Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Human Rights Watch”
United Nations investigators encountered evidence that alleged chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian military were staged by jihadist rebels and their supporters, but still decided to blame the government for two incidents in which chlorine was allegedly dispersed via improvised explosives dropped by helicopters. In both cases, the Syrian government denied that it had any aircraft in the areas at the …
A talk with psychedelic freedom fighter Casey Hardison about human rights, doing time, and the good and bad sides of hedonism. https://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/hardison_casey/hardison_casey.shtml
For people in the modern world, there may be nothing more difficult to comprehend than the group calling itself the Islamic State, or ISIS. The beheadings, rapes, and other acts of cruelty seem beyond understanding, as does the wanton destruction of priceless ancient monuments. Perhaps most mystifying of all is the way ISIS has been able to recruit young men …
This year the rains failed in southern Ethiopia and some 25% of a country of 90 million people are facing acute food shortages in the coming months. This climate disaster, brought on mainly by western industries damage to the environment, has left the Ethiopian government quietly begging the international community for a preliminary food aid package worth $500 million, desperately …
Israeli forces are choking, beating, and abusing Palestinian children as young as 11, arresting and coercing them into confessions without granting them access to lawyers or even informing their parents of their whereabouts, a new investigation from Human Rights Watch reveals. The findings are contained in a report—Israel: Security Forces Abuse Palestinian Children—based on interviews with six children between the …
The main crisis of human rights is not about perceptions, but about its complicity with domination. When Israel is criticized about its rights-abusive policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the refrain most often heard among local politicians is that the government’s hasbara–the Israeli propaganda machine–is inadequate. The problem, in other words, is not what Israel actually does to the …
Vowing to combat the “converging crises” of racism, militarism, climate change, and “extreme materialism,” Dr. Jill Stein on Tuesday announced this week that she is running for president of the United States as a Green Party candidate. In a campaign kick-off speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, Stein laid out the major planks of her platform, excerpted …
The Saudi-led bombing campaign against rebels in Yemen is using U.S.-supplied cluster munitions, endangering civilians and violating an international arms treaty, Human Rights Watch warned on Sunday. According to the group, there is “credible evidence” that cluster bombs have been used in recent weeks as part of coalition airstrikes in Yemen’s northern Saada governorate, a Houthi stronghold that borders Saudi Arabia. Through …
Bad pay, hard labor, nasty skin rashes, and poor sleep in constructions sites are just the tip of work conditions found in Israeli agricultural settlements, said Human Rights Watch (HRW) in a report released Monday. The 74-page “Israel: Settlement Agriculture Harms Palestinian Children” is a devastating look into underage Palestinian laborers farming for Israeli companies. Minors as young as 11 are interviewed …
A Phalanx close-in weapons system (CIWS), which Human Rights Watch calls a prototype for fully autonomous weapons—or “killer robots”—fires at sea. (Photo: U.S. Navy/flickr/cc) Fully autonomous weapons, or “killer robots,” present a legal and ethical quagmire and must be banned before they can be further developed, a new human rights report published Thursday urges ahead of next week’s United Nations …
