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Taguhi shows scars on her neck and shoulder. In 2016, her former husband attacked her and her mother with an axe, killing her mother. 

© 2016 Nazik Armenakyan (Daphne.am)

Armenia’s parliament adopted amendments strengthening the country’s domestic violence law. The legislation was adopted last week as postwar Armenia both struggles to secure its border with neighboring Azerbaijan and deepen its relations with the European Union.

Armenia’s 2017 domestic violence law was an important first step, but its accountability provisions were inadequate and protective measures were deeply flawed. The law’s title, which included “restoring family harmony,” set the tone.

The amendments remove the reference to “family harmony” and add additional acts of physical, sexual, psychological, and economic violence that can be considered domestic violence. These include, among others, forced medical and psychiatric interventions, hindering access to medical care, virginity testing, prohibiting or hindering contacts with relatives and friends, and various forms of exercising control over a partner. The amendments also criminalize stalking as a standalone crime.

Armenia’s criminal code doesn’t list domestic violence as a standalone offence, but it does specify that if the perpetrators of certain crimes are close relatives, this can be an aggravating factor. The amendments provide that partners and former partners (who are not deemed relatives) are now also included as perpetrators who can be charged with this aggravating factor. The amendments also specify that causing a child to witness domestic violence is tantamount to an act of violence.

The amendments set a minimum time period for urgent intervention measures – which are a step short of court-issued protective orders – and extend the time period for protective orders. Both measures allow police to force an abuser from the home or restrict them from communicating with a victim.

Finally, the amendments specify that survivors have priority access to free healthcare services to address conditions caused by domestic violence and that shelters must be accessible to people with disabilities.

Authorities noted a doubling in the number of criminal investigations into domestic violence: 1,848 investigations in 2023 compared with 960 in 2022. They partially attributed this to a new methodology of compiling statistics and an increased reporting rate, rather than an increase in violence.

Much needs to be done in Armenia to protect women and girls from domestic violence. For example, in some cases, courts invalidate police urgent intervention orders. And Armenia has yet to ratify the Council of Europe’s convention on preventing domestic violence, known as the Istanbul Convention. Meanwhile, the Armenian government should continue promoting zero tolerance on domestic violence and ensure accountability of perpetrators.

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A boy sits on a bicycle in front of a plastic recycling facility in Adana, Turkey.
© 2021 Human Rights Watch

Next week in Ottawa, countries will reconvene to continue negotiations on an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution. A revised draft of the treaty published by the United Nations Environment Programme on December 28, 2023, contains certain positive measures to reduce plastic production. However, it lacks the necessary provisions to protect human rights and health from the impacts of plastic pollution, especially for frontline communities and those who are most vulnerable.

The draft proposes options to address the full life cycle of plastics, from reducing production to eliminating the use of the most hazardous chemicals to improve plastic safety. However, it promotes higher recycling rates to increase producer responsibility without accounting for the human rights and health harm associated with recycling. It also overlooks a significant element of plastic production: fossil fuels. Ninety-nine percent of plastics are made from fossil fuels, which are also the primary driver of the climate crisis.

January 25, 2024

US: Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’

Dire Health Crisis From Government Failure to Rein in Fossil Fuels

In January, a Human Rights Watch report found that communities living alongside fossil fuel and petrochemical operations, including those producing the feedstocks for plastics, in Louisiana, United States, suffer elevated risks and rates of severe health harm, including cancer, respiratory ailments, and maternal, reproductive, and newborn health harm. This area has come to be known as “Cancer Alley” due to parts of it bearing the highest risks of cancer from industrial air pollution in the country. In Cancer Alley, health harm from fossil fuel operations disproportionally impacts Black residents.

September 21, 2022

Turkey: Plastic Recycling Harms Health, Environment

Lax Monitoring, Enforcement Creates Serious Rights Risks

Previously, Human Rights Watch documented the harmful impacts of plastic recycling in Turkey, where people living near recycling facilities suffer respiratory and skin ailments from pollutants and toxins emitted from plastic recycling. The treaty should not promote higher recycling rates without outlining measures to mitigate human rights and health impacts linked to recycling.

Governments are obligated under international human rights law to respect, protect, and fulfill all human rights, including the rights to health and to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. The plastics treaty should uphold existing obligations and commitments, including by phasing out fossil fuels, to address the climate crisis.

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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz sits opposite of Chinese President Xi Jinping during talks at the State Guest House in Beijing, China, April 16, 2024.
© 2024 Michael Kappeler/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Photo

Germany’s economy is very dependent on China, so expectations were low that Chancellor Olaf Scholz would place human rights concerns prominently on the agenda of his April 13-16 trip to China. But his apparent unwillingness to publicly say the words “human rights” was deeply disappointing.

The Chinese government’s long-egregious human rights record has become dramatically more repressive since Xi Jinping took power in 2013. Thousands of critics of the government are behind bars. The government oppresses and surveils the Tibetan and Uyghur populations and for years has actively suppressed their language, culture, and religion. In recent years, Beijing has deprived the people of Hong Kong’s fundamental freedoms.

Scholz’s three days in China were longer than any of his previous trips since taking office. He came with a huge entourage, consisting of the heads of the largest and most renowned German companies, as well as federal ministers, state secretaries, and the media. He spoke for hours with Xi, campaigned for freer trade for German industries, and sought Chinese support on key foreign policy issues, including over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He assured journalists that he had addressed “all the difficult issues,” but did not once mention “human rights.”

Sino-German relations are complicated. But even evaluated against its own metrics, the new German China Strategy, the German chancellor did not achieve its aims. The strategy recognizes China as a security threat and geopolitical competitor from which Germany should “de-risk,” and that the two countries’ relations should be rules-based and values-driven. This broadened Sino-German relations from their traditional focus on improving market access for German industries to a more multifaceted one.

But sadly, the German China Strategy proved to be nothing but hollow words. Germany’s experience with Vladimir Putin’s Russia should have made it clear that abusive governments make unreliable trade partners. Instead of steering Sino-German relations on a new course consistent with its own strategy by publicly promoting respect for human rights, Scholz defaulted to the well-worn path that will not further Germany’s long-term interests nor the basic human rights of the people in China.

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Groups protest against the visit of Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon and other Central Asian leaders to Berlin, Germany, September 29, 2023.
© 2023 snapshot-photography/FBoillot/Shutterstock

(Berlin, April 16, 2024) – Several people based in Lithuania, Poland, and Türkiye, linked to a banned Tajik opposition movement, Group 24, have in recent months disappeared or have been arrested and threatened with extradition to Tajikistan, Human Rights Watch and the Norwegian Helsinki Committee said today.   

Group 24 is a political movement promoting democratic reforms in Tajikistan, which the Tajik government banned and designated a terrorist organization in October 2014. Tajikistan has for the last decade sought the extradition of exiled activists in other countries, some of whom also have been killed or forcibly disappeared. Host governments should not deport the people concerned to Tajikistan because of the risk of torture and should respect Tajik asylum seekers’ full due process rights, including not arbitrarily detaining them at the behest of unfounded and politically motivated requests by the Tajik government.

“Tajikistan should unequivocally end its decade-long hunt of perceived critics abroad, especially those related to Group 24 and other banned groups,” said Syinat Sultanalieva, Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The EU and Türkiye should protect opposition activists and refrain from returning them to Tajikistan, a country known for engaging in transnational repression, where they risk being tortured.”

Human Rights Watch recently published a report on transnational repression – targeting of critics abroad by repressive governments – that includes several cases of members of Group 24, both former and active, who had fled the country only to be targeted by the Tajik government,  seeking their arrest and extradition to Tajikistan on charges of terrorism or extremism-related activities. Activists in exile have also been subject to enforced disappearances or abusive use of Interpol Red Notices, which is a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person because a government is seeking their extradition.

On April 5, 2024, Lithuanian security services detained Sulaimon Davlatov, a former member of Group 24, in Vilnius on charges of allegedly violating Lithuania’s national security. On April 7, a court in Vilnius ordered his pretrial detention for two months, and on April 9 the Lithuanian Prosecutor General’s office told the media that Davlatov “presents a threat to the national security of Lithuania due to his cooperation with members and allies of terrorist organizations, extremist movements and propaganda of extremism.”

Davlatov has been a resident of Lithuania since he was granted asylum in 2015. Lithuanian authorities should rule out any risk that Davlatov could be extradited to Tajikistan, and in line with fair trial rights, grant Davlatov and his lawyer immediate access to any evidence they have to substantiate the allegations.

On February 23 and March 10 respectively, two senior figures in Group 24, Nasimjon Sharifov and Sukhrob Zafar, disappeared in Türkiye. Both had previously been detained by the Turkish police in March 2018 at the request of Tajik authorities and threatened with extradition but were eventually released. They had recently told family and colleagues that they were receiving regular threats from Tajik intelligence services. Neither man’s whereabouts is currently known. Friends and colleagues are concerned that they may have been forcibly disappeared by either or both Tajik and Turkish authorities and extrajudicially removed to Tajikistan.

On March 19, a court in Poland ordered Komron Khudoydodov, brother of former Group 24 activist Shabnam Khudoydodova, to leave Poland by April 19 voluntarily or be deported to Tajikistan. This followed the rejection of his application for asylum. Khudoydodov moved to Poland in 2018 on a humanitarian visa from the Polish authorities granted because he faced persecution in Tajikistan due to his sister’s peaceful political activity. In 2015, Tajik authorities had Shabnam Khudoydodova placed on the Interpol Red Notices on charges of extremism.

Tajik authorities also have an ongoing criminal investigation against Komron Khudoydodov on charges of extremism. Returning Khudoydodov to Tajikistan would place him at risk of torture or ill-treatment, and therefore be a violation of the ban on refoulement. Poland should make clear that it will abide by its international legal obligations and rule out deporting Khudoydodov to Tajikistan.

In addition to Lithuania and Poland, other European Union members, such as Austria, Germany, and Slovakia, have in recent years returned or threatened to return Tajik asylum seekers to Tajikistan despite credible evidence of their risk of being tortured. Upon their arrival in Tajikistan, those deported from the EU member states have been jailed.

The United Nations Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, prohibits the expulsion, return (refoulment), or extradition of a person to another state where there are substantial grounds for believing that they would be in danger of being tortured. The European Convention on Human Rights also incorporates this ban as an element of the prohibition on torture and inhuman and degrading treatment. All EU member countries and Türkiye are party to both treaties. This principle is also incorporated into Lithuanian, Polish, and Turkish domestic law.

“EU member states and Türkiye should uphold their international human rights obligations, including not to return people at risk of torture and persecution for their political activism to their country of origin,” Sultanalieva said. “They should denounce cases of transnational repression and review any cooperation agreements with states engaged in targeting critics abroad.”