There is a jarring disconnect between EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s insistence on European values and the rules-based order - and the bloc's willingness to throw the right to asylum out the window.

They fled genocide in Sudan to find persecution in Egypt so they moved on to Libya, but von der Leyen aims to pay Cairo and Tripoli to keep Sudanese refugees out of Fortress EU.

Blogger Sirojiddin Adilov’s October 5 conviction on dubious extortion and fraud charges raises serious questions about fair trial standards in Uzbekistan, as well as the government’s commitment to uph...

The UN Human Rights Council on October 6 extended the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Russia for another year. Russia withdrew its amendment that attempted to delete...

The EU promised to sanction Israeli ministers and partially suspend the EU-Israel trade agreement in September 2025. Neither has happened. Why? Shortly after…

The ongoing prosecution of two prominent human rights defenders in Greece is a politically-motivated attempt to silence their efforts to expose abuses against migrants, Human Rights Watch said today. ...

By embedding dignity, inclusion, equality, economic security, and belonging in the international treaty, we can ensure that women like Chung Sun-cha and Jung Kyong-sook are no longer treated as invisi...

Russian authorities are doubling down on their efforts to quash freedom of expression, including access to information, by increasingly suppressing tools to circumvent draconian censorship laws, Human...

Satirist and political commentator Azamat Omarov, who had been in pre-trial detention in Kazakhstan since mid-April on “inciting discord” charges, struck a plea bargain with the prosecution, under the...

A United Nations process is moving forward to consider a new legally binding treaty to strengthen children’s right to free education. The proposed Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of ...

Ruben Vardanyan, a former senior official in Nagorno-Karabakh's de facto administration who is serving a 20-year prison sentence in Azerbaijan, says that he and 18 other Armenian prisoners are being d...

Georgian authorities are using vague administrative offenses to jail or heavily fine people for online speech, deepening the government’s crackdown on freedom of expression, Human Rights Watch said to...

Sweden has a long history of supporting human rights, and successive governments across the political spectrum have described respect for human rights and international law as a "cornerstone" of Swedi...

Hungary’s new government has taken an important step toward dismantling a key discriminatory legacy of the Orbán era—the legal targeting of LGBT people. The job is not finished, however.

Guidelines for the implementation of the European Union’s Forced Labor Regulation are an important step toward rights-respecting supply chains but need further strengthening to eliminate forced labor ...

Criminal gangs have carried out a spate of violent attacks targeting civil society and opposition gatherings ahead of the 2027 elections, Human Rights Watch said today.

Authoritarian regimes persecute critics not only within their own countries’ borders but also abroad. States that harbour dissidents should take more decisive action against the various forms of transnational repression. This also applies to Germany.

Hungary’s government has extended until December 31 the “state of crisis caused by mass migration,” prolonging an emergency regime introduced in 2016 despite the absence of the conditions that could j...

Survivors’ groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina have condemned the announcement that the Serbian government plans to bury the convicted genocidaire Ratko Mladić with “highest military and state honors.” M...

The Tunisian government has systematically cracked down on civil society groups and their members since 2024, all but shutting down the vibrant civic space that emerged after the 2011 revolution.

Nothing inherent in children’s development explains why their right to education should be more or less accessible depending on whether they are 4, 8, or 16. Yet international law treats financial bar...

Ratko Mladic, the notorious Bosnian Serb general, has died at 84 while serving a life sentence for war crimes.