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6 Executed as Jordan Resumes Death Penalty
(Amman) – Jordanian authorities executed six men by hanging on June 21, 2026, its first mass execution since 2017, Human Rights Watch said today. All six cases, two involving terrorism-related charges and three involving drug trafficking, included acts of violence in which members of the police or security forces were killed.
All six men were convicted following trials in Jordan’s State Security Court, a military institution that includes military and civilian judges. Mohammad al-Momani, Jordan’s communications minister, said the executions were carried out after the sentences received final judicial confirmation through the Court of Cassation, Cabinet endorsement, and royal decree.
“Carrying out six executions in a single morning marks a sharp return to a practice Jordan has used only sporadically since reinstating capital punishment 12 years ago,” said Adam Coogle, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Jordan should lead the region by example on rights and protection and renew its moratorium on the death penalty.”
Two of those executed, identified by authorities as Mahmoud Nayef Musa and Anwar Adel Saleh, were convicted in connection with the so-called “Salt Cell” case. The government said that they were members of a cell that detonated a bomb near a joint security patrol close to an annual festival in the town of Fuheis, west of Amman, on August 10, 2018, killing two members of the gendarmerie forces and wounding six others. The next day, during follow-up operations to detain the bombing suspects in the nearby town of al-Salt, four additional security personnel were killed.
A third man, Ibrahim Mansour, was executed for his role in a December 2022 ambush on a police patrol in the southern town of Maan that killed Colonel Abdulrazzaq al-Dalabeeh, then-deputy director of the Maan Police Directorate.
The remaining three men executed were also tried before the State Security Court, in cases that al-Momani said involved the killing of law enforcement officers during anti-narcotics operations.
The State Security Court’s jurisdiction includes drug offenses alongside terrorism, treason, and espionage cases.
Jordan reinstated the death penalty in December 2014 after an eight-year unofficial moratorium, hanging 11 people convicted of murder. In March 2017, it executed 15 men, 10 of whom had been convicted by the State Security Court on terrorism-related charges.
Jordan’s National Center for Human Rights (NCHR), the country’s official human rights institution, said in its 2025 annual report that 284 people (264 men and 20 women) were under death sentences in 2023, and 276 (254 men and 22 women) in 2024. The center said in its report that new death sentences issued by the Grand Criminal Court fell from 25 in 2023 to 13 in 2024, and that the State Security Court issued no new death sentences from 2022 through 2024.
However, a 2023 Jordan Times report said that the State Security Court had sentenced three Salt Cell members to death on February 22, 2023.
Human Rights Watch opposes the creation and use of special courts to try national security crimes, because such courts are frequently authorized by law to conduct trials in a manner that restricts the rights of defendants beyond what is permissible under international human rights law. In many countries, regular criminal courts have proven effective in prosecuting terrorism offenses in accordance with international due process standards. Jordan should restrict its security court’s jurisdiction over civilians as a step toward abolishing the court, Human Rights Watch said.
Human Rights Watch opposes capital punishment in all countries and under all circumstances. Capital punishment is unique in its cruelty and finality and is inevitably and universally plagued with arbitrariness, prejudice, and error. Most countries in the world have abolished the practice. In 2012, the United Nations General Assembly called on countries to establish a moratorium on the use of the death penalty, progressively restrict the practice, and reduce the offenses for which it might be imposed, with the view toward its eventual abolition.
“No one disputes that the police and security forces killed in these attacks deserved justice and their families deserved accountability, but the death penalty is an inherently cruel and irreversible punishment,” Coogle said.
US: Millions Lost Health Insurance When Subsidies Expired
(Washington, DC) – The United States Congress’ failure to extend public subsidies for private health insurance has caused millions to lose healthcare coverage, increasing financial hardship and deepening inequality, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam America said today. Six months after the subsidies expired on January 1, 2026, early data indicate that millions of households lost health insurance and face sharp increases in healthcare costs.
When the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) became law in July 2025, it extended and deepened tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the ultra-wealthy while allowing important subsidies for health insurance plans purchased through government-operated marketplaces to lapse. More than one million fewer people enrolled in marketplace plans in 2026 than in 2025, and reporting indicates many who did enroll subsequently dropped coverage because of failure to pay their premiums. An actuarial firm estimates the number of people covered through marketplace plans could ultimately fall to as low as 16.5 million this year, a decline of nearly 6 million from 2025.
“Congress’ choice to let these subsidies end has led millions to become uninsured and is forcing many to pay far more for care that they have a right to,” said Matt McConnell, economic justice and rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Lawmakers shouldn’t force ordinary people to sacrifice their health to pay for tax breaks for the wealthy.”
The 2010 Affordable Care Act expanded access to health care by regulating private insurance and creating public marketplaces where people without public or employer healthcare coverage could buy private plans. It also established subsidies to lower premiums for private health insurance purchased through one of these marketplaces, though it excluded people earning above 400 percent of the federal poverty level. This “subsidy cliff” disproportionately affected middle-income earners, many of whom did not earn enough to afford quality health insurance, and older adults not eligible for Medicare, who also face higher premiums because of their age.
In 2021, Congress temporarily addressed this by expanding eligibility and capping premiums at 8.5 percent of household income. These increased subsidies, or “enhanced premium tax credits,” later extended through 2025 by the Inflation Reduction Act, significantly reduced costs and helped more than double marketplace enrollment from 2020 to 2025, contributing to a decline in the uninsured rate over this period. By 2025, approximately 24.3 million people obtained health insurance through one of these marketplaces, according to KFF, a nonprofit health policy research organization.
With the OBBBA in 2025, Congress chose not to extend these enhanced subsidies in favor of major, inequality-fueling tax cuts in which the richest 0.1 percent of households will pay roughly $50 billion less in taxes annually over the next eight years. The enhanced subsidies had cost about $35 billion per year.
In late 2025, Congress reached an impasse resulting in a federal government shutdown, as Democratic Party lawmakers sought to secure an extension of these subsidies. The House of Representatives passed an extension in January 2026, but it stalled in the Senate.
“Congress is cutting health care for millions of people in order to enrich the very wealthiest and huge corporations. It’s a case of grossly misplaced priorities, plain and simple,” said Jackson Gandour, senior policy advisor for economic justice at Oxfam America. “These callous decisions fuel extreme inequality and deny human rights to millions, making our society less healthy and more unstable.”
Monthly marketplace insurance premiums rose about 58 percent this year, from an average of about $113 to $178, with the steepest increases for older people and those earning above 400 percent of the federal poverty level ($63,840 on average for an individual in 2026). However, some states partially offset these increases, with New Mexico offsetting them completely.
In early 2026, 9 percent of adults polled by KFF who had marketplace coverage in late 2025 had become uninsured, with 80 percent citing increased cost as the reason. Among those who had retained coverage through a marketplace plan, 17 percent were not confident they could afford their premiums for the entire year, and more than half had cut or planned to cut spending on household expenses such as food and clothing to afford health care.
“At my age, everything right now is about surviving the next seven years until I can start drawing down on Social Security and get on Medicare,” said a former USAID foreign service officer interviewed by Human Rights Watch.
After losing her contract with the agency last year, she struggled to find work and earns about $700 per month as a substitute teacher. She is ineligible for Medicaid because she lives in a state that did not expand coverage to adults without dependents and pays $1,100 per month for a marketplace plan. She sold her car and moved in with family to reduce expenses and is considering moving to a state where she is eligible for Medicaid.
Official data on the number of people without health insurance are not yet available for this year, but early indicators suggest millions have lost health insurance. Marketplace enrollment declined in 41 states, with decreases as large as 22 percent in North Carolina and 20 percent in Ohio. Although those earning just above the subsidy cliff comprised only 3 percent of enrollees last year, they accounted for 27 percent of this decline nationwide.
Many more people who initially enrolled in a marketplace plan for 2026 may have already become uninsured or will become uninsured in the coming months. According to the actuarial firm Wakely Consulting Group, about 14 percent of those who enrolled in marketplace plans this year did not pay their first monthly premium. The news site NOTUS reported in May on internal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services documents that showed a roughly 21 percent decline in enrollment because of unpaid premiums during the first month of this year in the 30 states using the federal marketplace.
Millions more switched to poorer-quality plans with cheaper premiums and higher deductibles, driving the average deductible for marketplace plans up from $2,759 in 2025 to $3,786 in 2026. A 2025 peer-reviewed study published in an American Medical Association’s medical journal found that adults enrolled in high-deductible plans were less likely to receive recommended medical care than those in non-high-deductible plans.
The loss of these subsidies may have also contributed to a sharp increase in the cost of private health insurance purchased outside of these marketplaces. In March, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that employee health insurance costs increased by an average of 14.2 percent among northeastern manufacturers surveyed and 12.9 percent among service firms.
Under international law, everyone has the human right to health, which requires access to health care regardless of one’s ability to pay. By failing to extend these subsidies in favor of tax cuts, US authorities have dramatically reduced access to health care, undermining this human right, worsening inequalities, and impeding the enjoyment of other human rights like housing, food, and education.
“US lawmakers need to learn from the many countries with far fewer resources that do much better at realizing the right to health,” McConnell said. “In the meantime, they shouldn’t be forcing families to choose between paying for health care and rent.”
Gulf States: Migrant Workers’ Heat Protections Fall Short
(Beirut) – Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are exposing migrant workers to yet another deadly summer without adequate occupational health and safety protections as temperatures soar to dangerous levels, Human Rights Watch said today.
Migrant workers, particularly outdoor workers, are left to fend for themselves as they balance the pressures of extreme heat and physically taxing work, and relentless demands from their employers. The “heat [is] so intense that it is beyond the endurance of an ordinary person,” one worker said.
“Despite a wealth of evidence on both global temperature increases and the severe health risks extreme heat exposure poses, Gulf states are dragging their feet on adopting adequate protections,” said Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Gulf states have the means and capacity to adopt these protections, including restricting working hours based on actual temperature thresholds rather than fixed schedules.”
Between February and May 2026, Human Rights Watch spoke to 20 migrant workers from Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan working in construction and app-based bike delivery about heat and occupational health and safety issues in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. This is the fourth consecutive year that Human Rights Watch has interviewed outdoor workers to better understand extreme heat risks.
June marks the start of the enforcement period of midday work bans in several Gulf states, their sole heat exposure protection measure, which prohibits outdoor work during certain hours in summer months. These bans generally apply from June through August or September and restrict outdoor work between late morning and mid-afternoon.
However, there is growing scientific evidence on the limitations of calendar- and time-based bans to shield workers from heat-related health risks.
A UAE-based road construction worker described the heat as “unbearable” and recalled working outdoors when temperatures reached 48 degrees Celsius (118.4 degrees Fahrenheit). “During summer, it becomes difficult to work by 7:30 or 8:00 a.m., but we have to work until 11:30 a.m. no matter what. That is the most difficult time.” He said migrant workers in Gulf states have to mentally prepare themselves for the upcoming summer, thinking, “How will we get through this year?”
Exposure to extreme heat can cause fatal heat stroke, exacerbate pre-existing conditions, impair cognitive function, and increase the risk of workplace injuries. It can also cause lasting health harm, including kidney failure, and even premature death.
A UAE-based worker said, “Sometimes we hear news that someone in another company collapsed from the heat and died. When we hear that, we get goose bumps. We think, ‘Maybe tomorrow it will be our turn. We are also working in the same heat.’”
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report establishes that heat extremes have increased across the Arabian Peninsula, with human-induced climate change having a contributing role. World Weather Attribution's 2024 study of the West Asian heat wave found that human-induced climate change made the event roughly five times more likely and about 1.7 degrees Celsius more intense than it would have been in a world without fossil-fuel warming. According to a rapid World Weather Attribution study, climate change is making the Hajj pilgrimage for Muslims to Mecca dangerously hot earlier in the year compared to the past, with temperatures that were confined to peak summer months June-August now occurring in May or even earlier.
Human Rights Watch spoke to six app-based, or so-called platform, bike delivery workers who described a lack of cool or shaded rest areas, poor visibility under intense sunlight, heat distorting their vision, the overheating of devices required for their jobs, and direct health impacts such as sunburns and heat-related illness, including dizziness and fainting, as common.
They also described pressures from platform companies, including time-sensitive deliveries and fear of losing income or losing their jobs, making it difficult to refuse orders even when conditions were unhealthy or unsafe.
“If an order comes, you have to deliver it even if it is hot or rains,” said a UAE-based worker. Some pickup locations provided rest areas and cool water, some companies provided rest areas such as air-conditioned buses, and others were able to adjust their schedules to include cooler night hours.
“During the very hot three months, in some places, every 15-20 kilometers, there were buses with AC arranged for rest for bike delivery riders,” one worker said. “Water was also available there. If the heat was too much, we could rest there … but those were only in limited places.”
Some GCC countries, such as Kuwait and Qatar, have explicitly banned bike deliveries during summer midday ban hours. The UAE has mandated rest and cooling stations for bike delivery riders and announced the recent expansion of these rest areas.
Gulf states should adopt evidence-based occupational heat protection measures, such as the widely used Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) index, which measures occupational heat stress based on air temperature and relative humidity. These measures should include evidence-based work-rest schedules guided by real-time WBGT thresholds and work intensity, as well as access to cool water and cool, shaded rest areas, to prevent heat-related illness and death among outdoor workers. Only Qatar, in 2021, has introduced the index with an upper WBGT threshold of 32.1 degrees Celsius (89.78 degrees Fahrenheit) to stop outdoor work, but the threshold is too high and enforcement gaps remain.
“When we sweat a lot, the body becomes extremely weak,” one worker said. “But because of company pressure, we continue working. The mind says, ‘I can do it,’ but the body does not support us … Every season, someone collapses.”
There are also significant variations in the occupational health and safety measures provided by private employers. “If anything happens at the site, medical facilities are available immediately,” one worker said. “On large sites, doctors are stationed. Good companies provide all facilities. In smaller companies, however, such facilities do not exist.”
Another worker said, “Some sites provide cool water, others don’t. To stay hydrated, you need to use the toilets frequently. But many construction sites did not have proper toilet provisions.”
A Qatar-based masonry helper said: “We would feel dizzy when working in the heat. We would rest for 5 to 10 minutes after which the foreman would again call us to work. If we laid down, he would immediately shout telling us to get up and work.” The rest area at his construction site did not have air conditioning or refrigeration for workers’ food. “Sometimes, the food would smell bad and we had to throw it away.”
The lack of strong evidence-based policies to prevent dangerous heat exposure and inadequate oversight from authorities has turned heat protections into a game of chance, Human Rights Watch said, as workers’ health and safety in extreme temperatures often depends on the mercy of supervisors and employers.
The recent Human Rights Watch report on platform work found that gig workers often face dangerous working conditions, including extreme heat, with little protection when they are injured or unable to work.
A new International Labour Organisation treaty, adopted on June 12, sets labor standards for gig work and includes a section on occupational safety and health. It requires governments to take adequate preventive measures to prevent occupational accidents, occupational diseases, and other risks to gig workers’ health.
Governments should promptly ratify the convention and implement it in domestic law, including measures to adequately address extreme heat risks, Human Rights Watch said.
“Rising global temperatures are making existing extreme summer heat in the Gulf more dangerous, especially for the millions of migrant workers who work outdoors without adequate rest and hydration,” Page said. “Gulf states should guarantee safety and health protections to all workers.”
Robust Global Action Is Key to Curbing Sudan Atrocities
The United Nations Security Council on June 20 warned of the “imminent risk of mass atrocities” in El Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan region in western Sudan, which for months now has been the epicenter of fierce fighting between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).
The conflict, which broke out in April 2023, has claimed tens of thousands of lives, caused millions to flee their homes, and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters.
The UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, also issued a “stark warning” on June 18 over the risk of atrocities as RSF forces are reportedly encircling El Obeid.
The Security Council should discuss urgent steps to deter the RSF when it meets on Sudan on June 26. The council should impose new sanctions on commanders and key supporters of the RSF, including its backers in the UAE.
Throughout the conflict, the RSF has received military support from the UAE. Human Rights Watch recently reported that hundreds of Colombian private military contractors, apparently hired by a UAE-based company, transited through UAE military facilities before being deployed to Sudan to support the RSF.
Some governments are becoming increasingly vocal about the mounting atrocities and war crimes in Sudan. On June18, Norway issued a warning to the RSF on behalf of the recently established Coalition for Atrocity Prevention and Justice for Sudan at the UN Human Rights Council.
Emirati support for the RSF should be in the spotlight. Mounting evidence of the UAE’s material support to the RSF has led to growing calls for pressure on the UAE. Leaders from across the globe, particularly African leaders and members of the Atrocity Prevention Coalition, should break their silence on the insidious role of the UAE in fueling this conflict, and demand that it end its support and use its influence on the RSF to prevent further atrocities.
Now is the time for governments to show they care, by acting to prevent civilians from continuing to pay an immeasurable price.
Cambodia: Coerced Confessions Silence Activists, Opposition
(Bangkok) – Cambodia’s government is systematically coercing and publicizing confessions from detained political opposition members and activists to undermine their political standing, Human Rights Watch said today. This mistreatment is part of a decade-long government campaign against political opponents, enabled by a government-controlled judiciary and state-aligned media outlets.
Cambodian authorities in recent years have frequently filed baseless criminal charges against opposition party members and activists to pressure them to make public apologies and join the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) in exchange for being released from detention. State-aligned media regularly publish videos or statements of these coerced confessions, discrediting the political activists.
“Cambodia’s ruling party threatens political activists with absurd criminal charges and then coerces them to confess to the bogus crimes to gain their release,” said Bryony Lau, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “By compelling the activists to join the CPP, the authorities seek to discredit them and further cement effective one-party rule.”
Human Rights Watch reviewed more than 140 videos and news reports of public apologies and confessions by activists over the last decade and interviewed nine people, including activists and political opposition members, detainees’ family members, and defense lawyers. Human Rights Watch did not publicly identify those interviewed for their protection.
The coerced confessions are often filmed, and in many videos, activists face the camera wearing orange or blue prison uniforms. In several videos, it appears the activists are reading from prepared statements. The confessions are often accompanied by apologies for ostensible crimes related to their political activities, and requests to join the ruling party.
Activists and opposition party members have increasingly faced fabricated charges and pressure to defect since the longtime leader, Hun Sen, stepped down as prime minister and transferred the position to his son, Hun Manet, after the deeply flawed 2023 elections. Under Prime Minister Hun Manet, the government has continued to crack down on the political opposition, environmental and social activists, and all forms of dissent in the country. Forced confessions are frequently addressed to Hun Sen, now Senate president, and Hun Manet.
“They came to me in prison and said, ‘If you join the CPP, they’ll let you out of here,’” one activist said. A lawyer who represents many government critics in detention said: “For my clients who are political activists, 100 percent of them receive pressure to confess and join the ruling party in order to be released.”
The ruling party’s control over the judiciary allows the misuse of criminal charges against political activists, who are often charged with “incitement to commit a felony,” which carries up to two years in prison. In 2022, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that Cambodian criminal code articles on incitement are “vague and overly broad.” In recent years, the government has also charged opposition activists with “plotting an attack on the state,” a more serious offense that carries between 5 and 10 years in prison.
The lack of judicial independence in Cambodia facilitates coerced confessions, as the courts are never known to have intervened to stop politically motivated prosecutions. The ruling party has controlled Cambodia’s judiciary for decades, with judges and prosecutors holding senior ruling party positions, including the president of Cambodia’s Supreme Court, who is a member of the CPP’s influential Central Committee.
“Judges are high-ranking CPP officials, they are all CPP officials,” one lawyer said. “So, there is no way to guarantee there is justice.”
The UN Human Rights Council recommended in Cambodia’s most recent Universal Periodic Review, in 2024, that the government improve the independence of judges and prosecutors and guarantee fair trial rights, noting that these rights were not being respected. The government accepted a recommendation during the review process to “pursue the implementation of measures aimed at guaranteeing the independence of the judiciary,” but Cambodia’s courts remain subservient to the ruling party.
Once opposition party members and other activists are arrested and charged, they are almost always placed in pretrial detention and denied bail. Cambodia’s prisons are notoriously overcrowded, with prisoners reporting poor conditions including lack of access to food, clean water, and medical care, as well as torture and other ill-treatment.
In May 2022, the UN Human Rights Committee, which monitors compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), recommended that Cambodia “[s]ignificantly reduce overcrowding in prisons” and “[i]ntensify its efforts to improve the conditions of detention.” Since then, prison overcrowding has worsened.
Several activists said that harsh prison conditions added pressure to confess. “We sleep like sardines, there’s no room to lie down,” said one political activist, noting they had to pay between US$200 and $250 in bribes each month for adequate food and sanitation products.
Many coerced apologies and confessions are recorded and later published on Fresh News, a government-aligned media outlet that serves as the CPP’s mouthpiece. Over the past decade, Fresh News has published at least 90 recorded confessions, including many made inside prison with activists in prison uniforms.
One activist who was arrested and later confessed in exchange for release said that publicizing the confession led to mistrust and discrimination from former colleagues and friends: “There is isolation, loneliness, despair… people stop talking with you, interacting with you. You are on the blacklist.”
The Cambodian government should drop politically motivated charges, quash unjust convictions, and immediately and unconditionally release wrongfully held activists and opposition politicians, Human Rights Watch said.
“The Cambodian authorities’ forced confessions have for years made a farce of fair trial rights and political freedoms in the country,” Lau said. “If these made-for-state-TV confessions continue, no one in Cambodia or abroad should take seriously the commune elections in 2027 or the national election in 2028.”
‘Judicialized Lawfare’
Cambodia’s courts play a key role in creating the conditions under which ruling party officials coerce confessions from activists. In 2024, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Cambodia noted in his report, “Judicialized lawfare, whereby the judiciary uses the law to silence political and human rights actors viewed as inimical to the national authorities, prevails vis-à-vis the civil and political space.”
The authorities have increasingly used charges of “plotting” under article 453 of Cambodia’s Criminal Code to target political and environmental activists. In October 2019, when the exiled opposition leader Sam Rainsy was seeking to return to the country, then-Prime Minister Hun Sen gave a speech highlighting a “new charge” the government would use to target opposition political activists who supported the attempted return.
In his speech, Hun Sen urged opposition members to confess to what he characterized as plotting against the state, saying, “Those who participate will be punished. And if you have already unintentionally participated, you can confess and will be exempt from punishment.” The following month, Hun Sen again urged opposition supporters to confess, saying, “Too many Cambodian people have suffered because of the words ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights.’”
Around this time, there was a surge in prosecutions for alleged plotting. Between August and November 2019 alone, at least 89 people were charged with the offense. Human Rights Watch was unable to find any examples of “plotting” charges filed against political or environmental activists prior to 2019. The courts have continued since then to regularly use the charge against political opposition members, government critics, and environmental activists.
Judges and court officials also play a role in coercing confessions from activists once they have been arrested and charged. One activist said that a court official instructed him to “apologize” to both Hun Sen and Hun Manet if he wanted to be released from prison.
A defense lawyer said that a client who had faced repeated pressure to confess and promises of release were they to do so, was suddenly called to court without the lawyer being informed. The lawyer said that later his client told him that the judge said, “I want to release you, but I have no way to do it. You need to do what they want you to do—I don't want to keep you detained.”
“It's not justice,” the lawyer said. “It’s a tactic to use the justice system to drain the activism out of activists.”
‘Stay in prison, or apologize and get out’
By arbitrarily arresting activists, filing baseless charges against them, and ensuring convictions if cases go to trial, the government gives activists two possible paths: publicly confess and join the ruling party, or serve a lengthy prison sentence in an overcrowded and under-resourced prison.
A political opposition member described the impact of this cycle of arrests and coerced confessions on political activity in Cambodia:
The government accuses [critics] of incitement and arrests them, so they are scared. In reality, their hearts don’t want to join the CPP. But they need to leave prison. The ruling party uses this tactic to close the political space and prevent us from criticizing any institutions. They want to break the spirit of people who think differently from them.
One activist described agonizing over the decision: “People have to balance it—what is the cost?” the activist said, describing their experience in an overcrowded prison cell with 90 to 100 inmates sharing two toilets, where other inmates were beaten regularly and a constant haze of cigarette smoke made it difficult to breathe or sleep. “Stay in prison, or apologize and get out of prison?”
Several activists described their experience of being detained and then pressured to apologize, confess, and join the ruling party in exchange for their release. “They visited me in prison and pressured me to do a video,” one said. “They said they’d give me an adviser role, and I’d get out of prison immediately—I’d just have to stop doing opposition politics.” Another activist said that government officials used their family members to pressure them to confess and join the CPP to be released.
“They say they’ll give us a position, they’ll make us ‘excellencies’ [high-ranking officials],” another opposition member said. “In reality, if we join them, it isn’t freedom…. If you join, it’s like your freedom is gone.”
Several activists and family members of detained opposition members said they had resisted attempts to publicly confess. “We [the CPP and I] have different ideas about politics, I can’t lie to myself,” said one activist who had refused pressure to confess.
“They’ve closed the political space, dissolved the opposition party, and now they arrest us for criticizing the government?” said another. “That’s why I can never confess.”
The adult child of an opposition activist who has been imprisoned for more than five years said they were proud of their father’s decision to refuse repeated pressures to confess:
They say if he agrees to join the CPP, he can get pardoned, get positions or jobs, whatever he wants, but my father has been an opposition member for so long, and all that he does is for the benefit of society and democracy. What he said and did wasn’t wrong, so he says he can’t ‘apologize.’ I’m proud of him.
‘They make [coerced confessions] public to stop the activism’
Publicized confessions appear to be an important component of the Cambodian authorities’ broader efforts to splinter opposition political parties and activist networks. By broadcasting videotaped confessions on state-aligned media outlets, the ruling party makes it difficult for these activists to continue their opposition following their release.
“One hundred percent of my clients who confess have to make a video, and nearly 100 percent of those videos end up being published,” a defense lawyer said. “They make it public to stop the activism of those people.”
A political opposition member agreed that coerced confessions have a splintering effect on the opposition movement. “After they confess, I don’t trust them,” the opposition member said. “Some people are brave enough to come back after confessing, to rejoin [the opposition], but it just isn’t the same.”
Most confessions are published on Fresh News, which, though not officially state-owned, operates as a de-facto mouthpiece for the government and the CPP. The outlet regularly publishes videos of coerced confessions taken in Cambodia’s prisons.
One activist who filmed an apology video that was later published by Fresh News described feeling isolated and exhausted after the video’s publication. “There are people who believe [the confession], even international NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] or diplomats, they believe that you are no longer trustworthy,” the activist said. “So, you start to lose hope, and when you lose hope, you change your path.”
Human Rights Watch’s review of the Fresh News website, Facebook page, and YouTube channel shows that the outlet has published videos of more than 90 confessions since 2018. The examples below are taken from those videos, related news reports, and official government documents. Human Rights Watch did not interview the individuals making the confessions because of surveillance concerns and fear of further harassment by the authorities.
A 14-minute video published by Fresh News in May 2023 shows 10 men in prison uniforms standing in a line in Prey Sar Prison, officially Correctional Center 1, on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. Each of the men, all former members of Cambodia’s political opposition arrested because of their peaceful activism, gives a brief and similarly worded statement. They introduce themselves as former opposition party supporters who are imprisoned because of incitement of the leaders of the former main opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party.The men express regret and contrition for their political activism, which they say continued even after the Supreme Court dissolved the opposition party in 2017. Each man ends his statement with a plea to Hun Sen to release him and allow him to rejoin his family. At several points in the video, voices can be heard laughing off-camera. At one point, an activist pauses for several seconds as he appears to struggle with what to say, and a man’s voice can be heard feeding him the next word of his confession. The men were released from prison shortly after the video was published, and at least one became a ruling party official and adviser to Hun Sen.In 2024, a 19-year-old social activist was arrested and charged with plotting as part of a sweeping crackdown on public criticism of a regional development zone in which more than 94 people were arrested. Just weeks before the arrest, the activist had spoken on a radio program about the importance of youth engagement in politics, saying:
Youth who start to talk about social problems, they always hear, ‘Be careful, we’re afraid you’ll have trouble!’ These words aren’t wrong, but it affects our freedom of expression, especially for youths and students. It makes us consider stopping studying, stopping caring about the problems affecting our country or what is missing from our country.
About a month after being arrested, the activist appeared in a video on Fresh News in a prison uniform. His eyes move as if reading from a script, apologizing and asking both Hun Sen and Hun Manet to allow them to join the CPP. The activist was released on bail shortly afterward, but the charges were not dropped. The activist later publicly denied that the confession was coerced in a video published on Hun Sen’s Facebook page.
A former opposition Candlelight Party official was threatened by name in a speech by Hun Sen in 2023 for criticizing the government’s handling of the Southeast Asia Games. Within 72 hours, the opposition official was arrested; appeared in a video on Fresh News confessing, apologizing to Hun Sen, and asking to join the ruling party; was released from detention and was appointed as an adviser with the rank of undersecretary of state.A longtime political activist who led the opposition’s youth movement among migrant workers in South Korea was arrested in Cambodia in March 2023 over a Facebook post critical of Hun Sen for standing near Cambodia’s king without showing proper deference during a public ceremony. Less than a week later, Fresh News published a video of the activist in Correctional Center 1 wearing a prison uniform and requesting that then-Prime Minister Hun Sen obtain a royal pardon for the activist. Toward the end of the video the activist says, “I inform the public, for this public apology of mine to Hun Sen, it comes from my own true intentions. No one forced or encouraged me to do it.”The day the confession was published, the activist was released on bail. A month after his arrest, in April, the activist wrote a letter to Hun Sen asking to join the CPP. A day after that letter was published, he was appointed an undersecretary of state at the Labor Ministry. Less than two weeks later, he was appointed an advisor to Hun Sen. Later in 2023, he was promoted again to secretary of state of the ministry.
Coerced confessions are torture or ill-treatment under the ICCPR and the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which Cambodia ratified in 1992. The publication of coerced confessions causes further mental suffering to victims, which is related to but can be considered distinct from the act of coercing the confession, as victims report feeling humiliated, distraught, isolated, and ashamed. This suffering appears to be intentionally inflicted to intimidate those accused into ending their political activity or activism. The suffering is inflicted by or with the consent of public officials, including prison and judicial authorities who provide access to detainees and facilitate the filming of confessions.
The public dissemination of coerced confessions, at a minimum, is a continuation of the ill-treatment or torture under the Convention Against Torture. It may also constitute a separate act of ill-treatment and if this public dissemination inflicts “severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental” and was “intentionally inflicted on a person” for a specific purpose, including to intimidate or coerce, then it may amount to an act of torture under the convention.
Syria: Mob Violence Against Groups Linked to Assad Era
(Beirut) – Demonstrations demanding accountability for Assad-era crimes in Syria have coincided with a rise in vigilante attacks and identity-based incitement between June 13 and 17, 2026, Human Rights Watch said today.
The protests spread across Aleppo, Idlib, Deir Ezzor, Raqqa, and Damascus governorates. Syrian authorities should ensure that security forces protect people accused of ties to the former government from mob justice.
“Massacres and killings targeting Syrian religious minority groups throughout 2025 show how quickly targeting individuals turns into collective punishment of entire communities,” said Hiba Zayadin, senior Syria researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Syrians have every right to demand justice, but justice should never become a pretext for targeting people simply because of their religion or background. Syrian authorities need to draw that line clearly,”
On June 16, dozens of protesters in Damascus entered or attempted to enter the Mazzeh 86 and Ush al-Warwar neighborhoods, both of which are majority Alawi. Local media outlets reported property damage and injuries in Mazzeh 86, while security forces sealed off Ush al-Warwar to keep outside protesters from entering.
A shopkeeper in Mazzeh 86, who asked not to be identified out of fear for his safety, told Human Rights Watch that several men in civilian clothes, their faces covered by keffiyehs, attacked his store on the evening of June 16. He said he recognized some of the men from repeated prior encounters in the neighborhood, during which they had stopped, cursed, and beaten residents accused of being Alawi.
“They didn’t leave anything whole,” he said. The men broke the store’s glass containers, damaged its windows, tore down the curtains, and fired gunshots inside that did not hit him, he said, all while beating him with stun batons, stabbing him, and hurling sectarian insults.
He estimated the damage to his shop at around US$1,000. He said men he believed to be the same group later returned and took him to al-Mouwasat Hospital for treatment. Human Rights Watch reviewed photographs consistent with his account of physical harm, showing a black eye, a stitched stab wound on his arm, and bruising on his back and arms.
A female resident of Mazzeh 86, who also asked not to be identified, said that on that same night, a crowd of 300 to 400 people gathered at the bottom of the hill leading into the neighborhood, blocking her from entering through the main entrance by a General Security checkpoint. She entered another way and saw masked men and security personnel walking the streets. She said the masked men stopped her but let her pass once they saw she was a woman.
In Ush al-Warwar, Human Rights Watch geolocated and verified two videos posted to social media on June 15 between 10:30 and 11 p.m. They show crowds chanting vulgar anti-Alawi slurs on the main road leading to the neighborhood entrance, which had been blocked off by the Interior Ministry’s Road Security Directorate. Additional videos from the same location show security forces present as a crowd gathered.
In Salqin, Idlib, media reports stated that unidentified attackers had vandalized businesses owned by people accused of being supporters of the former government. Agence France-Presse reported threats circulating online against alleged former pro-Assad paramilitary fighters in Latakia.
Human Rights Watch also reviewed videos documenting mob violence against two men accused of ties to the former government. Multiple geolocated videos show an older man, identified as Shukri Kayali, accused of being a former pro-government paramilitary fighter, bloodied and partially stripped, being dragged through the streets of Kafr Takharim, Idlib, then left at the base of a local clock tower. Media reports said Kayali died following the attack.
A separate video, published on social media around 2:30 a.m. on June 15, purports to show the body of a man identified as Fadi Rabou, also accused of being a former paramilitary fighter, with men in the crowd shouting “Allahu Akbar.” Multiple social media accounts reported that the killing occurred in the al-Sheikh Talat neighborhood of Idlib city. Human Rights Watch could not independently geolocate the footage nor confirm either man’s death from the video footage alone.
Syrian authorities deployed security forces to some flashpoints as the unrest spread, including blocking access to Ush al-Warwar, and the protests have since subsided. But the underlying tensions that drove people into the streets remain unresolved, Human Rights Watch said.
The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria has identified the absence of a clear legal framework for justice as one of the drivers of continuing violence in the country, a gap that Syrian authorities have acknowledged. Syria’s National Commission for Transitional Justice said on June 15 that collective punishment is incompatible with justice, while the interior ministry said the same day it is holding nearly 6,000 Assad-era military and security personnel and urged citizens to submit evidence through official channels instead of acting on their own.
The authorities should urgently investigate those who carried out violent attacks in June, ensure that detainees are held in safe, lawful custody, and make protective deployments the standard response the next time tensions rise. These attacks also underscore the urgency of strengthening and building public confidence in independent justice processes to address Assad-era crimes and other serious international crimes committed in Syria.
The authorities should put in place comprehensive legislative reforms to enable effective prosecution while ensuring compliance with international human rights and fair trial standards, Human Rights Watch said. They should also actively protect civic space and include Syrian civil society and victims’ groups in justice processes. This includes clarifying the authorities’ strategy, timeline, and modalities for nationwide consultations and providing meaningful space for civil society involvement in the development and functioning of institutions, including the National Commission for Transitional Justice.
“The longer revenge gets mistaken for justice, the more people get hurt and the harder it becomes for any accountability process to succeed,” Zayadin said.
Burkina Faso: Prominent Journalist Forcibly Disappeared 2 Years On
(Nairobi) – Burkina Faso’s authorities should urgently account for the journalist Atiana Serge Oulon, who was forcibly disappeared by state security forces two years ago, and release him immediately, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Observatoire Kisal, the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a partnership between the International Federation for Human Rights (Fédération internationale pour les droits humains) and the World Organisation Against Torture, and Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, or RSF) said today.
On June 24, 2024, armed men claiming to be intelligence agents abductedOulon, 40, director of the newspaper L’Événement (The Event), from his home in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso’s capital. In July, Burkina Faso’s president, Capt. Ibrahim Traoré, acknowledged that a journalist had been arrested for allegedly spreading falsehoods, an apparent reference to Oulon. The government later confirmed that Oulon and other journalists had been conscripted into the armed forces. However, in May 2026, an exclusive investigation from RSF revealed that security forces, including high-ranking officials close to President Traoré, secretly detained and tortured Oulon in private houses converted into unofficial prisons in Ouagadougou.
“Oulon has been specifically targeted for his journalistic work by the regime and was subjected to different kinds of abuses and detained without any contact with a lawyer or family members,” said Sadibou Marong, RSF’s Sub-Saharan Africa director. “Oulon’s family and friends have the right to know what happened to him and obtain justice.”
Oulon, an investigative journalist known for exposing corruption within the security forces, had long reported on alleged misuse of public funds. In a December 2022 investigation, he alleged that an “[army] captain from the Centre-Nord region” diverted 400 million CFA francs (about US$660,000) earmarked for the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (Volontaires pour la défense de la patrie), civilian auxiliaries supporting the military. The rank and region of deployment of the “captain” matched President Traoré. Just days before Oulon’s abduction, authorities suspended L’Événement after it revisited the corruption allegations.
RSF reported that security forces held Oulon, along with other civilians, in at least two villas opposite the US embassy in Ouagadougou and severely beat and deprived them of food.
Since taking power in September 2022, Burkina Faso’s military authorities have sharply curtailed civic space, targeting independent media, the political opposition, and civil society. They have used a sweeping 2023 emergency law, introduced to support counterinsurgency efforts and suppress dissent, including through the unlawful and politically motivated conscription of journalists, civil society activists, opposition figures, and members of the judiciary.
“Several dozens of government critics have been unlawfully conscripted and deployed to combat zones without adequate training,” said Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Sahel researcher at Human Rights Watch. “This cruel practice appears intended to pressure critics into submission through fear and coercion.”
While governments may conscript civilians for national defense, international standards require that recruitment be carried out through a lawful process that provides clear notice, due process safeguards, and an opportunity to challenge the decision.
Between July and October 2025, at least seven journalists and three activists, who had been previously conscripted, were released, while Moussa Sareba, a journalist working for the online outlet Fil Infos, who was forcibly disappeared in August 2025, is still missing. Others remain behind bars on politically motivated charges, including Guy Hervé Kam, a prominent lawyer and founding member of the civil society group Balai Citoyen.
International media outlets and human rights organizations have extensively reported that security forces converted dozens of villas in Ouaga 2000, a neighborhood of Ouagadougou, as well as other properties on the outskirts of the capital into unofficial detention sites where they have secretly and unlawfully detained hundreds of people, including government critics, political opponents, and others perceived as enemies of the authorities. Former detainees have described being held incommunicado in these makeshift prisons and being subjected to torture and other forms of ill-treatment.
“People are being detained in unofficial prisons without access to lawyers, family members, and medical assistance,” said Marceau Sivieude, Amnesty International’s regional director for West and Central Africa. “Many of those who were eventually released were never presented before a judge or charged officially and were prevented from leaving the country afterwards.”
Burkina Faso is party to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. Under international law, an enforced disappearance occurs when state authorities or their agents detain a person and then refuse to acknowledge or disclose their fate or whereabouts, placing them outside the protection of the law. People forcibly disappeared are at heightened risk of torture and other ill-treatment and extrajudicial execution.
“Burkina Faso’s authorities should immediately and unconditionally release Oulon and all those arbitrarily detained and unlawfully conscripted,” said Drissa Traoré, secretary general of the International Federation for Human Rights. “They should end the unlawful use of conscription to silence journalists and other critics of the military authorities.”
The authorities have expelled foreign journalists and suspended and banned numerous national and international media outlets and organizations, often citing vague administrative grounds or responding to critical reporting.
The government’s suppression of independent media has enabled it to exert far greater control over public discourse while expanding the reach of state-aligned propaganda and disinformation. Networks of pro-government activists—including coordinated groups known as Rapid Communication Intervention Battalions tasked with shaping public opinion on social media—amplify government messaging, promote support for President Traoré, harass critics and human rights defenders, and often spread hate and violence against minorities.
The military authorities have also cracked down on unions. In May 2026, the minister of territorial administration suspended the country’s largest student union, the General Union for Burkina Students (L’union générale des étudiants burkinabè) for three months, citing “glorification of terrorism.” The decree provided no explanation for the suspension, but the action appears linked to the union’s criticism of the government’s security record nearly four years after taking power.
“As the authorities curtail independent reporting, pro-government narratives increasingly dominate the information space,” said Binta Sidibé Gascon, president of Observatoire Kisal. “Pro-military authorities and social media activists have contributed to inflaming ethnic tensions, particularly through rhetoric that falsely conflates the entire Fulani community with Islamist armed groups, inciting stigmatization and hostility.”
Argentina: Flawed Lobbying Bill
(Washington, DC) – A proposed bill to address lobbying that is before Argentina’s Congress would place unreasonable burdens on independent human rights organizations and other civil society groups that wish to influence government policy, Human Rights Watch said today.
The bill seeks to advance important government interests around transparency and integrity, but would impose new administrative burdens and legal risks so severe that they would effectively prevent many civil society groups from participating in the policymaking process.
“The government is right to want to regulate and ensure transparency around lobbying activity, but needs to ensure the rights of Argentine people and organizations to participate in crucial policy debates,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Congress should fix the overly broad provisions in the law to make sure rights groups and others are allowed to operate without undue restrictions.”
On May 23, 2026, the government of President Javier Milei introduced the bill in Congress with the stated objectives of limiting undue influence over government decisions and bringing much greater transparency to lobbying activity. The bill, which is before the Congressional Committee on Constitutional Affairs, would bar all communications intended to influence government policy unless the entity and persons involved first register as lobbyists and make rapid, detailed reports about every contact and communication.
The bill would create a Public Registry of Interest Representation and require professional lobbyists as well as representatives of companies, business associations, and any other individuals or organizations seeking to influence decisions by the executive branch or Congress to register.
Registration would not be automatic or a matter of right. Instead, registry authorities, who would operate under the executive branch, would be allowed to reject the registration, for instance, if it is not “compatible” with the organization’s registered purpose.
They would also be able to suspend or cancel the registration for violations of the law, such as not reporting a meeting quickly enough. This would allow executive authorities to arbitrarily block civil society groups from engaging in lobbying activity at all, Human Rights Watch said.
The bill would also ban government officials from “representation of interest contacts” with unregistered organizations or people, “even if such contacts are spontaneous or incidental.” The law also defines “representation of interest contacts” broadly to include “any communication ... that has the objective of presenting interests, positions, arguments, proposals, information or requests destined to influence the adoption of public policies.”
The bill would require registered people or organizations to report extensive details about each meeting or “contact” with government authorities, within five days. Civil society groups would most likely struggle more than business interests to manage these administrative burdens. This risks tilting the playing field in a way that would ultimately give more access to deep-pocketed interest groups than to human rights activists and other civil society groups, Human Rights Watch said.
The bill would also modify the criminal code to allow for up to two years in prison for anyone who engages in unauthorized lobbying activity. It would also allow a sentence of up to three years for anyone who conducts “clandestine representation of foreign interests,” including those who fail to register that they are trying to influence the “national defense, interior security, or foreign policy” with foreign funding.
Robust regulation of lobbying activity can support the integrity and transparency of key governmental policymaking processes. Other countries have taken varied approaches to balancing those imperatives against the rights of people and civil society groups to participate freely in policy deliberations. Some countries exempt activists from lobbying requirements altogether, while others exempt lobbying activity on certain matters of broad public interest or tailor requirements to account for the risks and rights imperatives associated with various kinds of lobbying.
Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the American Convention on Human Rights, Argentina is required to respect the rights to freedom of association and expression. Any restrictions on these rights must be clearly defined, and necessary and proportionate to achieve a legitimate goal, such as protecting the rights of others.
As drafted, the bill is not meaningfully tailored in a way that seeks to accommodate these human rights obligations and would even give the executive branch excessive powers to sanction groups that seek to improve the government’s approach to corruption or rights violations.
“If Congress truly cares about transparency, it should regulate lobbying without undermining civil society advocacy,” Goebertus said.
The UK’s Discriminatory AI Experiment on Child Refugees
The UK Home Office is pushing ahead with plans to use AI technology to guess the age of young people arriving at UK borders to seek asylum, starting in 2027. Yet the Home Office’s own tests found the technology performed worse on certain groups of people, notably Africans. The plans severely endanger the human rights of children seeking asylum and should be scrapped.
Facial age estimation technology (FAE) is a nascent technology used to estimate a person’s age, which would contribute towards determining their asylum status. Described with much fanfare by the Home Office as a “cutting-edge AI tech,” FAE is currently used in UK shops and bars on customers seeking to buy age-restricted items. To use this for life-changing decisions in refugee processing centers is to introduce an unreliable, untested technology into an already flawed process.
Human Rights Watch, Foxglove, and 61 other civil society groups have written to the Home Office asking them to halt these plans immediately as they create new, unnecessary risks to vulnerable young people. This technology has no place in deciding whether a young person can access the rights and protections they are entitled to.
We are asking the Home Office to address urgent questions around accuracy, efficacy, and discriminatory risks of the system, as well as a lack of legal justification, adequate safeguards, and accountability mechanisms.
The Home Office’s troubling justification for using this technology wrongly pitches FAE as a magical solution to complex issues and as a way increase deportations, while painting asylum seekers as fraudulent. This does not give confidence that young people subjected to a FAE assessment will be given fair and balanced treatment.
The Home Office guidance says the technology will advise human decisions for now. However, too often pilot tests of harmful technology serve as a gateway to wider adoption, as with the Metropolitan Police's trial of facial recognition technology, expanded incrementally over a decade to current widespread always-on surveillance across extensive use cases. As such systems are entrenched and expanded, the risk of automation bias increases, and the technology’s role often changes from advisory to authoritative.
No other government appears to use FAE in this way, and there is a risk that this will set a global trend. The UK is influential in setting migration policy, for example, the now-shelved Rwanda Scheme, since mimicked by Dutch and US governments. The FAE plans are simply too risky to pursue, and those risks extend far beyond UK borders. We urge the UK government to reconsider.
Canada Delivers a Blow to Corporate Accountability
The Canadian government’s elimination of the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE), announced on June 11, marks a significant step backwards in the fight for accountability for human rights abuses by Canadian companies.
The CORE, established in 2019, investigates rights abuses by Canadian companies operating abroad in the oil and gas, mining, and garment sectors. For example, the office has investigated links between Canadian mining and garment companies and Uyghur forced labor in China.
Prime Minister Mark Carney justified abolishing the ombudsperson’s office by pointing to its ineffectiveness. But the government’s lack of support for the role has seriously undermined the ombudsperson’s investigations.
The government has long denied the ombudsperson the power to compel witness testimony and document production from companies, a key tool for investigating often secretive and uncooperative businesses.
The ombudsperson position itself has also been vacant for more than a year, leaving remaining staff unable to move complaints forward. At least 36 complaints alleging corporate abuses had been awaiting decisions from the CORE, including additional cases of Uyghur forced labor in China and human rights violations related to oil and gas exploration in Namibia.
Canadian labor unions and civil society organizations have long fought for robust steps to tackle Canadian businesses’ human rights impacts, citing, among other things, the country’s outsized role in extractive industries worldwide.
In addition to eliminating the CORE, the government has so far failed to put forward legislation requiring companies to exercise due diligence to prevent rights abuses. On June 12, the government did announce legislation that it says will strengthen Canada’s existing prohibition on the import of goods linked to forced labor.
The CORE is an important part of the wider struggle to tackle corporate human rights abuses. Rather than eliminating the office, Prime Minister Carney should give it the personnel and investigative powers needed to shine a light on abusive businesses and provide justice to victims.
Support Builds to Protect Children from Crimes Against Humanity
In the process leading toward a new international treaty to prevent and punish crimes against humanity, there is already growing, cross-regional support to ensure the final effort includes justice for crimes against children. In recent weeks, countries submitted formal proposals for amendments to the draft articles under consideration for the treaty. A civil society coalition, including Human Rights Watch, has supported this process.
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. If negotiations yield a new and broadly ratified treaty, this effort would close that gap.
Crimes against humanity entail some of the worst crimes during a widespread or systematic attack on civilians: murder, extermination, torture, sexual violence, persecution, and more. Despite children being routinely targeted, the current draft articles mention children only in the preamble and in the definition of enslavement. This low starting point makes the new proposals especially significant:
Of the 63 countries who submitted proposals, 16 explicitly supported recognizing age as a basis for persecution, showing that at least a quarter (25%) of them are in favor of this change.14 (22%) proposed creating a new crime of “recruiting persons under the age of 18 as part of the attack, or using them to participate in the attack.”12 (19%) proposed excluding people who were children at the time of the alleged crime from the adult criminal justice system’s jurisdiction.Other countries proposed ensuring child victims and witnesses have access to justice and to reparation procedures. Given how often children are overlooked in such proceedings, making protections explicit is critical. Some proposed amendments came from countries such as Liberia and Colombia with first-hand experience in these crimes.
The civil society coalition has supported this process by elaborating the firm legal basis for these proposals, and the value of aligning the new treaty and international criminal law more broadly with progress made on other fronts, from human rights law on child soldiers to enabling children to testify safely.
In 18 months, delegates will come together to negotiate the treaty’s content. The solid set of children’s rights proposals already put forward provides a strong foundation for that negotiation. All countries should consider the proposals carefully and come to the conference ready to use this singular opportunity to protect children.