Reports

The 119-page report, “Trapped: How Male Guardianship Policies Restrict Women’s Travel and Mobility in the Middle East and North Africa,” says that although women’s rights activists have succeeded in securing women’s increased freedom in many countries in the region, old and new restrictions require women to seek permission from their male guardian – typically their father, brother, or husband – to move within their country, obtain a passport, or travel abroad. Human Rights Watch also found that in a number of countries, women cannot travel abroad with their children on an equal basis with men.

The 74-page report, “‘Automated Neglect’: How The World Bank’s Push to Allocate Cash Assistance Using Algorithms Threatens Rights,” details how an automated cash transfer program in Jordan known as Takaful (a word similar to solidarity in Arabic) profiles and ranks the income and well-being of Jordanian families to determine who should receive support – an approach known as poverty targeting. This system, which the World Bank has funded in Jordan and seven other countries in the Middle East and North Africa, is depriving many people of their right to social security even as they go hungry, fall behind on rent, and take on crippling debt.

The 127-page report, “‘Cut Off from Life Itself’: Lebanon’s Failure on the Right to Electricity,” argues that electricity is fundamental to nearly every aspect of living and participating in present- day societies, and as such, the internationally protected right to an adequate standard of living includes the right of everyone, without discrimination, to sufficient, reliable, safe, clean, accessible, and affordable electricity. At present, the government provides electricity for only one to three hours a day on average, while people who can afford it supplement that supply with private generators. The public sector and private generator industry rely on polluting climate-intensive fossil fuels. The electricity crisis has exacerbated inequality in the country, severely limited people’s ability to realize their most basic rights, and pushed them further into poverty.

The 135-page report, “‘All This Terror Because of a Photo’: Digital Targeting and Its Offline Consequences for LGBT People in the Middle East and North Africa,” examines the use of digital targeting by security forces and its far-reaching offline consequences – including arbitrary detention and torture – in five countries: Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Tunisia. The findings show how security forces employ digital targeting to gather and create evidence to support prosecutions.

The 40-page report, “To Sleep the Law: Violence Against Protesters and Unaccountable Perpetrators in Iraq,” details specific cases of killing, injury, and disappearance of protesters during and after the 2019-2020 popular uprising in central and southern Iraq. Al-Kadhimi took power in May 2020 promising justice for the murders and disappearances, but when he left office in October 2022, his government had made no concrete progress on holding those responsible to account.

The 63-page report, “‘My Son is Just Another Kid’: Experiences of Children Repatriated from Camps for ISIS Suspects and Their Families in Northeast Syria,” documents the experiences of approximately 100 children who have been repatriated or returned to France, Germany, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Uzbekistan between 2019 and 2022. Human Rights Watch found that despite years of detention in life-threatening conditions with insufficient water, fresh food, and health care, and little to no access to education, many of the children appear to be adjusting well and performing well in school. Many have reintegrated smoothly and enjoy a wide range of activities with their peers, including football, skating, cycling, dancing, crafts, and music.

The 61-page report, “‘The Court is Satisfied with the Confession’: Bahrain Death Sentences Follow Torture, Sham Trials,” based primarily on court records and other official documents, found serious and persistent human rights violations underlying the convictions and death sentences of cases of eight men examined for the report. The men are among 26 who are currently on death row, their appeals exhausted. Trial and appeal courts cavalierly dismissed credible allegations of torture and ill-treatment during interrogation instead of investigating them, as required by international and Bahraini law. The courts routinely violated defendants’ rights to fair trials, including the right to legal counsel during interrogation, the right to cross-examine prosecution witnesses, and through reliance on secretly sourced reports.

The 71-page report, “‘It Was Really Hard to Protect Myself’: Impact of the Armed Conflict in Syria on Children with Disabilities,” details the abuses faced by children with disabilities, including a heightened risk during attacks and a lack of access to the basic support services they need. The absence of inclusive and universal programs – including in education, delivery of humanitarian aid, and mental health and psychosocial support services – compounds the difficulties children with disabilities in Syria already experience.

In the 129-page report, “They’ll Get You No Matter What: Morocco’s Playbook to Crush Dissent,” Human Rights Watch documents a range of tactics that, when used together, form an ecosystem of repression, aiming not only to muzzle dissenting voices but to scare off all potential critics. The tactics include unfair trials and long prison terms for nonspeech criminal charges, harassment and smear campaigns in state-aligned media, and targeting dissidents’ relatives. Critics of the state were also subjected to video and digital surveillance, and in some cases to physical intimidation and assault that the police failed to investigate properly.

The 86-page report, “‘Everyone Wants Me Dead’: Killings, Abductions, Torture, and Sexual Violence Against LGBT People by Armed Groups in Iraq,” documents cases of attempted murder of LGBT people by armed groups primarily within the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), which are nominally under the prime minister’s authority. Human Rights Watch also documented cases of abductions, extrajudicial killings, sexual violence, and online targeting of LGBT people by the police and armed groups. The Iraqi government is responsible for protecting LGBT people’s rights to life and security but has failed to hold those responsible for the violence accountable, Human Rights Watch found.

The 36-page report, “‘No One Represents Us’: Lack of Access to Political Participation for People with Disabilities in Iraq,” documents that Iraqi authorities have failed to secure electoral rights for Iraqis with disabilities. People with disabilities are often effectively denied their right to vote due to discriminatory legislation and inaccessible polling places and significant legislative and political obstacles to running for office.

The 101-page report, “‘Security Forces Dealt with Them’: Suspicious Killings and Extrajudicial Executions by Egyptian Security Forces,” found that the alleged armed militants killed in the so-called shootouts did not pose an imminent danger to security forces or others when they were killed and in many cases had already been in custody. Egypt’s international partners should halt weapons transfers to Egypt and impose sanctions against the security agencies and officials most responsible for ongoing abuses.

The 127 page report, “‘They Killed Us from the Inside’: An Investigation into the August 4 Beirut Blast,” sets out the evidence of official conduct, in a context of longstanding corruption and mismanagement at the port, that allowed for tonnes of ammonium nitrate, a potentially explosive chemical compound, to be haphazardly and unsafely stored there for nearly six years. The detonation of the chemical caused one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history, pulverizing the port and damaging over half the city.

The 213-page report, “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution,” examines Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. It presents the present-day reality of a single authority, the Israeli government, ruling primarily over the area between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea, populated by two groups of roughly equal size, and methodologically privileging Jewish Israelis while repressing Palestinians, most severely in the occupied territory.

The 94-page report, “‘Everything I Have to Do is Tied to a Man’: Women and Qatar’s Male Guardianship Rules,” analyzes official male guardianship rules and practices. Human Rights Watch found that women in Qatar must obtain permission from their male guardians to marry, study abroad on government scholarships, work in many government jobs, travel abroad until certain ages, and receive some forms of reproductive health care. The discriminatory system also denies women the authority to act as their children’s primary guardian, even when they are divorced and have legal custody. These restrictions violate Qatar’s constitution and international law.