Donald Trump built his reelection campaign off big promises – among them, the mass deportation of migrants, retaliation against political opponents, deploying the military to crush dissent, and allowing states to decide abortion rights. Having won a second term as the President of the United States, the question is, now what?   Ngofeen Mputubwele  talks to three Human Rights Watch experts from the front lines of advocacy in the United States. Tirana Hassan, Tanya Greene and Sarah Yager...

Gen. Sri Rumiati served as a policewoman in Indonesia for decades, but her life’s work became centered around protesting a policy of the state security forces. When she was summoned for military service, she was shocked to learn that she was required to take a virginity test. The Indonesian military and police held the misogynistic belief that female soldiers and officers needed to be chaste and that they could test for virginity by examining a woman’s hymen, an abusive practice that has no...

In the late 1960s, the United Kingdom made a deal allowing the US to build a military base on Diego Garcia, one of 58 islands that make up the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean. The UK, which had colonized the islands in the 1800s, claimed there was “no permanent population” in Chagos. But that was a lie. Several hundred Chagossians lived on those islands. They were all forcibly removed by 1973 and have been campaigning to return ever since. In 2024, the UK announced it would relinquish...

Finn Lau, a Hong Kong activist, was taking his daily walk along London’s River Thames when Chinese government thugs beat him up. Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was filing paperwork at a Saudi consulate in Turkey when Saudi government assassins murdered and dismembered him. And Bi-2, a dissident Russian-Belarusian rock band, narrowly avoided being forcibly sent to Russia while on tour in Thailand. All had fled repression and thought they were safe in exile. But increasingly, governments are...

President Nayib Bukele came to power in El Salvador on a promise of ending gang violence. He succeeded, turning a state that was the world’s murder capital into to one with one of the lowest homicide rates in the Western Hemisphere. But in the process, he systematically dismantled democratic checks and balances and arbitrarily detained tens of thousands of people, including children. El Salvador now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world.    What’s to be done when an elected...

Since April 2023, more than a half-million people have been displaced in Sudan due to fighting between two armed forces who were once aligned. The story of how the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces turned on each other, with devastating consequences for Sudan’s civilians, can be traced back to 2013 when a group of dissidents were told by their interrogators to ride a bicycle drawn with chalk on the wall of a Sudanese jail.  Detained for providing legal support to...

In the early aughts, a campaign to “Save Sudan” became the bipartisan issue of the time. Celebrities and politicians alike implored a global audience to pay attention to and advocate against Suan’s human rights crisis.   As interventions waned, so did the attention of many global onlookers. But, since the Sudan Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces began fighting in April 2023, over 500,000 Sudanese civilians have been displaced. What has happened in Sudan since the world stopped paying...

When Robert Taylor bought land and began to build a home in St. John Parish in Louisiana, he envisioned a compound that would house his family for generations to come. Now, Taylor hopes that his grandchildren don’t have to live in this “Sacrifice Zone.”   The Taylors’ home is situated in what’s known as Cancer Alley, an 85-mile stretch of land along the banks of the Mississippi River that was once home to sugar plantations, but now houses some 200 fossil fuel and petrochemical...

  In 2023, Human Rights Watch researcher Nadia Hardman came across a letter the United Nations had sent to the government of Saudi Arabia expressing concern over the killing of Ethiopian migrants who were attempting to enter the kingdom. Migrants from the Horn of Africa had long used the so-called “eastern migration route” through war-torn Yemen in the hope of getting employment in Saudi Arabia – but the UN letter mentioned a mass grave of up to 10,000 in a remote border region. The Saudi...

What happens to cargo ships at the end of their lives? Often, they wind up beached on shores in the global south where untrained and unprotected workers are tasked with breaking them apart in dangerous conditions. In this episode, Host Ngofeen Mputubwele takes listeners to the beaches of Bangladesh where Human Rights Watch recently completed an investigation of the shipbreaking industry. Here, in what the International Labour Organization calls the most dangerous job in the world, workers are...

The Russian military assault on the Ukrainian city of Mariupol between February and May 2022 left thousands of civilians dead and injured, including many in apparently unlawful attacks, and trapped hundreds of thousands for weeks without basic services, Human Rights Watch along with Truth Hounds and SITU research produced a report with extensive findings. It called on Russian President Vladimir Putin and other senior officials should be investigated and appropriately prosecuted for their role...

Teaser: Rights & Wrongs