Human Rights Watch recently released a report that details brutal gang rapes and other abuses allegedly carried out by employees of Barrick Gold in Papua New Guinea. Barrick, a Canadian firm, is the world's largest gold producer and Porgera is one of the world's largest gold mines. Now the company is scrambling to put things right, investing in new mechanisms for oversight and accountability and firing some of its private security personnel while others are being hauled away by the police.

French senators should remove provisions in the draft immigration law that are incompatible with human rights norms, Human Rights Watch said in an open letter to senators today. On February 8, 2011, the Senate is scheduled to resume examination of the government-sponsored immigration bill article by article. The National Assembly approved the bill in October 2010.

We are writing to express our serious concerns about a variety of provisions in the immigration bill currently under examination in the Senate. The memorandum annexed to this letter sets out our analysis and detailed recommendations.

Private security personnel employed at a gold mine in Papua New Guinea have been implicated in alleged gang rapes and other violent abuses, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The Porgera mine has produced billions of dollars of gold in its twenty years of operation, and  is operated and 95 percent owned by Barrick Gold, a Canadian company that is the world's largest gold producer.

Friday’s (January 21) powerful ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that Greece is not a safe country of asylum should come as no surprise to immigration ministers in the EU.

Too many governments are accepting the rationalizations and subterfuges of repressive governments, replacing pressure to respect human rights with softer approaches such as private “dialogue” and “cooperation,” Human Rights Watch said today in releasing its World Report 2011. Instead of standing up firmly against abusive leaders, many governments, including the European Union, adopt policies that do not generate pressure for change.

In my numerous trips to Tunisia for Human Rights Watch since the mid-1990s, I grew weary of Tunisian dissidents telling me that at any moment the people would rise up in revolt against their autocratic president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.

China's first National Human Rights Action Plan committed the Chinese government to end the practice of "extortion of confessions by torture" and put police and security forces on notice that "it is strictly forbidden to extort confessions by torture."