to punish those responsible,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Sri Lanka’s international partners need to step up their efforts to promote accountability for war crimes in Sri Lanka.”

The UN Human Rights Council set up the Sri Lanka Accountability Project in 2021 to collect evidence of crimes under international law committed in Sri Lanka. Successive Sri Lankan governments have failed to credibly investigate and prosecute international crimes related to the 26-year civil war between government forces and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The current government of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake came to office in 2024 promising to “deliver justice” but has made no apparent progress, while victims and survivors continue to suffer long-term harm. Under international women’s rights standards, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the UN Women, Peace and Security agenda, Sri Lanka’s failure to address conflict-related sexual violence heightens concerns about accountability and survivors’ rights.

During the armed conflict, which ended on May 18, 2009, both sides committed numerous war crimes, particularly in the final months of the fighting. Photographs and mobile phone videos, seemingly made as keepsakes by government soldiers, show summary executions of prisoners and corpses of naked women fighters who were apparently raped and then murdered. Human Rights Watch has found that successive Sri Lankan governments had stalled investigations and denied justice.

The UN researchers found that sexual violence was “institutionally enabled” by the state and “employed as a strategic tool to extract information, assert dominance, intimidate individuals and communities, and instill a pervasive climate of fear and humiliation” throughout the war. The victims and survivors were mostly from conflict-affected Tamil communities, and these violations occurred primarily in state-run detention facilities.

Survivors recounted lasting medical problems and social stigma. However, the researchers said that there is “no currently visible path to justice or restoration” for survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in Sri Lanka.

The UN researchers found that “men were as likely as women to have been victims” of sexual violence, but that the particular stigma affecting male survivors made engaging them during the research “especially challenging.”

Another legacy of these crimes is the prevalence of sexual violence in post-conflict Sri Lanka, the researchers found. Survivors described an enduring climate of intimidation and “ongoing surveillance, often by the very officers responsible for past abuse.”

There are significant legal and institutional obstacles to justice, including a 20-year statute of limitations in sexual violence cases and the fact that Sri Lankan law does not recognize the rape of men. Some survivors who attempted to register complaints described humiliating or intimidating experiences with the police and court authorities. “Survivors cannot be expected to seek protection from the very entity they fear,” one respondent told the UN.

In 2018, the Sri Lankan government established the Office for Reparations Act to compensate victims and survivors of the conflict, but according to the UN, the government “has not taken any concrete steps to provide them with interim or full reparations, and has not disaggregated statistics of its caseload by gender.” Under international law, survivors have a right to reparations, and the failure to provide them has left many without care, dignity, or justice.

The Sri Lankan government and its international partners should urgently develop a program to deliver support, including medical treatment, and interim relief to survivors, Human Rights Watch said. Many survivors have placed their hope in foreign governments or international organizations to promote justice. Yet, the report says: “While international actors have expressed concern, meaningful steps toward facilitating credible accountability and access to justice for survivors have remained limited.”

“Sri Lanka is obligated under international law to prosecute perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and until it does, foreign governments need to do more to press for accountability,” Ganguly said. “That means providing support for legal processes, better vetting of military personnel for peacekeeping missions, and concerted efforts to bring criminal cases abroad under universal jurisdiction.”

Click to expand Image Family members and neighbor (far right) of Alimnur Turganbay, a Kazakhstan citizen detained in China, outside their house in Uzynagash village, located outside Almaty, Kazakhstan on August 4, 2025. © 2025 Chris Rickleton

(London, January 15, 2026) – Kazakh authorities should drop charges against 18 Kazakh activists who peacefully protested against Chinese government abuses in Xinjiang, Human Rights Watch said today. The activists, from the Nagyz Atajurt Volunteers group, face up to 10 years in prison for exercising their freedom of expression. Thirteen are in pretrial detention, while the rest are under house arrest. The trial is expected to begin on January 21 in the city of Taldykorgan.

“Kazakh authorities should withdraw the criminal charges against the Atajurt activists and release those in detention immediately,” said Maya Wang, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Instead of aiding China’s repression, the Kazakh government should press the Chinese government to stop its crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.”

The charges of “inciting national discord” stem from a November 13, 2025 demonstration in Qalzhat, Almaty’s Uyghur District, where activists burned three Chinese flags and a portrait of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Protesters demanded that the Chinese authorities release Alimnur Turganbay as they were chanting slogans such as “Stop the pressure and injustice against Kazakh and Uyghur peoples” and “Down with the Communist Party! Down with Xi Jinping!” A Kazakhstan citizen originally from Xinjiang, Turganbay has been detained on unknown grounds by Chinese authorities since July 2025. 

This is the first time Kazakh authorities have sought to criminally prosecute in a single case such a large group of activists advocating for human rights in Xinjiang, Human Rights Watch said.

According to the indictment, the activists “premeditatively gathered … using mass media, with the aim of inciting national discord, as well as insulting the national dignity and honor of representatives of the Chinese nationality.” State-ordered forensic examinations of the protest video—which demonstrators had posted on social media after the event—allegedly found “signs of incitement to interethnic discord or national enmity.”

Evidence suggests Kazakh authorities may be acting at China’s request. Kazakh police initially detained the protesting activists on November 13, and an administrative court convicted them of “hooliganism,” imposing sanctions ranging from fines to 15 days’ detention. 

On November 14, the Chinese Consulate in Almaty sent a diplomatic note to Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs calling the protest a “deliberately planned … open provocation” and urged authorities to “take appropriate measures.” Kazakh authorities then opened a criminal investigation into the activists.

Authorities have also targeted other Atajurt activists in recent months. On November 15, authorities arbitrarily detained four other Atajurt volunteers in Astana and held them for ten days for administrative offences. On December 23, a Kazakhstan citizen in the capital city of Astana was fined for sharing information about the protest on Facebook. Officials have warned other Atajurt activists not to provide video or financial support to Atajurt. 

Authorities in Kazakhstan have long misused the vague and overly broad offence of “inciting discord” (article 174 of the criminal code) to silence individuals for actions and speech that are protected under international human rights law. 

International human rights bodies have repeatedly called on Kazakhstan to amend the law, including at Kazakhstan’s last Universal Periodic Review, where the government received and supported at least six recommendations to amend the “inciting discord” offence. Yet, authorities persist in using the law to silence government critics. 

Kazakhstan shares a long border with China and is home to a sizable Uyghur and Kazakh diaspora from Xinjiang, where the Chinese government has carried out severe repression against these Turkic Muslim communities since late 2016. The Chinese government’s abuses in Xinjiang, including those constituting crimes against humanity, have been a point of contention in Kazakhstan-China relations. These abuses include mass arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearances, mass surveillance, cultural and religious persecution, separation of families, and forced labor. Since 2016, Chinese authorities have punished Uyghurs and ethnic Kazakhs who have foreign ties by detaining and imprisoning those with family in, or who have visited, any of the “26 sensitive countries,” including Kazakhstan.

In recent years, the Chinese government has also escalated its harassment of critics abroad, known as “transnational repression.” While Kazakhstan has refrained from extraditing ethnic Kazakhs or Uyghurs wanted by the Chinese government, the Kazakh government has sacrificed respect for human rights in an apparent effort to maintain good relations with the Chinese government, Human Rights Watch said. 

In recent years, Kazakh authorities have barred researchers and prosecuted activists exposing Xinjiang abuses from entering the country. In May 2025, Kazakh authorities denied entry to Danish anthropologist Rune Steenberg. Similarly, in 2021, Kazakh authorities barred Gene Bunin, founder of Xinjiang Victims Database, from entering the country for five years. 

In 2019, authorities charged Kazakhstan citizen and Atajurt activist Serikzhan Bilash for “inciting discord.” Bilash was released only after he agreed to cease his Xinjiang activism; he is currently in exile in the United States. Other Kazakh nationals who have intermittently protested the Chinese government’s abuses in Xinjiang have also faced arrest and short-term detention.

Kazakhstan’s international partners should urge the government to drop these unfounded charges, release the Atajurt activists, and uphold freedom of expression. 

“The Chinese government should end its crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and stop intimidating peaceful critics abroad,” said Wang. “Kazakh authorities should protect its citizens from Chinese government repression, not prosecute peaceful activists for speaking out against it.”

Click to expand Image Activists attend a procession to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on November 25, 2025. © 2025 MD Abu Sufian Jewel/NurPhoto via AP Photo

On February 12, Bangladesh is scheduled to hold its first general elections since the country’s August 2024 Monsoon revolution. But ahead of the elections, attacks on women, girls, and religious minorities are on the rise, exposing the interim government’s failure to protect fundamental human rights.  

Police data shows that gender-based violence increased between January and June 2025 when compared to the same timeframe in 2024. Dr. Fauzia Moslem, president of the Bangladesh Mahila Parishad (Women’s Council of Bangladesh or BMP), attributes this increase to a rise in activity and rhetoric by religious groups seeking to restrict women’s free movement and participation in society. In May 2025, hardline religious groups protested the interim government’s efforts to improve gender equality and women’s rights and demanded an end to activities they deemed “anti-Islamic.” 

Since then, women and girls have experienced verbal, physical, and digital abuse that further silence their ability to speak out for fear of violence. 

Hindu minorities have also been attacked. In December, Dipu Chandra Das, a 27-year-old garment worker, was beaten to death by a mob over alleged blasphemy. Rights groups have reported at least 51 incidents of violence against Hindus, including 10 killings. Ethnic minorities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts continued to face abuse from security forces after the revolution.  

Despite Bangladesh previously having two women prime ministers and many women participating in the 2024 student-led protests, women are still largely denied political participation. In the upcoming general elections, 30 out of the 51 political parties do not have any women candidates. Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist political group and one of Bangladesh’s two leading political parties, does not have a single woman candidate among its 276 nominations.

The Bangladeshi government should consider recommendations by the country’s Women’s Affairs Reform Commission including increasing women’s parliamentary representation, adhere to the United Nations Security Council’s Women, Peace, and Security agenda, and comply with its obligations as a state party to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The government should also uphold constitutional provisions to protect religious and ethnic minorities in Bangladesh. 

These aren’t innovative proposals; they’re the same ones Bangladeshis have reaffirmed in the lead-up to and after the Monsoon Revolution. Bangladesh’s interim government and all political parties should commit to ensuring gender equality and protecting minority rights.

Click to expand Image A view of Baku’s skyline, Azerbaijan, June 9, 2022. © 2022 Hoch Zwei/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Photo

Last month, Azerbaijani police raided a venue in the capital Baku, known as a safe space for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, and detained over 100 people. According to witnesses and independent media, those detained were abused by police who made it seem like the operation was to target sexual and gender minorities rather than routine law-enforcement.

According to a witness Human Rights Watch spoke with, police arrived shortly after midnight, confiscated patrons’ mobile phones, demanded passwords and searched through private photos and videos without warrants. Officers took at least 106 people to the Nasimi District Police Department, then forced them to stand outdoors in a freezing courtyard for up to five hours without adequate clothing, food, or water. The witness told us police provided only a single bottle of water for the entire group.

There were other reports of physical and psychological abuse. One person sustained a broken tooth allegedly due to use of force by police, while others said they were denied access to toilets for hours. Officers also reportedly verbally abused a woman experiencing an epileptic seizure rather than promptly assist her.

At the station, police reportedly took biometric data, including fingerprints—typically reserved for criminal suspects—without offering any legal grounds, and subjected detainees to forced drug testing and humiliating questioning about their sexual orientation and private lives. 

Authorities only released the detainees after forcing them to pay on the spot “fines” for “petty hooliganism” ranging from 30 to 150 Azerbaijani manats (approximately US$17-88).

The raid echoes the mass arrests, documented by Human Rights Watch, which took place in Baku in 2017 that involved arbitrary detention, torture, and extortion. In 2024, the European Court of Human Rights found Azerbaijan had violated the prohibition on torture and discrimination in executing the arrests, but while the authorities paid victims compensation, no one was held to account.

Weeks later the Interior Ministry has yet to comment on the raid. A police-affiliated social media account posted a video that appeared to include images taken from confiscated phones, stating that the operation followed residents’ complaints about “unethical” behavior and neighborhood disruption.

Azerbaijani authorities should promptly and impartially investigate allegations of abuse and extortion, return confiscated property, and ensure protection from discrimination and abuse for everyone, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Col. Claude Pivi, Guinea’s former minister for presidential security and one of the men convicted in a landmark trial for rapes and killings committed in Guinea in 2009, reportedly died in custody in a hospital on January 6, 2026, of natural causes.

Click to expand Image Col. Claude Pivi, Guinea’s former minister for presidential security, at Martyrs Square of Conakry on October 2, 2009. © 2009 Seyllou/AFP via Getty Images

On July 31, 2024, a Guinean court issued a verdict for the September 28, 2009 massacre, in which security forces attacked peaceful demonstrators at a stadium in the country’s capital Conakry, killing 150 people and raping scores of women. The judges convicted Guinea’s former self-declared president Moussa Dadis Camara, and seven others, including Pivi, of crimes against humanity with sentences ranging from 10 years to life in prison.

Following Pivi’s death last week, as well as current president Mamady Doumbouya’s decision to pardon and release Dadis Camara from prison in March 2025, five men convicted for their role in the massacre remain in custody today. Camara’s pardon is incompatible with Guinea’s obligations under international law and could amount to a violation of the right of victims to an effective remedy.

Victims of the September 28 crimes and the remaining convicted men await what are now long-delayed appeal hearings, as well as progress on reparations.

There has been some movement, however, in separate legal proceedings against additional suspects in the September 28 massacre. On December 18, 2025, a new trial began of seven defendants, in which four appeared before court, including Col. Bienvenue Lamah, former regional director of the Conakry gendarmerie. The three other defendants remain at large.

Mamady Doumbouya was formally elected president in December 2025. It was Guinea’s first presidential election since Doumbouya took power in a 2021 coup. Although human rights conditions have declined under Doumbouya’s rule, his new government should break with its past.

Doumbouya should commit to advancing unfinished accountability measures for the September 28 crimes and lay the groundwork for credible and fair justice for other rights abuses in Guinea.

Click to expand Image Anna, 80, shows a notebook containing detailed records of monthly expenses, for herself and her sister Erika, 84, in their home in Budapest, Hungary, October 2025. © 2025 Kartik Raj/Human Rights Watch The Hungarian government is failing to ensure older people’s rights to social security and an adequate standard of living, including access to sufficient food, medicine, and energy.The rise in poverty among older people, which became evident during sharp inflation in 2022 and 2023, highlights longstanding structural problems with the Hungarian pension and social security system.Hungary should raise the lowest pensions to reduce pension inequality and guarantee the rights of all older people in the country to social security and to an adequate standard of living.

(Brussels, January 14, 2026) – The Hungarian government is failing to ensure older people’s rights to social security and to an adequate standard of living, including access to sufficient food, medicine, and energy, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities should urgently review retirement pensions and take immediate steps to increase pension levels in line with human rights obligations to address rising poverty among older people.

“The Hungarian government expects hundreds of thousands of older people to survive on low pensions that are evidently inadequate,” said Kartik Raj, senior Europe researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Hungary’s insufficient social security system forces many older people to choose whether to spend their meager pensions on food, medicine, or heating, and which essential item to do without.”

Official data show that about 2 million people received age-related pensions at the end of 2024, more than two-thirds of them below the monthly gross minimum wage (266,800 HUF, or €676). Almost a quarter of all pensioners (471,000 people) receive pensions below the official income poverty threshold (173,990 HUF, or €441). Higher numbers and proportions of women receive pensions below these thresholds.

Number and Percentage of People Receiving Old-Age Pensions Lower Than Thresholds

2024

Threshold Monthly HUF Male number Male % Female number Female % Total number Total % *Hungary has two types of minimum wage: a “minimum wage” (minimalbér) for positions that require no formal educational qualifications, and the “guaranteed minimum salary” (garantált bérminimum) for positions that require evidence of completing high school. Human Rights Watch uses the gross figures for both. Source: Human Rights Watch analysis of Hungarian Central Statistical Office data. Number of people per monthly old-age pension amount from Statistical Yearbook of Hungary, 2024, Table 3.5.31 and at-risk-of-poverty threshold Table 3.2.5.

Human Rights Watch interviewed 45 people ages 65 to 91 who receive age-based contributory pensions in Budapest and two rural communities, and social policy experts and pensioner associations, and analyzed official data.

Hungarian Central Statistical Office data show a rapidly rising risk of poverty for older people. The at-risk-of-poverty rate for people 65 and over increased from 6.3 percent in 2018 to 16.1 percent in 2023. Nearly one-in-five older women is at risk of poverty. The data show a general decline in the at-risk-of-poverty rate across the population and for people under 64; which the authorities have chosen to emphasize while downplaying rising poverty for older people. 

The increase in poverty experienced by older people coincides with rising inflation since 2018, which skyrocketed in 2022 and 2023 when food price increases in Hungary outstripped those in other European Union countries. Older people on low pensions were among those hardest hit, with many unable to maintain adequate diets due to the surging prices of staples, such as sugar, oil, flour, dairy, meat, and fruit.

Hungarian authorities responded by managing gas prices, and imposing partial price controls on key food items in 2023 and 2025. However, vendors increased prices of other uncapped goods to make up their losses, limiting the effectiveness of price capping.

The plight of older people in Hungary is at odds with the government’s repeated claims that it prioritizes the wellbeing of “ordinary Hungarians,” Human Rights Watch said. These claims also come amid international concern over Hungary’s anti-democratic rule and widespread violations of liberties and freedoms.

The rise in poverty among older people highlights longstanding structural problems with the Hungarian pension and social security system. These include a flawed pension indexation method that causes low pensions to lose value faster than higher ones, perpetuating inequality, and leaving those with the lowest incomes furthest behind.

“People who have millions can’t imagine this life, when you have nothing to spend and are just surviving,” said a 90-year-old woman who worked in a state-owned textile company and then ran a state shop in Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county, until she retired in 1991. “A person who worked for 40 years shouldn’t have to live like this. We need a more equal pension system.”

Government steps to provide additional financial support to pensioners have only provided partial relief and have not addressed structural inequalities. In 2020, the government gradually introduced a “13th month pension,” providing all pensioners with an extra monthly payment per year since 2024. In November 2025, the government proposed creating a “14th month pension.” Although older people interviewed appreciated the additional support, many want the government to address the fundamental problem that their monthly pensions are too low to reverse the increasing at-risk-of-poverty rate among older people.

Click to expand Image Margit, 85, shows the food vouchers she has remaining after buying fruit at a market in Budapest, Hungary. She reported that only some market stalls would accept them. October 2025. © 2025 Kartik Raj/Human Rights Watch

In July 2025, the government decided to issue one-off 30,000 HUF (€76) in food vouchers to all pension recipients, redeemable for “cold food” between October and December. Many older people interviewed said having the cash equivalent added to their pension, instead of vouchers, would have allowed them greater independence over how to spend the funds. A few dismissed the meal vouchers as a political gimmick and others said they were worth significantly less than a tax refund for pension recipients that was initially proposed by the government, but abandoned due to administrative complexity.

Hungary has an obligation under the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights to ensure all economic, social, and cultural rights, including the rights to social security, to an adequate standard of living, and the highest attainable standard of health. International human rights standards, treaties, and related guidance on social security set out clear requirements for the adequacy of social security benefits. European social rights law provides protection from poverty and social exclusion, as well as a specific “right of elderly persons to social protection.”

Hungary should urgently review the adequacy of pension levels, raising the lowest pensions to reduce pension inequality, to guarantee the rights of all older people in the country to social security and an adequate standard of living. In particular, the government should take immediate steps to ensure that no one is left without adequate nutritious food, sufficient energy to warm their home, and necessary medication and supplies to ensure their health.

“Food coupons or a hastily legislated extra month’s pension are band-aids to address Hungary’s open wound of rising pensioner poverty,” Raj said. “If the Hungarian government genuinely cares about older people’s right to social security, it should urgently increase low pensions, take decisive steps to make the system more equitable, and ensure that all older people in the country can afford a decent, dignified living standard.”

For further data analysis and detailed accounts by the people interviewed, please see below.

Methodology

In October and November 2025, Human Rights Watch interviewed 45 people—29 women and 16 men—between ages 65 and 91, receiving low pension incomes from the public contributory pension in Budapest and rural communities in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg and Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok counties. Most received pensions less than 173,990 HUF/month (€441), the at-risk-of-poverty threshold, in line with the EU definition of 60 percent of median equivalized net income in a given country.

Real names are used where interviewees granted consent; pseudonyms are used for those who requested anonymity. Human Rights Watch informed people interviewed of the purpose and voluntary nature of the interview and obtained verbal consent. Nobody received compensation for providing information.

Human Rights Watch also interviewed experts on social policy, pensions, and poverty, as well as representatives of pensioner associations.

Human Rights Watch analyzed official data from the Hungarian Central Statistical Office, Eurostat, and data from social scientists and municipal authorities including time-series data on poverty rates, pension levels, and inflation, and compared income distributions across age groups. The research accounts for the fact that Hungary has two types of minimum wage: a “gross minimum wage” for positions that require no formal educational qualifications, and the “guaranteed minimum salary” for positions that require evidence of completing high school.

Summarized findings and additional questions were sent to the Hungarian government prior to publication. No response was received.

To assess the adequacy of pension levels, Human Rights Watch applied international human rights standards, including the requirements under the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights that social security benefits must be sufficient to enable recipients to enjoy an adequate standard of living. Human Rights Watch reviewed multiple indicators of adequacy, including poverty thresholds, the relationship between pensions and statutory minimum wages, inflation and food price trends, and the real value of pensions over time. Human Rights Watch compared relevant benchmarks with official pension distributions to evaluate whether current benefit levels ensure income security for older people.

The research uses a Euro-Hungarian Forint conversion figure of €1 = 395.44 HUF, based on the European Central Bank’s average exchange rate. The rate derives from the average across 2024, to ensure consistency with other data drawn from 2024. Euro figures are rounded.

Key Pension System Features

Hungary’s pension system is based on a compulsory social insurance scheme financed primarily through contributions from current workers, with additional funding from general revenue.

Old-age pensions are available to people who reach the statutory retirement age, currently 65, or those who have accumulated a sufficient number of contributory years. Women can, in some cases, retire after 40 years of eligibility (including employment and certain child-raising years) regardless of age, based on current legislation. Benefit levels are calculated using a formula that accounts for an individual’s lifetime earnings and contribution history, meaning people with lower wages or interrupted employment receive substantially lower pensions.

In the current system, pension eligibility generally requires at least 20 years of contributions, and a minimum of 15 years for the lowest tier of benefits. People with fewer years are excluded from the system, but those who do not qualify can apply for a ”minimum pension” of 28,500 HUF/month (€72). Pension experts consulted said that very few people receive the minimum pension.

Groups most affected by low pension incomes include women with interrupted employment due to unpaid care responsibilities and people who worked in informal or partially informal jobs, raising concerns about structural discrimination and the state’s obligation to ensure universal and adequate social security to all older people.

Hungary’s Fidesz government abolished the country’s mixed public–private pension system in 2011, nationalizing the system into a single public pillar, using legislative means to override property rights and legal certainty. The post-2010 system has over time exacerbated income inequality between pensioners.

Structural Problems with Pensions and Falling Living Standards

The experience of older people on fixed pension incomes, which came into stark relief during the cost-of-living crisis of 2022 and 2023, highlighted at least four structural problems with the Hungarian pension and social security system.

First, it is a “pure pay-as-you-go state pension system,” with benefits calculated based on years of qualifying work and wage-based contributions during those years. People who had comparatively low earnings during Communist rule, or in the post-Communist transition, and retired in the 1990s or early 2000s generally tend to receive lower pensions than people who have more recently become eligible.

Second, it was commonplace to earn unreported income in the informal economy in the latter decades of Communist rule, and successive governments continued to allow “off the books” employment after the transition. As a result, many people discover when they retire that their pensions are much smaller than they expected.

Third, between 2009 and 2011, Hungarian authorities stopped factoring in wages into annual pension increases, (as used to happen under the so-called Swiss indexation mechanism, which indexed pensions half by inflation and half by nominal wage growth), choosing to base subsequent annual increases solely on the consumer price index. Given rapid wage increases in the late 2010s, pensions have not kept up with wages and the cost of living. Some pension experts and pensioner advocacy groups argue that reintroducing the “Swiss indexation” mechanism would help address pension inadequacy problems. The indexed increases also often lag by several months, which causes particular problems for pensioners receiving low incomes during rapid inflation.

Finally, the data also bear out a wider demographic trend that older women tend to live longer than older men, and given that women in general receive lower pensions, higher numbers and proportions of women receive low pension incomes as they age. Nearly a quarter of all people receiving an old age pension are women over the age of 75. Human Rights Watch estimates that the median man receives an old age pension that is 16 percent higher than that received by the median woman. Nineteen percent of older women are more likely to be at-risk-of-poverty, compared with 12 percent of older men.

Case Study of One Municipality

Local authorities in one of the municipalities that Human Rights Watch visited provided information on the ages of all residents receiving pensions and gross monthly pension payment amounts. At the time of the visit, 98 pensioners between ages 63 and 92 received age-related retirement pensions. All but nine received pensions below the poverty threshold, and all received pensions lower than the gross monthly minimum wage.

Older People’s Concerns Over Lack of Pension Equity

Older people raised concerns about their pension incomes not meeting living costs, their perception that they were being treated unfairly, and the inequality embedded in the Hungarian pension system. Many said they depended on free or subsidized meals from municipal social services, and in some instances through charities. Although municipal provision of free or subsidized meals do form part of the state’s efforts to guarantee the rights to social security and to an adequate standard of living, and most likely help address food insecurity among older people, Human Rights Watch noted that such provision varied significantly between municipalities and may not provide uniform or comparable coverage to all older people on low incomes across the country.

Click to expand Image Béla, a retired agricultural worker, holds a slip of paper that confirms his monthly pension of 148,665 HUF (€376). Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county, Hungary, November 2025. © 2025 Kartik Raj/Human Rights Watch

Béla, 87, raised animals in a state-run agricultural cooperative in a village in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county until it ceased to exist in the early 1990s. He was then unemployed until he reached pension eligibility age. His pension is 148,665 HUF/month (€376), which he calculates leaves him with about 10,000 HUF (€25) as his monthly disposable income after paying for food, utilities, medicine, and home maintenance. Béla said:

I get a lunch service delivered by the municipality. I spend what I have on breakfast and dinner. I always pay my bills. It’s not fair. I don’t even get half of what I should for the work I did. All the people who had jobs like mine, who are still living, have very low pensions. If I could change things, I would … make sure that older people with less money can continue to live in villages, otherwise the villages will cease to exist.

“Zsuzsa,” 85, was born into a farming family in Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county. The family’s land and tools were collectivized in 1959, after which she worked briefly in a state-run agricultural cooperative, and then left paid work to raise a child with disabilities. She resumed paid work at 38, in the state radiator factory, and was forced into retirement at 55, when state assets were sold off in the mid-1990s. She lives alone, and her pension is 138,000 HUF/month (€349). Zsuzsa said:

Those with high pensions say they worked hard and deserve it. No one worked harder than farmers and factory workers, but we are left on the periphery. There are hundreds of thousands of pensioners with very low monthly income. There has to be a fairer way to share the pensions. For example if everyone gets a 1.6 percent pension raise, for me it’s 2,000 HUF (€5), but for someone else who already has a high pension, it could be tens of thousands. I don’t want to say we should take pensions away from others, but we should make it fairer.

Tihomir, 78, was a cinema engineer in Romania, which he fled in 1989 living briefly in Germany, and then worked for more than 20 years in sales at an import market in Budapest. He said he had a good salary in his years working in Budapest, but realized when he began to claim his pension that he had not been in full legal employment during those years, and that due to contractual irregularities had not made the necessary social security contributions.

His monthly pension, including pension income from Romania, was 125,000 HUF (€316). Tihomir lives in affordable housing in Budapest and gets free meals from social services in his district. Tihomir said: 

Without free lunch and my low-rent apartment, I could not survive. I am grateful to the local municipality. With the rising prices of medicines and groceries, I can’t afford healthy food anymore. I can’t buy fruit, the only fruit I eat is in the small cups of yogurt that cost 80 HUF (20 cents). I can’t afford even a soft drink. It’s sad the place I’m in now.

Erika, 83, and Anna, 80, are sisters who live together in an apartment in Budapest’s VIII district. Erika was a kindergarten educator and administrator until she retired in 2000, and Anna was a gymnastics teacher until her retirement in 2004 and had been an Olympic gymnastics coach. Following the most recent indexed increase, one of their pensions has increased to the point that it took them above the “at-risk-of-poverty” threshold and close to the “gross minimum wage” for two adults; their household income is 518,000 HUF/month (€1,312). Anna and Erika said that supermarket leaflets containing discount coupons had become “like a Bible” to them, as they now base their shopping almost solely on discounted products. Anna said:

We are not whining or complaining. There are people in worse conditions, of course. But we feel the hardship. If the government wants to build a future with long-term prospects, they should have more respect for the work previous generations have done. We worked, we had honest jobs, we built this country, we didn’t steal money, and now we can’t afford to live.

Choosing Between Food and Heat

Following the rapid inflation of 2022 and 2023, most of the older people interviewed reported either reducing their food intake, cutting back on heating their homes, or both.

“Anita,” 78, lives in a village in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county. She worked on farms and in a factory, and then in the post office from 1983 until her retirement. She spent some years receiving a disability benefit following an injury. Her retirement pension is 150,425 HUF/month (€381). Anita said:

I never miss buying medicine, but I cut back on other things like food or heating. I only buy what is needed. I like fruit, but I don’t buy it anymore. I make do with plums from my garden, and apples from my cousin. I raise my own chickens in the summer, freeze them whole, and cook them. If I cook, I make a dish that lasts for four or five days, and I’ve stopped eating lunch so the food lasts longer. I would eat more fish if I could, but I can only dream. The cost of firewood has gone up too.… And I need to pay someone to come and chop it. I only use the wood oven in the main room when I’m alone. I can’t afford the gas heating, but I need to keep it working for when the grandchildren visit.

Piroska, 91, lives in a town in Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county. She worked in agriculture from when she left school in 1945, at age 11, until she retired in 1998, the year her husband died. She had received a letter notifying her of a raise shortly before being interviewed; she said her pension after the raise was just under 200,000 HUF/month (€505). To save money, Piroska switches on the heat only in the afternoon or spends the day at a center for older people.

Access to adequate food goes beyond mere subsistence, and can affect social participation and levels of social isolation. Older people reported no longer being able to afford “treats” like going out for coffee or a soft drink, as a way of spending time with friends. Many older women referred to rising fruit and vegetable prices affecting their ability to enjoy one of their favorite activities: creating preserves, jams, and pickles during the summer, for additional nutrition during the rest of the year and as an affordable way to give gifts.

“Kati,” 71, a retired teacher living in Budapest’s XI district, receives a pension of 175,675 HUF/month (€444). Reflecting on recent sharp food price increases, Kati said:

I always preserved fruit to make jam or compote for the whole family, but I can’t afford to do it anymore. I used to eat plain yogurt with my homemade fruit jam in the winter. I can’t have that anymore. That was always a gift I could make for others, even if I didn’t have a lot of money. I could make zakuska [a vegetable spread] and give jars to my friends, family, my language teachers. It was cheaper than buying chocolate, and also it’s homemade and shows care. I’m so sad I can’t do that anymore. 

Difficulty Paying for Medication

Other older people said they cannot pay for medical supplies and prescribed medication to treat chronic health conditions, including diabetes, hypertension, asthma, and vascular disease.

Ildikó, 69, was a hairdresser for 43 years in Budapest, until she retired in 2017. Ildikó receives a pension of 77,000 HUF/month (€195), and blames this in part on the common practice in hairdressing of irregular pay arrangements leading to low contribution to social security, symptomatic of a wider informal economy in the hospitality sector. Municipal social services deliver free meals to her door because she typically has little left for food after contributing to communal maintenance costs for her apartment block, and paying for utilities and medication.

Ildikó has type-2 diabetes and high blood pressure. Her doctor has told her she should measure her blood sugar three times a day, which requires a single-use blood glucose test strip each time. A pack of six paper strips costs 4,000 HUF (€10), and the monthly cost of following her doctor’s instructions would be 60,000 HUF (€151), effectively using most of her pension. She said:

I can’t afford to measure my blood sugar. Who will pay for it? When I requested a medical subsidy, it was refused. My last pension raise was 3,000 HUF (€8), which won’t even pay for one pack of the little paper slips for testing my blood sugar. I get free meals delivered to me, but I can’t afford to maintain the diet I need to manage my diabetes. I don’t feel respected, and I don’t think the state is taking care of me. I have no hope for the future and will live like this until the end of my life.

Tibor, 67, from Budapest’s XVII district, tended livestock from age 15 on a state cooperative and then for a private company until the mid-1990s. He then worked in a factory. When he retired four years ago, he said he was told that only six years of his working life had counted as legal employment with pension contributions: he receives 42,000 HUF/month (€106). He has lived in a homeless shelter in Budapest for about 15 years and barely has enough money to buy food. “I have health problems with my arteries, dizziness, my ears are oozing, and the veins on my legs are very itchy, but poor people can’t buy medicine,” he said. “It is what it is.”

Hungary has a public means-tested support program, under which people on low incomes with serious chronic health conditions can apply for a card to meet certain healthcare costs, valid for a specified monthly amount of up to 12,000 HUF (€30). However, based on interviews, it was not clear that such support was adequate to prevent hardship associated with out-of-pocket healthcare costs or uniformly received by those who would benefit from it. Some older people interviewed were effectively denied their right to health because they could not afford prescribed medication and medical supplies.

International and Regional Human Rights and Social Rights Standards

Hungary is a party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which obligates it to fulfill the right to social security. The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which monitors the treaty’s implementation, has provided authoritative guidance on what that obligation entails, including in relation to minimum protections and adequacy of benefits over time. The committee’s guidance includes a requirement to address structural problems with social security system design, including pension coverage for workers in the informal economy and gender gaps.

States parties to the covenant must also fulfill the right to an adequate standard of living, which includes “adequate food, clothing, housing, and the continuous improvement of living conditions” and the right to health.

Despite being party to the treaty, Hungary has not reported to the committee in more than 10 years, limiting monitoring of its compliance.

As a European Union member state, Hungary is also bound by the union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, which in article 34 includes obligations to protect entitlements to social security and social services, and to respect the right to social assistance to combat social exclusion and poverty.

The right to social security is also contained in the International Labour Organization’s Convention 102 and the European Code of Social Security (original and revised). However, Hungary has not ratified these instruments.

The (Revised) European Social Charter includes “the right of elderly persons to social security” (article 23), which is understood to include pension and benefit levels sufficient to “lead a decent life” and play an active part in public, social and cultural life. The Charter further contains “a right to protection from poverty and social exclusion” (article 30).

However, Hungary has not accepted either of these provisions, meaning that people in Hungary have no means by which to hold the government to account. In the last available examination of Hungary in 2021, the European Committee of Social Rights, which supervises compliance with the Charter, found that the minimum pension in Hungary was “manifestly inadequate.”

The European Committee of Social Rights has developed recent jurisprudence setting out that in order for people to enjoy their rights to housing and health under the European Social Charter, for example, they must have “stable, consistent, and safe access to adequate energy.” The Committee has also set out guidance to state parties noting the importance of addressing structural shortcomings in social security systems which exacerbate the effect of cost-of-living crises.

 

Click to expand Image Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth arrives to brief senators at the US Capitol, Washington DC, January 7, 2026. © 2026 Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Photo

New reporting that US forces used an aircraft painted to appear civilian for a lethal strike on a boat in the Caribbean Sea on September 2, 2025—killing 11 people—raises new questions about the erosion of internal safeguards on US military operations.

According to The New York Times, officials briefed on the strike said the aircraft had no visible military markings and carried its weapons concealed inside its fuselage. Officials interviewed by the Times said they were told the plane flew low enough for the people on the boat to see it before the attack.

The strike began a broader campaign attacks on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that now number 35, with at least 123 people killed. Key details about the incident remain classified.

The Trump administration claims this and other boat strikes were part of an armed conflict with criminal groups, a legal position widely derided by experts. Human Rights Watch considers these attacks to be extrajudicial executions under international human rights law.

But if even under the administration’s indefensible war paradigm, the use of an aircraft disguised as civilian to carry out a strike would expose another institutional failure. In war, international humanitarian law prohibits “perfidy,”  which is the feigning of civilian or other protected status to lull an adversary into lowering their guard and then attacking them. This prohibition has long been adopted in US military doctrine, including the US Defense Department’s Law of War Manual, naval operation handbooks, and the rules governing military commissions, which treat perfidy as a punishable offense.

US military lawyers are trained to stop violations of the law. When combined with the follow-up strike on survivors of the initial attack—also prohibited under the legal regime the administration claims to be applying—the new allegations add to the impression already created by the larger campaign of unlawful boat strikes that there has been a real breakdown in command safeguards to prevent unlawful attacks.

Since taking office in January 2025, the Trump administration has removed and demoted senior military lawyers, and loosened guidance for compliance with international humanitarian and human rights law. Public reporting suggests that legal concerns raised by a senior Judge Advocate General and other military lawyers were sidelined during the boat-strike campaign, raising questions about whether normal legal review processes were meaningfully applied.

The September 2 strike is not just about a single aircraft or operation but rather a pattern of lawlessness that is possibly being made worse by the dismantling of legal safeguards. There is a pressing need for Congress to investigate how these operations were authorized, what legal review occurred, and whether internal checks on the use of lethal force are functioning at all.

Click to expand Image Demonstrators hold a banner during a protest against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) bill on January 15, 2022 in London, UK.  © 2022 Rasid Necati Aslim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

UK lawmakers are set to vote on January 14 on a proposed amendment to the Public Order Act 2023 (POA) that would classify “life sciences” facilities as “key national infrastructure.” If adopted, the change, which is drafted in vague and broad language, would expose people who organize or participate in protests near a wide range of sites to criminal penalties of up to 12 months in prison.

This includes pharmaceutical and healthcare facilities, including those used for animal testing, meaning the amendment could affect protests about animal testing, access to medicines, corporate accountability, or the harmful effects of specific drugs.

The proposal is the latest in a series of measures that have steadily narrowed space for peaceful protest in the UK. As documented in Human Rights Watch’s recent report, “Silencing the Streets: The Right to Protest Under Attack in the UK,” a raft of laws introduced since 2022 have given police wide discretion to restrict assemblies deemed noisy, disruptive, or inconvenient, reclassifying long-established protest tactics as criminal offenses and imprisonment for nonviolent conduct. The proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist group has been followed by a surge in the use of terrorism laws against peaceful protesters, with thousands arrested and facing terrorism charges.

The amendment’s vague language referring to protests that “interfere with the use or operation” of designated sites is open to broad interpretation. In practice, it may result in restricting protests simply because employees feel uncomfortable entering workplaces or because protests may be deemed inconvenient. Even small, peaceful gatherings, such as people holding signs outside offices, might be criminalized.

Under the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the UK is legally obliged to protect freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. Any restriction must be lawful, necessary, and proportionate, pursuing a legitimate aim. Economic inconvenience or discomfort to businesses alone does not justify sweeping bans on protest. The European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly affirmed that peaceful assemblies are allowed to cause a degree of disruption.

Were this amendment to become law, it could further limit where and how people can express dissent on matters of public interest, including healthcare, corporate conduct, scientific ethics, and animal welfare.

Parliament should vote down this amendment. A democracy committed to the rule of law must protect the right to protest.

Click to expand Image Zaida Catalán and Michael Sharp. © Instagram/Zaida Catalán; John Sharp

In March 2017, grainy video footage revealed that armed men walked Zaida Catalán, a 36-year-old Swede, and Michael Sharp, a 34-year-old American, through a savanna, sat them down and shot them. The brutal murders of the two United Nations investigators—and the disappearance of their Congolese interpreter and the three motorbike drivers who accompanied them—sent shockwaves across the Democratic Republic of Congo and the broader international community, especially among researchers and human rights defenders working in central Africa.

Nearly nine years on, the families, friends, and colleagues of Catalán and Sharp are still awaiting justice.

The two investigators were abducted and executed while documenting mass killings in Congo’s Kasai region. While then-President Joseph Kabila’s government initially blamed the Kamuina Nsapu militia for the murders, courageous reporting by Congolese and international journalists provided evidence pointing to the role of high-level state officials.

While a Congolese military court convicted over 50 individuals in 2022 for their involvement in Catalán and Sharp’s murders, the trial failed to address evidence of state complicity, including video footage showing government agents facilitating the experts’ travel to the ambush site. The trial was plagued with other issues, including defendants tried in absentia and reported witness intimidation. A ruling on the appeal is expected soon.

Last week, Congo’s National Human Rights Commission issued a statement urging the Congolese judiciary to examine the role of all those cited in official investigations, including those who allegedly ordered the double murder, before the case is closed. The commission also called on the judiciary to take all necessary steps to find out what happened to the four Congolese who accompanied the experts, and to ensure that justice is also delivered for the many Congolese victims of the large-scale massacres in the Kasai region. Paul Nsapu, the commission president, later gave an interview with Radio France Internationale, reiterating these calls and adding that he had evidence that could help “trace the perpetrators back to those who commissioned the crime, to the masterminds behind it.”

Congolese authorities should heed these calls. Sharp and Catalán’s families, along with those of the Congolese victims, deserve the full truth. Genuine justice means exposing and prosecuting all those responsible, regardless of position, and fostering rule of law that safeguards human rights defenders. 

Click to expand Image Al-Safat Square, a location where public executions used to take place, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, August 18, 2022. © 2022 Johannes Sadek/dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images

(Beirut) – Saudi authorities executed at least 356 people in 2025, setting a new record in the country for the highest number of executions in one year since monitoring began, Human Rights Watch said today. This is the second year in a row that Saudi authorities have set a new execution record, with 345 registered in 2024. 

“The close of 2025 crystallized a horrifying trend in Saudi Arabia with a record surge in executions for the second consecutive year,” said Joey Shea, Saudi Arabia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Governments should immediately press Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s authorities to halt all executions.”

Executions of foreign nationals for nonlethal drug crimes drove the surge in executions in 2025. According to the nongovernmental organizations Reprieve and the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR), 240 of those executed had been convicted of nonlethal drug related offenses, and 188 of them were foreign nationals. Authorities executed 98 people in 2025 for charges solely related to hashish, according to the organizations. 

Those executed included at least two men convicted of crimes allegedly committed as children. On October 20, the authorities executed Abdullah al-Derazi, who had been sentenced to death on terrorism charges related to participating in protests and funeral processions. Al-Derazi, 17 at the time of the alleged offenses in 2012, belonged to the country’s Shia Muslim minority, who have long experienced systematic discrimination and violence by the government.

On August 21, the authorities executed Jalal al-Labbad, who was 15 at the time of his alleged offenses. Saudi authorities arrested al-Labbad in 2017 for participating in demonstrations and funeral processions, the ESOHR reported. Both al-Derazi and al-Labbad were allegedly tortured by Saudi authorities while detained.

Several defendants accused of committing crimes as children remain at imminent risk of execution, including Yousef al-Manasif, Ali al-Mabiouq, Jawad Qureiris, Ali al-Subaiti, Hassan al-Faraj, and Mahdi al-Mohsen, Human Rights Watch said. 

On June 14, Saudi authorities executed Turki al-Jasser, a journalist known for exposing corruption within the Saudi royal family, raising concerns that the Saudi government is using the death penalty to crush peaceful dissent. 

International human rights law, including the Arab Charter on Human Rights, ratified by Saudi Arabia, obligates countries that use the death penalty to only do so for the “most serious crimes” and in exceptional circumstances. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights released a statement in November 2022 about the alarming rate of executions in Saudi Arabia after it ended a 21-month unofficial moratorium on the use of the death penalty for drug-related offenses.

Human Rights Watch opposes capital punishment in all countries and in all circumstances as a matter of principle because this form of punishment is inhumane, unique in its cruelty and irreversibility, and universally plagued with arbitrariness, prejudice, and error. International law, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Saudi Arabia is a party, includes an absolute prohibition on capital punishment for crimes committed by children.

“Celebrities, athletes, and others seeking to cash in on Saudi whitewashing of its human rights record should reconsider based on the number of executions during 2025 to determine whether the money is worth being associated with this killing spree,” Shea said. 

Click to expand Image Sudanese refugee children from Darfur fly a handmade kite inside the Touloum refugee camp in Wadi Fira province, eastern Chad, November 30, 2025. © 2025 Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters

Murder, rape, torture, slavery: children are targeted for these and other crimes against humanity that occur in widespread or systematic attacks on civilian populations. Crimes against humanity may damage children’s physical and psychosocial development even more severely than adults’ and cause harm throughout their lives. Unlike for war crimes and genocide, there is no dedicated international treaty under which countries agree to prosecute or extradite those responsible for crimes against humanity. But diplomats from around the world will meet at the United Nations in New York from January 19 to 30 for the next step in drafting one.

When they do, it’s imperative that they pay more attention to the issues affecting children. The current draft text mentions children only twice: once in the preamble and once in the definition of enslavement (“women and children”). Crimes against humanity specifically targeting children, from age-based persecution to armies recruiting and using children, and even the accepted definition of a child as anyone under 18, are missing. The draft includes no provisions to capture childhood victimization explicitly, such as a child born of rape or forced to witness crimes against a caregiver, and no provisionto address children accused of crimes.

While it seems obvious that children would be covered, international justice mechanisms have historically taken an adult-centric approach. Criminal investigations have often overlooked how children are particularly victimized in mass atrocity settings, and reparation initiatives often exclude children. These failures illustrate why children should be explicitly included in a new convention.

Thirty-eight organizations and child rights experts have endorsed a succinct set of proposals, rooted in law and jurisprudence, to ensure that a future convention protects children. It’s not a question of listing “vulnerable groups.” Children’s victimization should be specifically captured in how crimes are defined and in provisions relating to victims’ participation, including how they can safely testify, as well as provisions about treatment of those accused of crimes. Progress on international and domestic justice in recent decades show this is possible, practical, and necessary.

Countries meeting at the UN should strongly support including and protecting children in all aspects of a crimes against humanity treaty, and encourage others to join them. Children need champions and they need them now.

Click to expand Image An activist holds a computer keyboard and makeshift handcuffs in downtown Beirut on July 24, 2018, during a protest against a recent wave of prosecutions for peaceful speech. © 2018 ANWAR AMRO/AFP via Getty Images

(Beirut) – Lebanon’s government should hold to account officials responsible for the January 2025 unlawful extradition of the Egyptian-Turkish poet Abdulrahman Youssef al-Qaradawi to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Human Rights Watch and MENA Rights Group said today. Al-Qaradawi remains arbitrarily detained there in near-incommunicado conditions. 

Lebanese authorities arrested al-Qaradawi on December 28, 2024, upon his return from Syria based on a provisional arrest request from Egypt. The UAE made an additional arrest and extradition request, which was circulated by the Arab Interior Ministers Council and cited charges including “engaging in activities that aim to stir and undermine public security.” 

“By acting on an unfounded politically motivated request, circulated through the Arab Interior Ministers Council, Lebanese authorities enabled transnational repression in violation of Lebanon’s domestic law and its international obligations,” said Tanya Boulakovski, senior legal officer and research lead at MENA Rights Group. “Lebanon’s decision to extradite al-Qaradawi despite well-founded risks of torture and enforced disappearance underscores how regional security mechanisms like the Interior Ministers Council are being abused to silence peaceful critics across borders.”

The Interior Ministers Council is tasked with circulating state-requested warrants to Arab League countries. Targeted individuals cannot seek access to the evidence underlying the request or to have the warrant withdrawn, and there is no mechanism to monitor abuse of its systems. 

Between 2022 and 2025, MENA Rights Group documented seven cases of individuals targeted by the council’s system, enabling transnational repression. Requested and requesting states include Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. All cases involved peaceful dissidents, protestors, or members of religious minorities facing extradition to Arab League countries where they risked grave human rights abuses, including torture, based on a report released by MENA Rights Group in May 2025.

The request to arrest and extradite al-Qaradawi, who is not an Emirati citizen and was not in the UAE when the alleged offense was said to have occurred, stems from a social media post by al-Qaradawi during a visit to Syria in December 2024 in which he criticized the authorities in the UAE and other Arab states. 

Al-Qaradawi was extradited on January 8, 2025, despite an appeal filed by his lawyer before Lebanon’s top administrative court, the State Shura Council, requesting the suspension of the cabinet’s decision. United Nations experts had also expressed concern that “al-Qaradawi could be subjected to torture, ill-treatment or enforced disappearance if he is deported” and that the charges against him were “in retaliation for his legitimate exercise of the right to freedom of expression.”

Shortly after he was extradited, the Emirates News Agency (WAM), the UAE’s official state news agency, announced that al-Qaradawi had been taken into custody “pursuant to a provisional arrest warrant issued against him by the General Secretariat of the Arab Interior Ministers’ Council” and that al-Qaradawi “faces charges of engaging in activities that aim to stir and undermine public security.” 

Emirati authorities have reportedly only allowed his family two brief visits, in March and August. The authorities have provided no information about his place of detention, legal status, or any judicial proceedings against him.

Extraditing al-Qaradawi to the UAE violated Lebanon’s domestic laws and its international obligations, including under the International Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which Lebanon has ratified, Human Rights Watch and MENA Rights Group said. Article 34 of Lebanon’s Penal Code states that extradition requests should be rejected when they arise “from crimes of a political nature, or that appear to be for a political purpose.” A similar provision is found in the Riyadh Arab Agreement for Judicial Cooperation, a League of Arab States instrument governing extraditions between member states, which provides that nobody can be extradited “if the crime for which extradition is requested is considered by the laws of the requested party to be a crime of a political nature.” 

In October, Lebanon’s State Shura Council rejected the appeal filed by al-Qaradawi’s legal representative. It cited article 31 of the Lebanese Penal Code, which permits extraditions for offenses that “harm the security of the requesting state or its financial standing.”

Over the last decade, Emirati authorities have enacted repressive laws and policies and unlawfully detained human rights defenders, activists, political dissidents, and other perceived critics. Scores of defendants are serving lengthy sentences following unfair trials on vague and broad charges that violate their rights to free expression and association.

Lebanon should cease its participation in transnational repression by refusing extradition requests, including those circulated by the Arab Interior Ministers Council on political grounds and that discriminate on the basis of political opinion and violate the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits returning anyone to a place where they would face a real risk of persecution, torture, or other serious ill-treatment or a threat to their life, Human Rights Watch and MENA Rights Group said. 

Lebanese authorities should open an independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding al-Qaradawi’s unlawful extradition and hold accountable former Lebanese ministers responsible for violating Lebanon’s domestic laws and international human rights obligations, the groups said. These include a prohibition on discrimination based on political belief, and the absolute, non-derogable principle of non-refoulment. 

The UAE should immediately release al-Qaradawi, refrain from extraditing him to Egypt, and allow him to go to a country where he does not face a risk of persecution. The UAE should release anyone held for the peaceful exercise of their right to freedom of expression and refrain from requesting the extradition of other dissidents for those reasons. 

Türkiye and the UAE’s allies should pressure the Emirati government to release al-Qaradawi and anyone else wrongfully detained, the groups said. All Arab League states should refuse extradition requests from the UAE for anyone’s peaceful exercise of the right to freedom of expression. 

“Lebanon’s unlawful deportation of al-Qaradawi raises the possibility that dissidents from across the Arab world could be snatched up and extradited without due process or consideration of the risks of abuse they might face,” said Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Lebanese authorities should ensure that those responsible for al-Qaradawi’s deportation are held to account and that nobody else faces extradition merely because they peacefully criticized other Arab states.”

Click to expand Image Climate activists hold signs during a press conference with House Democrats on COP30 and climate issues outside the US Capitol November 13, 2025. © 2025 Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images

The Trump administration this week announced its intention to withdraw the United States from over 60 international organizations, conventions, and treaties, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN’s leading climate science body. The move comes amid a broader retreat from international climate engagement framed by the administration as inconsistent with US national interests. 

Addressing greenhouse gas emissions, rising temperatures, and climate-driven disasters requires global cooperation, shared scientific understanding, and collective accountability through reporting and public scrutiny. Withdrawing from multilateral climate institutions weakens progress on these efforts and is likely to have severe human rights consequences.

Climate change is already threatening the rights to life, health, food, water, housing, and a healthy environment. In the United States, fenceline communities living near fossil fuel and petrochemical facilities bear the brunt of policy choices that devastate their health, lives, and environment.

UN climate processes have also supported national adaptation planning in countries such as Bangladesh and Fiji, where governments have laid out plans for safer housing and disaster preparedness for communities exposed to floods, cyclones, and rising seas.

In his UN General Assembly speech in September 2025, President Donald Trump dismissed climate-friendly policies and renewable energy as a “scam.”

While the UNFCCC has limitations, it provides a widely used framework for reporting and review through which governments’ climate actions are documented and assessed. US withdrawal would limit participation in these processes and reduce international scrutiny of its climate-related actions and impacts, including on human rights. 

Although the administration has already pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement, leaving the UNFCCC is more significant as it strips the government of its role in negotiations that continue to shape global rules on emissions reporting, carbon markets, adaptation, and climate finance.

While progress on climate action is increasingly happening outside the UNFCCC through courts, domestic regulation, cross-border climate initiatives, and supply chain standards, they cannot adequately meet the near-universal participation, where scientific findings and state responsibilities are examined transparently, with formal and structured opportunities for civil society engagement that the convention has offered.

International cooperation to a crisis that knows no borders is indisputable. Governments should be strengthening, not dismantling, global frameworks to cut emissions, adapt to climate impacts, and accelerate a just transition away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy.

Click to expand Image A patient receives a reduced supply of medication for HIV treatment, following the cut of USAID funds for treatment programs in the Democratic Republic of Congo, July 31, 2025. © 2025 Arlette Bashizi/For The Washington Post via Getty Images Conflict-related sexual violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has escalated, while support to survivors has significantly dropped.The Rwanda-backed M23 and other armed groups and military forces are using sexual violence as a weapon of war, while survivors experience a climate of impunity that protects those responsible and a healthcare system that has been deprived of the means to support them.The Congolese military should take all necessary measures to enforce discipline to prevent sexual violence. The government should increase support for investigating and prosecuting sexual violence. International partners should bolster their support for accountability efforts. 

(Kinshasa, January 12, 2025) – Conflict-related sexual violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has escalated while support to survivors has significantly dropped, Human Rights Watch and the Congolese women’s rights organization SOFEPADI said today.

Human Rights Watch has documented sexual violence by members of at least five non-state armed groups and the Congolese army in eastern Congo. Expanded fighting in Ituri, North Kivu, and South Kivu provinces as well as funding cuts and limited access to health services, have made it increasingly difficult for women and girls who survive sexual violence to get the holistic support they need. Many clinics offering health care and other support have been forced to close.

“Armed groups and military forces are using sexual violence as a weapon of war across eastern Congo,” said Ida Sawyer, crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch. “Survivors of these horrific crimes experience a climate of impunity that protects those responsible and a healthcare system that has been deprived of the means to support them.”

Play Video Read a text description of this video

SOUNDBITE: I went there to gather cassava leaves, when the soldiers arrived and grabbed me. (“Marie” Sexual violence survivor)

TEXT: WARNING. This video includes distressing descriptions of sexual violence. The name of the survivor has been changed, and her words read by an actor.

SOUNDBITE: They tore my clothes, and one after the other they raped me. (“Marie” Sexual violence survivor)

NARRATOR: Marie is one of many survivors in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where sexual violence is increasingly being used as a weapon of war.

NARRATOR: The M23, other armed groups, and Congolese government forces are raping women and girls with impunity. Cuts to foreign aid by the United States and other donors have left clinics without essential emergency health care.

SOUNDBITE: We are a one-stop center that is available at all times, open to everyone, and care is 100% free. We provide holistic care for cases of gender-based violence and sexual exploitation. We struggle with challenges such as running out of post-rape kits. (Dr. Elisabeth Furaha, Medical Director, SOFEPADI)

NARRATOR: Crucial treatments, like emergency contraception and post-exposure prophylactic kits, known as PEP kits, can provide protection against potential HIV infection, but they need to be given within 72 hours. 

NARRATOR: In eastern Congo, the US was the primary donor of these treatments. Without these and other essential supplies, clinics are struggling to provide for survivors of sexual violence.  

SOUNDBITE: We are still focusing on the need to seek medical attention within 72 hours, in order to prevent unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections such as HIV, gonorrhea, syphilis, hepatitis B, and others. 

SOUNDBITE: When I regained consciousness five hours later, I was in the hospital. The nurses were not there, so I washed myself. At 5 p.m. I was still at the hospital, and they told me for cases like mine you have to go to Bunia [the provincial capital]. So, I started to try and earn some money, and managed to get a bit [after two months]. I took a taxi which brought me here to Bunia where they found that I was pregnant and that I had contracted HIV/AIDS.

NARRATOR: Survivors of sexual violence are often stigmatized by their communities, making recovery and resilience much harder. So, it’s vital that care for survivors is holistic, including reproductive health care, abortion care, and psychological and socioeconomic support.  

SOUNDBITE: I can say that even if the conflict persists and the number of cases continues, at least the work we are doing is not a waste of time and we are helping to give courage.  

NARRATOR: So long as the war and sexual violence continue in eastern Congo, organizations supporting survivors should be given the tools and resources to address the consequences. 

NARRATOR: The US and other international donors should urgently restore funding for post-rape care and survivor services in eastern Congo.  

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Narrators: Anna Bruckner, Janet Ngokadi

Producer/Editor: Nicolas Suarez

Producer/Videographer: Patrick Thompson

Additional Footage: AFP

Music: Audio Network

In November 2025, Human Rights Watch, in cooperation with the Beni and Buni offices of the Solidarité Féminine pour la Paix et le Développement Integral (SOFEPADI), interviewed 23 survivors of sexual violence in northeastern Congo. Researchers also interviewed four Congolese survivors in Uganda who had fled eastern Congo. Human Rights Watch also met with Congolese provincial health and justice officials and staff of domestic and international organizations that provide support to survivors. Human Rights Watch wrote to the United States State Department, the Congolese government spokesperson, and the leadership of the M23 armed group with its findings, but has not received any responses.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) reported over 80,000 cases of rape in eastern Congo between January and September 2025, a 32 percent increase from the same period in 2024. At the same time, the United States government’s sudden and chaotic cuts to international aid in early 2025 abruptly halted emergency health care and other support for thousands of sexual violence survivors. Many contracted HIV or became pregnant as clinics and hospitals across eastern Congo were without stocks of post-exposure prophylactic (PEP) kits, which US-funded projects previously largely supplied. These kits must be administered within 72 hours of exposure to prevent HIV and pregnancy.

Sexual violence by military personnel and members of armed groups has occurred in a range of circumstances: attacks targeting particular ethnic groups during assaults on towns and villages; hostage taking and abductions for sexual slavery; and rape on farms and other workplaces or while women and girls are in transit.

Four Congolese soldiers raped and beat a 17-year-old girl who was walking to work in the fields near her village in Ituri province. Badly hurt, she managed to return home, and her family took her that day to the local health center, but they had no PEP kits. She worked for two months to save enough money to travel over 40 kilometers to a clinic in Bunia, the provincial capital. Medical tests revealed that she was pregnant and HIV positive.

In neighboring North Kivu province, M23 armed group fighters raped a 42-year-old woman. She reached a hospital within 72 hours, but the hospital had no kits. The Rwanda-backed M23, which controls the area, continued to threaten her, and she fled to neighboring Uganda a month later with her seven children. She was diagnosed with HIV and has been living in a refugee camp, where she struggles to obtain appropriate medical care, including antiretrovirals, and to provide for her seven children.

Rape and other sexual violence during armed conflicts violates international humanitarian law, also referred to as the laws of war, and are war crimes. The Geneva Conventions and customary international law prohibit rape, sexual slavery, sexual torture and mutilation, and other forms of sexual assault.

Sexual violence also violates international human rights law that Congo has ratified. Under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, gender and sexual based violence are prohibited. The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol) requires states to enforce laws prohibiting sexual violence, punish perpetrators, and implement programs for survivors’ rehabilitation. Under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, survivors of sexual violence have a right to quality health care, which includes access to emergency contraception and abortion care.

The M23’s control over much of North and South Kivu has significantly hampered the delivery of humanitarian aid, with the major airports in both provincial capitals closed since early 2025 and other restrictions on access and movement.

Despite issuing waivers for HIV prevention programs that included providing PEP kits, the US government abruptly ended funding for them in eastern Congo. The US government should urgently resume this funding. The Congolese government, European Union, United Kingdom, and World Bank, among others, should also immediately scale up their support. Donors should increase support to organizations providing holistic care to survivors of sexual violence, including psychological, socioeconomic, and vocational support, as well as reintegration programs for those taken hostage by armed groups.

Obtaining justice and accountability for sexual violence survivors may prove impossible in M23-controlled areas, where the Congolese courts are not functioning. Rwanda, the occupying power in these areas, also has international legal obligations to ensure accountability, including through local courts.

The Congolese military should take all necessary measures to enforce discipline within the armed forces and allied militias to prevent sexual violence. The government should increase support for investigation and prosecution of sexual violence, including for specialized police units to prevent sexual violence and to increase the number of judges and other court officials necessary for the timely prosecution of cases.

The government should also enforce the 2022 law abolishing legal fees for sexual violence cases and ensure that survivors receive appropriate legal aid. Legal assistance should be a key part of holistic support, including through government-run Integrated Centers for Multisectoral Services established in 2023. The government-funded reparations agency known as FONAREV should ensure that adequate financial assistance promptly reaches survivors of sexual violence and other serious crimes.

The US and EU should adopt targeted sanctions against officials and commanders implicated in recently reported abuses. International partners should bolster their support for domestic accountability efforts in Congo, including through the newly established coordination framework between the UN and the Congolese government, and strengthen their backing for the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its ongoing investigation in Congo.

“The Congolese government should continue its efforts to end sexual violence and fully implement its transitional justice program, in collaboration with the United Nations, to ensure that victims have access to justice,” said Sandrine Lusamba, national coordinator at SOFEPADI. “Regional cooperation on justice is also important, to make it possible to credibly investigate allegations, establish the responsibility of all parties, and genuinely prosecute those responsible, while providing survivors with the support they desperately need.”

For their privacy and security, the names of sexual violence survivors are pseudonyms.

Accounts from Survivors

In North Kivu, the M23 armed group and the Islamic State-funded Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) have abused women and girls over extended periods in their camps.

In February, after the M23 took control of Goma, North Kivu’s provincial capital, four M23 fighters forced their way into 22-year-old Patience’s house, where she lived with her infant son. The fighters demanded to know if her husband was there, struck her son with a gun, tied her to her bed, and then two fighters raped her.

They then forced her out of the house, leaving her son behind, and took her to a nearby camp. She spent three days in the camp, during which time multiple fighters raped her and three other women who had been taken there. She managed to escape across the border to Uganda, where her husband and son met her. When she arrived at a health center in Uganda, she found she was pregnant and had contracted a sexually transmitted infection.

M23 fighters abducted Justine from her home in Goma in March 2025. Six armed men broke into her house during an apparent forced recruitment operation and demanded to see her husband. After Justine told them that her husband was not home, they beat her and her 20-year-old son and then forced her to walk to their camp near the city. There, two men took her to a secluded area, beat her and raped her.

Unable to walk, she lay there until the next day, when nearby residents heard her cries and took her to a hospital. Justine arrived at the hospital within 72 hours, but the hospital had no PEP kits. She later fled to Uganda, where tests revealed she had contracted HIV.

Solange, who joined the M23 as a fighter, said that rape was a “habit” of M23 commanders, one of whom raped her repeatedly in an M23 camp. She could not complain or refuse for fear of being killed. She said she knew of at least 15 other women who fled the M23 due to abuse there.

The ADF, active in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, has frequently abducted people from villages and fields, indoctrinating them into their version of Islam. The men and boys are trained to be fighters, while women and girls are forced to “marry” fighters and are used as sex slaves.

When Liliane was between the ages of 14 and 18, from 2020 to 2024, she was held captive and sexually abused by the ADF. ADF fighters attacked her village in North Kivu. They killed her brother-in-law in front of her, then abducted her and her sister-in-law. The fighters abducted a total of five women and three girls from the village, forcing them to carry the bodies of those the fighters had killed. Liliane remained with the ADF for four years, during which time they forced her to marry a 19-year-old fighter.

“One day he said he would kill me because he wanted to have a child with me and I wasn’t getting pregnant,” Liliane said. He later cut her in the chest with a knife, saying he was punishing her for not becoming pregnant. Liliane managed to escape in May 2024. When Human Rights Watch met with her over a year later, she had serious health problems, including a wound on her leg that had not yet healed and pain throughout her body.

After three years in captivity, Esther and her young child also managed to escape the ADF in 2024, during clashes between the armed group and the Ugandan military. The child’s father was an ADF fighter whom Esther was forced to marry during her captivity.

“My child plays with some of the other children in the neighborhood,” she said. “Some of them call him an ‘ADF baby,’ which causes me a lot of pain. I fear that when he grows up, he will ask me where his father is. I worry how he will deal with that.” There are currently no programs in eastern Congo to help those who escape the ADF to reintegrate into their communities.

In Ituri province, sexual violence has been a common feature of intercommunal violence. The armed group Coopérative pour le Développement du Congo (CODECO) has been responsible for numerous massacres of civilians and incidents of sexual violence. The fighters regularly attack villages and camps for internally displaced people predominantly inhabited by members of the Hema ethnic group.

Beatrice, 32, said the fighters ambushed her and 11 other civilians in a field near her village in Fataki, Djugu territory in June. The fighters killed the six men in the group and beat the women with sticks and the flat side of their machetes and then raped them all. Beatrice said, “The fighters beat us, saying, ‘You Hema think you are too clever. Now you will see.’ After raping us, they stole everything we had and then fled.” Beatrice was six months pregnant when she was attacked. Her baby was born healthy but in addition to the horror of the attack, she contracted an unidentified sexually transmitted infection.

Agathe, 20, said that about 10 armed men attacked her village in Ituri in April. She is Hema and believes her village was targeted on ethnic grounds: “Two CODECO fighters took me and told me to choose between being killed and being raped. I didn’t have a choice.” She spent three days walking to Bunia to get health care. Lack of money for transport and constant insecurity on the roads makes it extremely difficult for many survivors to get health care. She arrived too late to use a PEP kit and learned she was pregnant.

Constant insecurity dramatically increases vulnerability for women and girls, who make up the vast majority of reported cases of sexual violence in eastern Congo. Fleeing fighting and violence, women and girls are often forced to live and work in unfamiliar areas. Many survivors interviewed had been internally displaced.

Esperance was displaced by fighting in North Kivu’s Masisi territory in 2024. Along with her seven children, she fled to an area near a base of the UN peacekeeping force in eastern Congo, MONUSCO. In December 2024, despite the proximity of the base, she and two other women were forced to flee into the bush when fighting neared. There, they encountered a group of seven fighters for the Wazalendo, an abusive militia associated with the Congolese military. One woman managed to escape, but the fighters raped Esperance and killed the other woman with her.

Women and girls who are attacked while working in farms and fields are often afraid to return to work. Women living in camps for internally displaced people who may have to leave the camp and cross front lines to find food and work are at a heightened risk of sexual violence.

The Congolese military, who are supposed to protect women from sexual violence, are among those most responsible for it. Eight survivors interviewed said that they were most likely raped by Congolese military personnel. While it is often unclear which armed group or force were responsible for the assaults, in these cases survivors were able to identify the attackers by their uniforms or said that they spoke the Lingala language, the lingua franca of the army and of western Congo.

In January, the ADF attacked Thérèse’s village in North Kivu at around 5 a.m. She fled to the bush with her family, but her 70-year-old father stayed behind to secure their house. The ADF killed him and eight other people that day. Thérèse returned to the village the next day and found his body with cuts from a machete on his arms, and a bullet wound in his head. After burying her father, Thérèse went to Beni. Her mother died not long after, and the responsibility to look after her family fell to her. In May, two men in military clothes speaking Lingala raped her while she was harvesting cocoa. “Since the incident I haven’t gone back to the field,” she said. “I’m scared now. Life has become so difficult.”

The 17-year-old girl who was severely beaten and raped by four soldiers and left for dead, said: “They said if I didn’t agree to have sex with them, they would kill me. Some grabbed my arms. They beat me, they had sticks. They beat me with those and with their hands.”

She said she lay for five hours in the bush before gathering the strength to walk home. Her relatives brought her to the local health center, but it had no PEP kits. Afterward, once she traveled to Bunia, she was treated at the SOFEPADI clinic. She said, “When we were in the [internally displaced person] camp in Bunia, I heard about the ‘safe space’ run by SOFEPADI, which has helped me until today. When I came to the safe space, I explained my situation, and they brought me to the hospital. I had [HIV], and they discovered I was also pregnant. I learned how to make clothes, which gives me a bit of money to help my daughter and my family.”

Click to expand Image The Beni office of SOFEPADI, a Congolese women’s rights organization focused on promoting and defending the rights of women and girls. © 2025 Human Rights Watch

Sylvie, a 27-year-old sexual violence survivor in Ituri, became pregnant after three unidentified men raped her while she was walking to work in the fields near her village with three other women. “They came out of nowhere,” she said. “The other women fled, but I fell. They told me, ‘You will be our wife for some time.’” She finally escaped and returned home, where her grandmother took her straight to the health center in the village. The center had no PEP kits, and two months later, she learned she was pregnant.

Medical Care

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) had funded IMA World Health to supply PEP kits to 80 percent of the health centers across South Kivu, North Kivu, and Ituri provinces. IMA World Health had ordered 116,000 kits in early 2025, but then the funding was withdrawn so these kits never made it to health centers in eastern Congo.

Health centers run by Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders, MSF) have a separate supply, and UNFPA fills gaps when possible. The Congolese government’s reparations agency, FONAREV, also spent US$1.5 million for PEP kits in 2025. Even before the Trump administration cut USAID in February, the supply did not match the extensive need.

From March to September there was a near total lack of PEP kits across eastern Congo. According to UNFPA, in May 2025 only 7 of 34 health zones in North Kivu had a minimal supply. By September, only 895 complete kits were available for the entire province, where hundreds of cases occur each week. According to national and international organizations working in Ituri and South Kivu provinces, the situation in other provinces is similar.

In September, IMA World Health received about 30,000 kits with funding from the World Bank. This funding ran out in December and there is no clarity over how much funding will be available in 2026 and no indication that the need will lessen.

Beyond the immediate shortage of PEP kits, there are many problems in the distribution chain to get the kits where they are so desperately needed, exacerbated by ongoing fighting. This is particularly true in areas occupied by the M23, as airports and banks are no longer functioning. USAID funding cuts exacerbate the problem, as humanitarian organizations have been forced to cut programs and lay off staff who would have managed the delivery of the PEP kits to the health centers.

There are also major gaps in testing and treatment for HIV. In 2025 in Ituri province, for example, health centers only had two of the three medications necessary for pediatric HIV treatment. Testing is rare across eastern Congo. While Congolese law mandates free initial treatment and testing for sexual violence, this is not always the case. Longer term HIV treatment is unaffordable for most. There are also significant costs for treating other injuries or medical conditions that survivors may have suffered during rape or captivity, such as beatings, bullet wounds, or machete cuts.

Since the adoption of the Maputo Protocol in 2018, abortion in Congo is legal in certain circumstances, including rape. However, significant barriers remain for women and girls seeking access to legal, safe abortion, as few primary healthcare centers have the capacity to conduct them, unsafe procedures are prevalent, and stigma surrounding abortion continues.

Psychosocial and Socioeconomic Support 

Survivors should have access to immediate and longer-term mental health support for trauma and to help them navigate the tragic widespread stigma associated with sexual violence. Many also need help to obtain food, health care, and other basic necessities. Despite a new directive that prohibits excluding pregnant girls from school, girls and young women may also need support to return to school. Most women in eastern Congo rely on farming to provide for themselves and their families. Almost all survivors interviewed had not returned to their farms due to well-founded fears of being targeted again, or because of ongoing fighting.

Local organizations have trained psychologists in eastern Congo who are able to provide psychological support to survivors, and some have vocational training programs to help survivors learn skills to provide for themselves and their families, especially when they are no longer able to go to their farms. But those in more remote or insecure areas or who have been displaced multiple times often do not have access to this support. Funding is also limited and often de-prioritized, despite the long-term, positive impact.

The ongoing insecurity and attacks by armed groups have forced some organizations to stop their programming in certain areas. On November 7, fighters most likely from the armed group known as the Convention pour la Libération Populaire (CRP) burned and looted several structures on the edge of the Kigonze displaced person camp in Bunia, including a center that provided psychological support run by SOFEPADI.

Click to expand Image The ruins of the organization SOFEPADI's “safe space” for survivors of sexual violence in Kigonze camp for internally displaced people, which fighters burned on November 7, 2025, in Bunia, Democratic Republic of Congo. © 2025 Human Rights Watch Lack of Reintegration Programs for ADF Returnees

Survivors who return home after being held hostage for years by the ADF have no specialized programs offering psychosocial support, rehabilitation or livelihood training. Some are treated as criminals and held for months in poor conditions at Congolese military intelligence prisons before being allowed to return home. One survivor who managed to escape the ADF after three years of captivity said that her father was required to pay $1,000 for her release after she had spent four months in detention.

When survivors do return to their communities, at times pregnant or with children born to ADF fighters, they face considerable stigma and harassment.

Access to Justice

Despite some progress, including legal reforms, the increased use of mobile courts and a number of relatively high-profile convictions, access to justice in eastern Congo remains elusive for most sexual violence survivors. None of those interviewed had filed an official complaint. Many believed they had no chance of a successful prosecution because they would not be able to recognize their attackers. Others said that they did not know how to seek justice, or they did not have faith in the justice system. Military justice officials in North Kivu and Ituri said that sexual violence was a priority for them but highlighted the problem of identifying suspects and said that the lack of funding and ongoing insecurity made on-site investigations difficult. In North Kivu and Ituri a dedicated team in the military prosecutor’s office deals with cases of sexual violence.

Even for cases brought before competent courts, there are problems. Cases are heard in French, which many survivors do not speak, under a military justice system that has been criticized for infringing on human rights. The expense involved puts justice out of reach for many. To bring a case, in addition to lawyers’ fees, complainants need to pay to obtain medical reports, forensic evidence and copies of judicial files. Administrative costs could amount to up to $1,000 per case. Protecting victims and witnesses also remains a significant problem, particularly in the current volatile environment.

It is critical for the Congolese government and international partners to strengthen their support for domestic accountability efforts. The government should also consider creating an internationalized justice mechanism that could complement the work of the ICC and domestic, mostly military, courts. This mechanism—which could take the form of specialized mixed chambers or a special mixed court—could enhance the capacity of the national judicial system to investigate and prosecute serious international crimes, including sexual violence, fairly and effectively.

Reparations

The Congolese government has started FONAREV, a well-funded project with a significant budget, to provide reparations to survivors of sexual violence and other serious crimes, as well as emergency support for those who have recently survived sexual violence. Its deputy director general, Emmanuella Zandi, said that they have provided payments to over 1,000 victims in Ituri, the Kasais, and Bas Congo provinces who were owed reparations in judicial sentences.

However, the program—whose funding is supposed to include 11 percent of Congo’s total mining revenue—has been subject to allegations of corruption. FONAREV responded to these allegations in October, issuing a press release in which it said it would recruit an external firm to independently audit its accounts.

Click to expand Image Community members attend a vigil for Renee Nicole Good, following a fatal shooting by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, US, January 7, 2026.  © 2026 Jaida Grey Eagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

(Washington, DC, January 9, 2026) – The killing of a woman in Minneapolis by a federal immigration officer on January 7, 2026, was unjustifiable, Human Rights Watch said today. Three videos of the incident shared on social media, verified by Human Rights Watch and media outlets, clearly contradict federal officials’ claims that the woman “weaponized her vehicle” or attempted to kill officers before an agent opened fire.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers confronted the 37-year-old US citizen, Renee Nicole Good, on a residential street in south Minneapolis, which a witness said Good was blocking with her car. As Good attempted to drive away from the officers, one shot her three times at close range. A statement by Good’s wife in a local media outlet indicated the two had been alerting neighbors of ICE’s presence. “We had whistles,” the statement said. “They had guns.” 

“Over the past year, ICE and other federal agents have been abusing immigrant communities across the United States with impunity,” said Ida Sawyer, crisis, conflict and arms director at Human Rights Watch. “This horrific incident is the latest sign that their abusive tactics put lives at risk, including people not subject to immigration enforcement.”

Human Rights Watch analyzed three videos of the shooting and one of the immediate aftermath and reviewed four witness accounts on local media outlets.

In a video shared on social media by a Minnesota Reformer reporter and later published by NBC News, Good is in the driver’s seat of a burgundy Honda Pilot, stationary in the middle of the road, as unmarked vehicles attempt to pass. Good appears to signal at them to go around. One vehicle does, and she signals for a second vehicle to pass, but it stops perpendicular to Good’s car. Two officers get out and walk toward Good, shouting: “Get out of the car.”

One of them tries to open the driver’s seat door by grabbing the handle and then reaching inside the window. A third officer approaches from the passenger side. Good briefly reverses in an apparent attempt to get away from the officers. The third officer walks to the driver’s side as Good begins to turn and drive in the opposite direction of the officers. Pulling out his gun, the third officer fires three shots in short succession at eye level, first through the windshield, then through the driver’s seat window. Good’s car speeds up and crashes into a parked car a short distance away. 

A second video of the incident, filmed by the shooting officer, shows Good turning her steering wheel and accelerating away from the officers. Good and her vehicle are then out of frame as the officer fires his gun. A third video of the incident is consistent with this analysis, showing Good’s vehicle pulling away from the officers as gunshots are heard. 

Video analysis shows that when the shots were fired, the officer could not have reasonably feared death or serious physical injury. 

In another video filmed afterward, a bystander standing across the street of Good’s car asks: “Can I go check a pulse? I’m a physician.” One officer refuses. Good can be seen, still inside the vehicle, bloodied and motionless, while several officers stand around the vehicle without making an apparent effort to provide immediate medical support. 

The Minneapolis city government reported that police officers who responded to the incident found Good with “life-threatening gunshot wounds” and Minneapolis firefighters provided medical attention until paramedics arrived. Two witnesses told media that the ICE vehicles parked in the street impeded the ambulance, forcing paramedics to reach Good on foot from the end of the block. The city government reported that Good later died in the hospital.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) quickly issued a statement claiming that Good tried to kill ICE officers with her vehicle in “an act of domestic terrorism.” This account is entirely inconsistent with any reasonable analysis of the video footage, Human Rights Watch said. 

Good’s killing comes amid increased deployment of federal immigration officers to Minneapolis. 

Thousands of people gathered at a vigil on the night of January 7 to honor Good’s memory and protest ICE’s presence in Minneapolis. The shooting has sparked demonstrations in other cities, including New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Seattle.

Good’s killing fits a broader pattern of incidents involving the use of firearms under questionable circumstances during immigration enforcement operations, Human Rights Watch said. On December 24, 2025, an ICE officer shot Tiago Alexandre Sousa-Martins in his vehicle in Glen Burnie, Maryland, causing him to crash. DHS claimed that Sousa-Martins had “weaponized his vehicle,” ramming into ICE vehicles and driving it “directly at ICE officers.” While footage of the shooting has not circulated, a local police statement calls DHS’s account into question, asserting that a second man injured in the crash was not a passenger in Sousa-Martins’ car, as DHS said, but was instead injured while detained in an ICE vehicle. 

In October, in Chicago, a Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agent shot Marimar Martinez five times. The next day, Martinez was criminally charged and accused of striking a CBP vehicle with her car, but the case was dismissed. In September, an ICE officer shot Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez near Chicago, claiming he “drove his car at law enforcement officers.” But CCTV footage does not show his car driving at or hitting law enforcement officers.

Justice Department policy explicitly prohibits law enforcement officers from discharging firearms “solely to disable moving vehicles.” Even when a “vehicle is operated in a manner that threatens to cause death or serious physical injury,” an officer may not discharge a firearm if they can reasonably avoid the harm, including by “moving out of the path of the vehicle.” Under international human rights standards, law enforcement officers can only intentionally use lethal force “when strictly unavoidable to protect life.” These standards also establish that law enforcement should ensure that injured people receive medical aid as soon as possible.

Human Rights Watch has documented other incidents of government agents’ excessive use of force against immigrants and people protesting increased raids and detentions since the Trump administration launched its violent immigration enforcement campaign last year. These abuses are compounded when law enforcement obscure their identity with face coverings, which has become a widespread practice among federal immigration enforcement agents and creates a barrier to accountability.

The Trump administration has dismantled key oversight mechanisms for DHS, including the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL), which could investigate an unlawful shooting by ICE but has had its capacity decimated through drastic staffing cuts. 

On January 7, the Minneapolis police chief said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), a criminal investigation agency within the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, would jointly investigate the shooting. However, the following day, BCA reported that it was closing its investigation after the FBI said it would no longer allow BCA access to evidence, and would instead lead the investigation alone.

Local and federal authorities should support one another’s efforts to thoroughly and impartially investigate Good’s killing, Human Rights Watch said. In the absence of strong internal DHS oversight mechanisms, the congressional DHS committees should hold oversight hearings.

“Good’s death is a horrifying example of the dangers posed by law enforcement agencies that have been empowered to act recklessly and sends a threatening and potentially chilling message to immigrants, protesters, and bystanders alike,” Sawyer said. “The authorities should investigate the killing publicly and thoroughly and ensure that justice is done.”