NCJ Number
192640
Date Published
2002
Length
695 pages
Annotation
This book provides an overview of human rights issues for 70 countries around the world.
Abstract
Human Rights Watch conducts regular investigations of human rights abuses and holds governments accountable if they transgress the rights of their people. It defends freedom of thought and expression, due process and equal protection of the law, and civil societies. It denounces murders, “disappearances,” torture, arbitrary imprisonment, and discrimination. Human Rights Watch began in 1978. In Africa, longstanding wars continue to plague several countries, the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is widespread, and poverty is rampant. Although 2001 was dominated by the human rights tragedy in Colombia, other parts of Latin America, such as Peru and Mexico, experienced positive change. However, chronic problems such as police brutality, deplorable prison conditions, domestic violence, and labor rights abuses persist. Asia suffered a political earthquake after the September 11 attacks on the United States. While Afghanistan was the center of attention, other countries suffered upheavals in domestic politics and international relations. Many countries in the Soviet Union region had made significant strides since 1991, but abusive authoritarian rule persisted in several, and others still struggled to overcome the ethnic conflict that permeated large parts of the disintegrating Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Clashes between Israelis and Palestinians erupted in September 2000 and have overshadowed any other developments in the Middle East and North Africa region. In the United States, the promotion of human rights occupied a low priority in the Bush Administration’s domestic political agenda until the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. In many countries violations of children’s rights were all too common in 2001, with children being beaten and tortured by police, forced to work long hours, and serve as soldiers in armed conflicts. Women’s rights activists made progress on several fronts -– leading governments to condemn sexual violence against women in armed conflict, among other things. Appendix