Helsinki Watch was a private American NGO established by Robert L. Bernstein in 1978, designed to monitor the former Soviet Union’s compliance with the 1975 Helsinki Accords. Expanding in size and scope, Helsinki Watch began using media coverage to document human rights violations committed by abusive governments Since its inception, it has produced several other watch committees dedicated to monitoring human rights in other parts of the world. In 1988, Helsinki Watch and all its companion watch committees were combined to form Human Rights Watch
Holt McDougal is an American publishing company, a division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, that specializes in textbooks for use in secondary schools.
The Human Right to Water and Sanitation (HRWS) was recognised as a human right by the United Nations General Assembly on 28 July 2010.
Operation Grapes of Wrath is the Israeli Defense Forces code-name for a sixteen-day campaign against Lebanon in 1996 which attempted to end rocket attacks on Northern Israel by Hezbollah. Israel conducted more than 1,100 air raids and extensive shelling. A UN Interim Force compound at Qana was hit when Israeli artillery fired on Hezbollah forces operating nearby. 639 Hezbollah cross-border rocket attacks targeted northern Israel, particularly the town of Kiryat Shemona. Hezbollah forces also participated in numerous engagements with Israeli and South Lebanon Army forces. The conflict was de-escalated on 27 April by a ceasefire agreement banning attacks on civilians.
Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has been in power since 1999, lifted a state of emergency in early 2011 and human rights have improved over the last few years. However, the country continues to restrict human rights in significant ways. Extensive nationwide protests, partly over these restrictions, have been raging since 2010.
Marc Garlasco is an American former Pentagon senior intelligence analyst, now senior civilian protection officer for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and senior military advisor for the Human Rights Council (HRC). Having served for seven years at the Pentagon, becoming chief of high-value targeting, Garlasco left in 2003 and joined Human Rights Watch (HRW) as a senior military expert, specializing in battle damage assessment, military operations, and interrogations for the Emergencies Division, where he investigated human rights issues in a number of different conflicts zones. The author of a World War II German anti-aircraft medals reference book, Garlasco was suspended by HRW with pay, "pending an investigation", on September 14, 2009 after it was alleged that he had collected Nazi memorabilia. Garlasco downplayed the controversy, indicating he collected German and US World War II memorabilia because of family history and his interest in military history. He resigned from HRW in February 2010. He served as senior civilian protection officer for UNAMA in 2011, heading the UN's Protection of Civilians office. In early 2012, as the U.N. senior military advisor for the HRC's Independent Commission of Inquiry on Libya, he investigated civilian casualties while leading a survey of NATO's activities in Libya.
The New Times is a national English language newspaper in Rwanda.
It was established in 1995 shortly after the end of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi Rwanda genocide.
The paper states that it is privately owned, with two shareholders. They also have a Rwandan local language (Kinyarwanda) weekly called Izuba Rirashe.
The Nager Kovil school bombing refers to a disputed incident in the Sri Lankan Civil War. Tamil sources claim that on September 22, 1995, the Sri Lankan Air Force bombed the Nagar Kovil Maha Vidyalayam school in Jaffna, resulting in the death of, by varying accounts, 34-71 Sri Lankan Tamil civilians, primarily schoolchildren and the injury of many more. The Sri Lankan government denied bombing the school. Journalists and human rights organizations reported the imposition of censorship at the time of the alleged incidents.
The Gornje Obrinje massacre refers to the killing of 21 Kosovo Albanians, belonging to the same family, in a forest outside the village of Donje Obrinje on 26 September 1998 during the Kosovo War. Among the victims were women and children.
Rinehart & Company was an American publishing company founded in 1946. Renamed Rinehart & Company in 1946, the publishing company merged with Henry Holt and Company and the John C. Winston Company in 1960, to form Holt, Rinehart and Winston (HRW).
Baz Mohammad Ahmadi (Ahmady) is the Deputy Minister of Interior for Counter-Narcotics and the former Governor of Badakhshan, in Afghanistan. He used to be Governor of Ghor Province. Ahmadi is an ethnic Tajik and was a mid-level commander in the Jamiat Islami military alliance under Ahmed Shah Massoud that fought in the civil wars that dominated Afghanistan after the withdrawal of Soviet occupation forces in the early 1990s. After the American-led invasion of 2001, Ahmadi became a high-ranking Afghan defense department functionary, including a posting as Ismail Khan's replacement as military commander of Herat Province.
A talibé is a boy, usually from Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali or Mauritania, who studies the Quran at a daara. This education is guided by a teacher known as a marabout. In most cases talibés leave their parents to stay in the daara.
Alison Des Forges was an American historian and human rights activist who specialized in the African Great Lakes region, particularly the 1994 Rwandan genocide. At the time of her death, she was a senior advisor for the African continent at Human Rights Watch. She died in a plane crash on 12 February 2009.
Kenneth Roth is an American attorney who has been the executive director of Human Rights Watch since 1993.
The international non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) has been the subject of criticism from a number of observers. Critics of HRW include the national governments it has investigated, NGO Monitor, the media, and its founder, Robert L. Bernstein.
Sarah Leah Whitson is an American lawyer who is the director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch.
Joe Stork is an American political activist and Deputy Director for Middle East and North Africa at Human Rights Watch. He holds an M.A. in International Affairs/Middle East Studies from Columbia University.
The kafala system is a system used to monitor migrant laborers, working primarily in the construction and domestic sectors, in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. The system requires all unskilled laborers to have an in-country sponsor, usually their employer, who is responsible for their visa and legal status. This practice has been criticised by human rights organizations for creating easy opportunities for the exploitation of workers, as many employers take away passports and abuse their workers with little chance of legal repercussions.
