Human Rights Archive

Last Friday, Apple announced that it was implementing measures to combat the distribution of child sexual abuse media, or CSAM, on its services. Apple, the company that famously defied the FBI by refusing to provide technical assistance in hacking its own iPhones after a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, surprised commentators in both the tech and human rights communities with this announcement, and there was a predictable torrent of criticism from both ends of the policy spectrum. The electronic distribution of child abuse images has been a perennial and unsolved issue for more than 20 years. The growing popularity […]

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, Middle East Memo, which takes a look at what’s happening, what’s being said and what’s on the horizon in the Middle East. Subscribe to receive it by email every Monday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it. On Aug. 4, Lebanon observed a somber one-year anniversary of the massive explosion at the Beirut Port that according to Human Rights Watch killed 218 and wounded 7,000. To mark the occasion, people bravely shared moving stories on social media about the toll the event took on their mental health, […]

A man from a long-marginalized minority group dies after a police officer kneels on his neck, triggering protests and bringing issues of police brutality and systemic injustice into focus.  The place is not Minneapolis, but the small city of Teplice in the Czech Republic. The date is not May 25, 2020, but June 19, 2021. And the victim is not George Floyd, but Stanislav Tomas—a 46-year-old Roma man. The Roma are the largest ethnic minority in Europe, numbering 12 million to 15 million, according to Julija Sardelic, a political scientist at Victoria University of Wellington and author of “The Fringes […]

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the United Nations Refugee Convention, one of the signal moral advances in human history. Negotiated in the wake of World War II and initially limited to Europe, the treaty established the first binding legal protections for individuals forced to flee their countries. These rights and responsibilities, which were made universal in the Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees in 1967, remain a cornerstone of the global humanitarian regime. The convention is, however, showing its age. Many governments are failing to fulfil their legal obligations under it, and the convention does little to […]

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, Africa Watch, which includes a look at the week’s top stories and best reads from and about the African continent. Subscribe to receive it by email every Friday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your email inbox. Last month, the African Union granted observer status to Israel, after nearly 20 years of Israeli diplomatic efforts to that effect. Israel had previously held observer status in the Organization of African Unity, or OAU, the AU’s predecessor. But it lapsed after the OAU was disbanded in 2002 […]

Since taking office in 2017, Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo has demonstrated a pattern of heavy-handedness, authoritarianism and impunity that belies his carefully crafted global image of a debonair and progressive African leader. The latest controversy involves a bill, supported by members of Akufo-Addo’s administration and key religious institutions in the country, that would criminalize displays of same-sex affection and advocacy for LGBTQ rights, punishable by up to a decade in prison. Ghana has long had a mixed record on protecting LGBTQ rights, but for much of the past four years in particular, LGBTQ Ghanaians—as well as their allies and advocates—have […]

Before sitting down to write this week’s column, I opened a large and tattered, white, padded envelope that had arrived from Hong Kong late last week to find the final issue of the city’s once famously feisty newspaper, the Apple Daily, which was forced by local authorities to shut down for political reasons on June 24. A Chinese friend had sent it to me from the city long renowned for being efficient and smooth-running. For the month that it took the package to arrive, therefore, I had wondered whether it had been held up for inspection by Hong Kong authorities […]

Regulating digital content and platforms was never going to be easy. As the European Union continues what is expected to be a multi-year process to turn its draft Digital Services Act into law, France appears to have jumped the gun and enacted its own version of the proposed regulations. In a 12-page rebuke couched as “observations,” the European Commission warned that France’s law “poses a risk to the single market in digital services and to Europe’s prosperity.” Just as it prepares to assume the EU’s rotating six-month presidency next January, France seems set on a collision course with the institutions charged with […]

Three weeks after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise, and a week after being sworn in as prime minister, Ariel Henry held his first Cabinet meeting on July 28. It did not go well. In an effort to distance himself from the unpopular Moise administration, Henry attempted to revoke a 2020 presidential decree creating a national intelligence agency, which had been widely criticized as an unaccountable secret police that could potentially spy on Moise’s political opponents.  But in response to Henry’s proposal, the Cabinet’s secretary-general, Renald Luberice, submitted a letter expressing his opposition to dismantling Moise’s agenda, in which he […]