.png)
Donations save lives and limbs.
RIGHTS
Children's Rights
Millions of children have no access to education, work long hours under hazardous conditions and are forced to serve as soldiers in armed conflict. They suffer targeted attacks on their schools and teachers or languish in institutions or detention centers, where they endure inhumane conditions and assaults on their dignity. Young and immature, they are often easily exploited. In many cases, they are abused by the very individuals responsible for their care. We are working to help protect children around the world, so they can grow into adults.
Nigerian States Should Protect Girls by Ending Child Marriage
Women preparing teenage girl for marriage in Kano, northern Nigeria on February 10, 2019. © 2019 ANy Photo/Clay Anna
The union of two teenage adolescents, age ranging from 13 to 19 is increasingly growing in West Africa . Many factors contribute to teenage marriage such as love, teenage pregnancy, religion, security, wealth, family, peer pressure, arranged marriage, economical and/or political reasons, social advancement, and cultural reasons.
LGBT RIGHTS
Lesbian Parents in the US Should Not Need to Adopt Their Own Children
Oklahoma Case Highlights Precarity of LGBT Parenthood
Erin Kilbride
Researcher, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program
Protestors join the 30th Annual New York City Dyke March, on June 25, 2022 in New York. © 2022 John Smith/VIEWpress/Getty Images
Lesbian Parents in the US Should Not Need to Adopt Their Own Children
People around the world face violence and inequality—and sometimes torture, even execution—because of who they love, how they look, or who they are. Sexual orientation and gender identity are integral aspects of our selves and should never lead to discrimination or abuse. Human Rights Watch works for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender peoples' rights, and with activists representing a multiplicity of identities and issues. We document and expose abuses based on sexual orientation and gender identity worldwide, including torture, killing and executions, arrests under unjust laws, unequal treatment, censorship, medical abuses, discrimination in health and jobs and housing, domestic violence, abuses against children, and denial of family rights and recognition. We advocate for laws and policies that will protect everyone’s dignity. We work for a world where all people can enjoy their rights fully.
Crisis and Conflict
Crisis and Conflict
Some of the most acute and pervasive human rights abuses take place in times of crisis and conflict. The Crisis and Conflict division documents, exposes and advocates to end violations of human rights and the laws of war during armed conflicts, humanitarian disasters, and severe social or political unrest. Our team also works on issues such as climate change and forced migration that can drive conflict. We investigate how measures that countries deploy in the name of security – such as overbroad counterterrorism laws and mass surveillance technologies – can undermine human rights. Our team deploys quickly to influence decision-makers through investigative reports, strategic communications and goal-oriented advocacy. We bring attention to under-reported crises, highlight the plight of marginalized people, advance rights-respecting legal norms, and press for justice to protect and promote human rights.
Disability Rights
© 2010 Martina Bacigalupo for Human Rights Watch
© 2010 Martina Bacigalupo for Human Rights Watch
Worldwide one billion individuals have a disability. Many people with disabilities live in conflict settings or in developing countries, where they experience a range of barriers to education, health care and other basic services. In many countries, they are subjected to violence and discrimination.
People with disabilities are also often deprived of their right to live independently, as many are locked up in institutions, shackled, or cycled through the criminal justice system. Many of these human rights abuses are a result of entrenched stigma and a lack of community-based services essential to ensuring their rights, including under the UN Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Our goal is to help change that, working closely together with disabled persons’ organizations and other partners.
Economic Justice and Rights
Constitutionalizing economic rights can begin to ameliorate the gaping issues of hunger, unemployment, and poverty that disproportionately affect low-income and minority communities in the United States and abroad.
© 2010 Brent Stirton/Getty Images
A number of different components together form the basis for economic justice. These components include safe and decent work with equal and fair pay, equal access to resources and opportunities, social protection systems, as well as the right to peaceful assembly.
The Economic Justice and Rights Division works to build just economies based on respect for human rights. We investigate how the global economic system both drives inequality that undermines human rights and enables private actors to harm communities, workers, and the environment. Our work is driven by rigorous, thorough, and objective investigations. The Poverty and Inequality program exposes policies and practices that concentrate wealth in private hands at the expense of public well-being, challenging corruption, deregulation, privatization, and the dismantling and underfunding of tax-funded systems of social protection. Our Corporate Accountability program works to ensure that products and services are free from abuse or exploitation by holding businesses accountable for the human rights impacts of their operations, investments, and supply chains. Our work illuminates opaque and diffuse global supply chains and investment flows that obscure involvement in human rights abuses—from forced labor to environmental destruction—and advocates for stronger regulation of industries at home and abroad.
Free Speech
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Freedom of speech is a bellwether: how any society tolerates those with minority, disfavored, or even obnoxious views will often speak to its performance on human rights more generally. In international law, access to information and free expression are two sides of the same coin, and both have found tremendous accelerators in the Internet and other forms of digital communication.
At the same time, efforts to control speech and information are also accelerating, by both governments and private actors in the form of censorship, restrictions on access, and violent acts directed against those whose views or queries are seen as somehow dangerous or wrong. From our earliest days, when we were called The Fund for Free Expression, we have fought all forms of repression of speech, in all media, around the globe.
The Right of the Elderly
Older persons should be able to enjoy human rights and fundamental freedoms when residing in shelter, care or treatment facility, including full respect for their dignity, beliefs, needs and privacy and for the right to make decisions about their care and the quality of their lives.
Millions of older people around the globe experience human rights violations every year, ranging from age-based discrimination and social and political exclusion, to abuses in nursing facilities, neglect in refugee camps, and barriers to healthcare and other essential services. Most of these abuses go undocumented and those responsible not held to account. Covid-19 has exposed the dangerous price of ignoring the rights of older people. Never before in history have so many older people been living, and life expectancy in every region is increasing. Human Rights Watch works to improve the lives of older people today and in the future.
International Justice
International justice means ensuring accountability for some of the most serious crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture and enforced disappearances. There are many reasons why victims of these crimes are denied justice.
© 2011 Reuters
Human Rights Watch considers international justice—accountability through fair trials for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity—to be an essential element of building respect for human rights. The International Justice Program champions meaningful justice for victims and survivors of serious international crimes and due process for the accused. We look to the International Criminal Court, other international tribunals, and national courts, whether in the countries where crimes have been committed or through the principle of universal jurisdiction to carry out fair and impartial trials. We advocate for effective justice mechanisms and advance innovative and practical pathways to overcome roadblocks to justice, working to build the political momentum and state cooperation to support accountability in the long term.
Women's Rights
© 2014 Samer Muscati/Human Rights Watch
Despite great strides made by the international women’s rights movement over many years, women and girls around the world are still married as children or trafficked into forced labor and sex slavery. They are refused access to education and political participation, and some are trapped in conflicts where rape is perpetrated as a weapon of war. Around the world, deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth are needlessly high, and women are prevented from making deeply personal choices in their private lives. Human Rights Watch is working toward the realization of women’s empowerment and gender equality—protecting the rights and improving the lives of women and girls on the ground.
Women's rights are the rights and entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st centuries. Wikipedia
