|2016

WORLD REPORT 2016
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
Foreword
World Report 2016 is Human Rights Watch’s 26th annual review of human rights
practices around the globe. It summarizes key human rights issues in more than
90 countries and territories worldwide, drawing on events from the end of 2014
through November 2015.
The book is divided into two main parts: an essay section, and country-specific
chapters.
In the introductory essay, “Twin Threats: How the Politics of Fear and the Crushing
of Civil Society Imperil Global Rights,” Human Rights Watch Executive Director
Kenneth Roth details how fear drove two of the most important global
developments of 2015. Fears of terror attacks and of the potential impact of
refugee influx led to a visible scaling back of rights in Europe and other regions.
Scapegoating Muslims and refugees, Roth argues, hurts and alienates populations
crucial to counterterrorism efforts. Efforts to weaken encryption of communications
and to intensify surveillance—the knee-jerk response of many
governments to terror attacks—undermines privacy rights, can endanger critical
infrastructure, and may distract from the focused investigative work that should
be at the heart of counterterrorism efforts. In countries as diverse as China,
Ethiopia, India, and Russia, another set of fears—in this case, fears that new digital
communications platforms will energize social and political movements—
helped to drive a less recognized but disturbing and destructive global trend: the
adoption by many countries of repressive new nongovernmental organization
laws and policies targeting individuals and groups that try to hold governments
to account, including social media users, civil society groups, and the funders
who back them. Roth traces the ways in which human rights law can and should
guide responses to these major global developments. “We abandon it,” he
warns “at our peril.”
Most people never question the “boy” or “girl” designation they receive at birth.
In the next essay, “Rights in Transition ” Neela Ghoshal and Kyle Knight examine
the humiliating and violent treatment often endured by those who do. Across the
world, transgender people are subject to discriminatory laws and policies that
prevent them from accessing a range of rights and services, including health
care, free expression, and privacy, and that in some cases ban their very existence.
Years of advocacy by intrepid transgender activists, combined with recent
international pressure—including from the United Nations and Council of Europe—has
increased access to legal recognition for transgender people and
eased the process by which they can achieve it. No new or special rights lie at
the heart of such crucial efforts, argue Ghoshal and Knight, but rather a fundamental
“commitment to the core idea that the state or other actors will not decide
for people who they are.”
Around the world, girls are forced into child marriages that are often ruinous for
their personal growth and disastrous for their ability to realize basic human
rights. Child marriage often means leaving school, domestic violence, a cycle of
poverty, and an increased risk of serious health problems and death due to early
childbearing. One in nine girls in the developing world marry before 15, and one
in three by 18. The UN Sustainable Development Goals adopted in September
2015 aim to eliminate child marriage within 15 years, and many governments,
donors, and civil society groups have rallied to the cause. But success, warns
Nisha Varia, will not come easy and requires sustained political commitment to
address social and cultural norms around girls' sexuality; coordination across
multiple sectors; learning about what works and for whom; and empowering
girls themselves with information and access to services so that they can realize
a potential that so many of their mothers—themselves child brides—have been
denied.
Finally, in “Children Behind Bars,” Michael Bochenek looks at the global overuse
of child detention. The UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, estimates that more than
one million children are behind bars worldwide. Some of these children are serving
excessively long sentences, others are held for skipping school, running
away from home, and other acts that should not be crimes, and some have never
been tried for their alleged crimes. Migrant children are often held in immigration
detention. Children with disabilities may be institutionalized. All of these
practices violate international standards. A UN study soon underway will hopefully
result in increased attention to these abusive practices and greater compliance
with international standards. But as Bochenek notes, governments do not
need to wait for this study; they can and should act now to develop alternatives
to detention and ensure that children who are locked up receive schooling,
health services, and humane treatment.
The rest of the volume consists of individual country entries, each of which identifies
significant human rights issues, examines the freedom of local human
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