Reports

In this report, Human Rights Watch examines how the declaration from the United Nations High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS addresses such critical issues as women’s and children’s rights, abuses faced by socially marginalized populations, and access to treatment.

More than 7,200 Romanian children and youth aged 15 to 19 are living with HIV. The vast majority were infected with HIV between 1986 and 1991 as a direct result of government policies that exposed them to contaminated needles and “microtransfusions” in which small children were injected with unscreened blood in the mistaken belief that this would improve their immunological status.

This 72-page report documents how the abusive policies and practices of the Zimbabwean government are fueling the HIV/AIDS epidemic, increasing vulnerability to infection, and obstructing access to treatment.

This 92-page report details the disrespect, suspicion and apathy that pregnant rape victims encounter from public prosecutors and health workers. The report also exposes continuing and pervasive impunity for rape and other forms of sexual violence in states throughout Mexico.

This report documents how draconian drug laws and routine police abuse of injection drug users – the population hardest hit by HIV/AIDS in Ukraine – keep them from receiving lifesaving HIV information and services that the government has pledged to provide.

This 61-page report documents the government’s denial of assistance and protection to people internally displaced as a result of Operation Murambatsvina (“Clear the Filth”), which began in May. The report also examines the role of international agencies, and in particular the United Nations country team, in addressing the humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe.

The families interviewed for this 60-page report described fleeing their homes after receiving threats, being subjected to torture, or seeing relatives or neighbors killed. When they flee their communities and seek shelter elsewhere, they may wait weeks or even months for emergency aid, are often denied medical care, and may be unable to enroll their children in schools.

This 55-page report is based on firsthand testimony from dozens of children in three countries hard-hit by HIV/AIDS: South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda. It documents how governments fail children affected by AIDS when they leave school or attempt to return.

This report is the most detailed study to date of abuses by insurgent groups. It systematically presents and debunks the arguments that some insurgent groups and their supporters use to justify unlawful attacks on civilians.

As Russia’s HIV/AIDS epidemic spreads, thousands of HIV-positive mothers and their children face pervasive discrimination and abuse. This 41-page report focuses on the discrimination that these women face, as do their children, many of whom are abandoned to the care of the state.

Decisions about contraception and abortion are difficult, deeply personal, and sometimes wrenching. In Argentina, women are routinely prevented from making such decisions.

This 57-page report based on on-the-ground interviews with Chinese AIDS activists, gay rights activists, activists working with drug users, and website managers shows that while senior officials have said they want to encourage China's emerging civil society, many AIDS activists face state harassment and bureaucratic restrictions.

This 47-page report examines the Indian government's response to the tsunami and documents several systemic and potentially enduring failures.

This 80-page report documents the recent removal of critical HIV/AIDS information from primary school curricula, including information about condoms, safer sex and the risks of HIV in marriage.

Governments around the world have done far too little to combat the entrenched, chronic abuses of women’s and girls’ human rights that put them at risk of HIV. Misguided HIV/AIDS programs and policies, such as those emphasizing abstinence until marriage, ignore the brutal realities many women and girls face.