Human Rights Watch's Blog
February 19, 2026
Olympic Ban Raises Thorny Free Speech Issues
The disqualification of the Ukrainian skeleton athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych from the 2026 Winter Olympics shines a critical light on Rule 50 (2) of the Olympic Charter prohibiting political, racial, or religious “propaganda” at Olympic venues. He was disqualified for wearing a helmet displaying images of Ukrainian athletes killed since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The decision by the Ad Hoc Division of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, an Olympic panel, while rejecting Heraskevych’s appeal, sympathizes with his motivation to commemorate those who have died. But it found the Athlete Expression Guidelines to be reasonable, proportionate, and correctly applied in this case.
At the 2024 Paris Olympics, an Afghan athlete, Manizha Talash, was disqualified after displaying the message “Free Afghan Women,” highlighting denial of rights to millions of women and girls under Taliban rule.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s interest in keeping playing grounds free from political propaganda is a legitimate aim, and freedom of speech is not absolute. However, there is a case to be made that commemorating the dead, whether from war, disease, or sexual violence, is not a political statement that could legitimately be banned.
The war has undeniably devastated Ukraine’s sports community, severely limiting athletes’ ability to train and compete, including at the Olympic level. Ukrainian authorities reported in February that more than 650 Ukrainian athletes and coaches have been killed, and that Russian attacks have destroyed over 800 sports facilities, including training centers for Olympians and Paralympians. Many athletes now train without reliable electricity, heat, or water, often amid air sirens and shelling as attacks on their home cities continue.
Athletes do not surrender their human rights in competition and should not feel censored from speaking out on human rights, social justice, racism, or bigotry at the risk of losing all they have trained for. Indeed in 2022, the IOC amended the Olympic Charter to acknowledge their responsibility to abide by “respect for internationally recognized human rights” and adopted a Strategic Framework on Human Rights.
The IOC and other international sports bodies need to assess the human-rights impact of their rules and ensure they protect both the integrity of competition and fundamental rights. Rules designed to keep sport free from propaganda should not silence remembrance of victims or expression about serious human rights abuses.
Six Years of Denied Justice in Hanau
Six years ago, on February 19, 2020, a far-right extremist shot and killed nine and injured six people predominantly of Muslim background in Hanau, Germany. The attack was motivated by racism and Islamophobia.
Today, we remember:
Ferhat Unvar
Hamza Kurtović
Said Nesar Hashemi
Vili Viorel Păun
Mercedes Kierpacz
Kaloyan Velkov
Fatih Saraçoğlu
Sedat Gürbüz
Gökhan Gültekin
The attack in Hanau was not an isolated racist hate incident. Official statistics reflect a steep rise of racist, antisemitic, and Islamophobic hate crime, with actual numbers of incidents expected to be much higher. Systemic anti-Muslim discrimination remains to be a daily reality in Germany as a result of ineffective government protection of Muslims and persons perceived as such. Where protection falls short, groups targeted by hate crime will face an environment that can threaten their lives.
The authorities’ investigations into the attack were deeply flawed and, still today, there are unresolved questions about the police’s response when some victims called the emergency hotline as the incident unfolded. A comprehensive official investigation has not been conducted and, six years later, victims’ families are still fighting for accountability.
The families’ efforts to commemorate their loved ones have also come under attack after they criticized political actors.
Bereaved families, survivors, and supporters founded the Initiative 19. Februar Hanau as well as individual initiatives in victims’ names. These grassroots groups have become a central, survivor‑led force in the advocacy for remembrance, justice, and full accountability. Ahead of the sixth anniversary, the initiative is once again calling for commemorations and acts of solidarity across Germany.
Serpil Temiz Unvar, the mother of Ferhat Unvar, said last year that these initiatives “have contributed to society coming together in this case more than in similar events in the past. But these individual efforts, as important as they are, are not enough to bring about fundamental societal transformation.”
A 2023 government-commissioned report on anti-Muslim hostility in Germany—following the Hanau attack—showed the widespread nature of hatred and discrimination affecting Muslims and persons perceived as such and outlined concrete recommendations for government action.
However, the German government is not taking action. As far-right political forces gain strength in Germany, the government should finally take seriously the threats against racialized communities and support civil society fighting for their protection every day.
The government should invest in protecting Muslims and all other minority communities in Germany, such as through sustained funding for independent, community‑based protection and support centers, because it is ultimately an investment in the safety and cohesion of the entire society.
February 18, 2026
Trinidadian Nationals Face Escalating Abuse in Syrian Camp
Since 2019, more than 90 Trinidad and Tobago nationals, including at least 50 children, have been arbitrarily detained in northeast Syria for alleged links to the Islamic State (ISIS). After enduring years of life-threatening conditions, their situation in recent weeks has only gotten worse.
Trinidadian women detained in Syria’s Roj camp, which is under control of the Syrian Democratic Forces, recently reported to Human Rights Watch what they described as escalating abuses by Asayish, Kurdish internal security forces, including night raids, beatings, threats, and degrading treatment. In a message to Human Rights Watch, one woman described armed men entering the camp late at night, firing into the air, forcing women and children from their tents at gunpoint, separating boys from their mothers, and beating the children. “It’s the most humiliated and powerless I’ve ever felt in my entire life,” she said. She said the men beat her as well and shouted, “You will never be free. You are garbage. You’ve failed your children. They are going to die.” The attack continued for four hours.
More than 40,000 foreigners from 60 countries have been held in camps and other detention facilities in northeast Syria since the fall of ISIS in 2018-2019. Since then, at least 40 countries have repatriated more than 12,000 of their nationals. Despite numerous promises to repatriate its own nationals, Trinidad and Tobago has only accepted back two boys in April 2025.
Most Trinidadian detainees are children who never chose to live under ISIS. Many were taken to Syria by parents who sought to join ISIS or live in the “caliphate.” Thirty or more were born in Syria. Not one Trinidadian being held in northeast Syria has been charged with a crime or had access to a judge to challenge their detention, which is unlawful.
The government of Trinidad and Tobago has long cited the difficulty of engaging with a nonstate armed group controlling the camps as a barrier to repatriation. As control of the area shifts and international engagement with Syria’s transitional authorities increases, that justification is less convincing.
The lives of dozens of Trinidadian women and children are hanging in the balance.
Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar should act immediately to bring the country’s detained nationals home.
Russia: Attacks on Abortion Undermine Women’s Rights
(Berlin) – Russian authorities are restricting access to safe abortion care and limiting the ability of women and girls to get accurate information about their reproductive choices, Human Rights Watch said today.
Authorities at all levels have openly pressured private clinics to stop performing abortions, toughened licensing requirements, revoked their licenses, and reclassified drugs used in medical abortion as controlled substances, making them harder to access. The Health Ministry’s 2025 guidelines for medical professionals, applicable to both public and private facilities, pressure women seeking an abortion to continue the pregnancy.
“Russian authorities are jeopardizing women’s rights, health, and even lives, as part of their harmful ‘traditional values’ crusade and effort to boost population growth,” said Holly Cartner, deputy program director at Human Rights Watch. “Although abortions in Russia are not banned outright, accessing this essential health service is becoming increasingly difficult.”
An analysis of government data exposes an egregious increase in restrictions on abortion care since 2023. There has been a dramatic drop in the number of facilities willing and able to provide such care, undermining women’s and girls’ rights to life, to health, and personal autonomy.
Although abortion is still legal in Russia, authorities have banned the “promotion” of a “child-free lifestyle” and, in many regions, “incitement” to abortion. In October 2025, the government announced the imminent creation of a special register to track pregnancies and their outcomes, which would violate women and girls’ right to privacy.
Access to safe abortion care is a core public health and human rights concern. Denying access to abortion is a form of discrimination and jeopardizes a range of human rights, including to life, health, and information; to freedom from torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; to privacy and bodily autonomy and integrity; and to decide the number and spacing of children. Abortion bans force pregnant people to self-manage abortion or travel greater distances for abortion care. Such bans are harmful to women’s and infant health, including resulting in increased mortality.
In recent years, with the birth rate reaching the lowest numbers in decades, the Kremlin has advanced the ideology of “traditional family values,” which presents a family strictly as a heterosexual pair with multiple children and designates a woman’s role primarily as that of wife and mother. When promoting 2024 as “Year of the Family” in Russia, President Vladimir Putin emphasized that, “The main purpose of the family is about having children, about procreation, and thus, the perpetuation of our people and our centuries-old history.”
In Russia, abortion care is legal up to 12 weeks on request, up to 22 weeks in cases of rape, and at any time for valid medical reasons. Abortion is free under the country’s universal health insurance in public facilities and for a fee in private commercial clinics licensed to provide abortion care. Reproductive services are guaranteed as part of the right to health under Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Russia enforces a waiting period of two to seven days, depending on the term of pregnancy, between the initial medical consultation and the abortion, ostensibly to prevent women from “making a rash decision,” but which in reality is often used to pressure women to reconsider, in line with the Health Ministry’s mandatory counselling guidelines. Mandatory waiting periods delay abortion and create logistical hurdles by requiring multiple visits to a clinic. These obstacles can be especially harmful for those already facing significant barriers, including adolescent girls.
Russian law allows girls ages 15 to 17 to access abortion independently in public health facilities, but younger girls need a parent or guardian’s authorization. Under civil law, girls under 18 need parental or guardian consent to receive any health services in private clinics, including abortion care. Parents or guardians can request and receive health information on their children, including on pregnancy, until the child turns 18. Human Rights Watch has documented extensively that forced parental involvement in abortion exposes adolescents to harm and delays their care.
Regional authorities across Russia, following federal efforts to boost birth rates, have increasingly pressured private clinics to give up their abortion licenses, resorting to threats or coercion. This pressure, coupled with burdensome requirements on the clinics, severely limits the availability and geographical accessibility of abortion care. Over 200 clinics across the country have lost their licenses to perform abortion since 2023, but the number that stopped providing abortion services is even higher. In January, Fyodor Lukyanov, head of the Patriarchate’s Commission on Family, Motherhood, and Childhood, under the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church, reported that at least 852 private clinics had, with the “assistance” of governors and the church, “voluntarily” stopped providing abortion care. In some regions, the availability of abortion services decreased radically.
Vologda region has put in place a de facto ban on abortion, forcing women to travel to another region, which is especially hard for those from rural areas, those with low incomes, and young and marginalized women, who often already face the greatest barriers to accessing care.
The government’s policy to promote population growth has led to public hospitals increasingly pressuring women to continue their pregnancies, including during mandatory consultations following a request for abortion. Clerics sometimes participate in these consultations, arguing that abortion is killing and therefore, a grave sin.
In many regions, government authorities offer medical professionals financial and other incentives to convince women to continue a pregnancy. Some medical professionals have incorrectly told women that abortions very often cause infertility. Mandatory counseling, biased information, and the involvement of clerics in clinical decision making are inconsistent with World Health Organization (WHO) guidance and violate standards of informed consent and noncoercion.
Discussion of reproductive autonomy and abortion is increasingly under attack, and anti-abortion rhetoric is rampant in Kremlin-controlled media. In 2024, the State Duma outlawed “child-free propaganda,” and in January 2025, a court fined a woman under this law for a social media post with a photo of a prominent film director who supposedly wanted to “make movies, not children.” Since 2023, regional legislators in at least 25 regions made “incitement to abortion” a punishable offense, and a similar federal draft is under discussion at this writing. In December 2025, a judge in Saransk fined a local resident under the region’s “incitement to abortion” ban for offering to pay for his partner’s abortion.
These policies are reducing access to quality medical care and violate the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. Restrictions on discussion of and access to reproductive rights, including family planning and abortion information, violate the right to freedom of expression.
“Access to quality reproductive care, including safe abortion, is a human right,” Cartner said. “Russian authorities should bring their policies and regulations in line with international law and reproductive care standards.”
For additional details, please see below.
Methodology
Human Rights Watch generated data on the number of facilities licensed to conduct abortions by comparing the October 2025 register of medical licenses to an archived version dated October 2023, provided by the Center for Data and Research on Russia, a research group. A researcher coded the facilities as either public or private, and their locations. Based on this data, Human Rights Watch found evidence of a significant reduction in the number of both private and public facilities licensed to conduct abortions.
The data does not allow researchers to establish how many, or which clinics lost their licenses due to the authorities’ intervention, gave up their licenses in light of new, more cumbersome and costly requirements coupled with pressure by the authorities (ad hoc inspections, hostile rhetoric, etc.), or gave up their licenses for other reasons. The data also does not provide information about how many facilities still provide abortion care in practice.
Human Rights Watch also sourced information from media reports, databases of regional laws, data from the state procurement portal, and government statistics through November 2025. The researchers did not interview affected women or medical professionals to avoid putting them at greater risk but included relevant comments from social media.
Growing Number of Clinics Refuse Abortion Services
Since 2017, Russian medical facilities have been required to have a specific license to provide abortion care. Recently the government has intentionally strictly enforced onerous licensing requirements, which include having an operating room, an in-patient ward, an anesthesiologist, and an emergency care doctor in attendance, and healthcare protocols, such as mandatory psychological consultations. During this period, over 200 medical facilities have terminated or lost their licenses. The licensing burden may disincentivize clinics and hospitals from providing this essential health service.
In seven Russian regions and in Russia-occupied Crimea, not a single private clinic is currently licensed to provide abortion services, based on Human Rights Watch’s analysis of the licensing register maintained by the Federal Service for Surveillance in Healthcare. The head of Crimea’s Health Ministry under occupying authorities said that, as a result of their “deliberate, systemic work,” the last remaining private clinic in Crimea, where almost 2 million people live, stopped performing abortions in 2025. In October 2023, Crimea had 11 clinics licensed to provide abortion care.
Between 2023 and 2025, authorities in the Tver region, with a population of 1.2 million, and the Republic of Mordovia, with a population of 759,000, terminated abortion licenses in all local private clinics, 17 in Tver and 11 in Mordovia, respectively. Mordovia authorities also shut down abortion services in all public facilities except for three public hospitals in the regional capital, Saransk. In 2025, the only private clinic providing abortion care in the Magadan region, with a population of 135,000, lost its abortion license.
In the Nizhny Novgorod region, with a population of roughly 3 million, 54 out of 64 private clinics lost abortion licenses between 2023 and 2025. Between July and November 2025, 33 public hospitals in that region stopped performing abortions. In some Russian regions, private and even some public clinics still licensed to perform abortions had stopped providing the service by October 2025.
In March 2024, the Consortium of Women’s Non-Governmental Associations said it received numerous complaints from women in various regions that private clinics were denying abortion care. A government official in Tatarstan said that 19 licensed clinics had “voluntarily” stopped providing abortions in the region in 2023. In Zabaykalsky Krai, a region with close to a million residents, public medical facilities gave up abortion licenses en masse under pressure from regional health authorities. In 2023, 27 towns in the region had hospitals that provided abortion care, but by 2025, there were only 6.
In some cases, the authorities clearly stated their intention to restrict access to abortion. The Nizhny Novgorod region governor Gleb Nikitin, said “We are against making the path to this controversial decision [to have an abortion] simpler.”
The government’s pressure on private clinics is a core component of the efforts to curb access to abortion. Authorities in multiple regions reported that they were in negotiations with local clinics to convince them to stop performing abortions, and publicly demanded that the clinics “voluntarily” give up their abortion care licenses.
Andrei Turchak, the head of the Altai Republic, with a population over 2 million, also promised to restrict abortions in private clinics, in a post on his Telegram channel in October 2025. The last remaining private clinic providing abortion care in the region gave up its license after the governor publicly gave the clinic what he described as his “last warning.” Authorities also conducted inspections of clinics providing abortion care and cited many clinics for violations.
The Russian Orthodox Church has long advocated an abortion ban and works closely with the government by aggressively condemning abortions in their public rhetoric, suggesting legal initiatives to restrict abortions, and having priests participate in mandatory pre-abortion consultations with the aim of pressuring women to reconsider.
In October 2025, Pavel, metropolitan bishop of Primorye, called on local clinics to follow the example of 750 private clinics across the country, which he claimed had “voluntarily” stopped performing abortions; the regional governor supported the call. The head of the Patriarchate’s Commission on Family, Motherhood, and Childhood boasted that between February 2023 and January 2026, 852, or 30 percent of private clinics across Russia, stopped performing abortions.
Shrinking Access to Medical Abortion
According to the WHO, medical abortion can be safely self-managed by women, including at home, up to the twelfth week of pregnancy. However, medical abortion has become increasingly difficult to obtain in Russia, despite being recognized as safe and effective, typically using mifepristone and misoprostol. In 2024, the Health Ministry reclassified them as controlled substances, with the heavier requirements making their procurement and use more burdensome, and the increased probability of ad hoc inspections and penalties for alleged violations.
Mifepristone and misoprostol are part of the list of essential medicines by WHO, meaning that countries should provide them as part of their core obligations to guarantee the right to health, and governments should ensure that they are both available in adequate quantities and physically and financially accessible for those who need them. In light of the new restrictions in Russia, however, many clinics stopped administering mifepristone and misoprostol. In July 2025, Mikhail Murashko, the Russian Federation health minister, expressed satisfaction that, due to joint efforts by the ministry and the State Duma, abortion pills were “impossible to buy and banned from sale in pharmacies” across the country.
Some public hospitals provide only procedural abortion (dilation and suction curettage), not medical abortion. Medical professionals and women in several regions reported that some doctors, instead of providing medical abortion as requested, suggested that the patient should wait and get a procedural abortion later in the pregnancy. In April 2025, the Consortium of Women’s Non-Governmental Associations said it received complaints from women whom doctors had denied medical abortion.
In 2024, 81 percent of abortions on request provided by private clinics were medical abortions, compared with only 44 percent in Health Ministry hospitals, according to government statistics. In occupied Crimea, where not a single private clinic is currently licensed to perform abortions, only 23 percent of abortions on request in public hospitals in 2024 were medical abortions. In Dagestan, the figure is 12 percent. Medical statistics show that only 15 percent of girls ages 15 to 17 who had abortions in 2024 had medical abortions, almost all through private clinics.
In 2023, the Kursk region’s Deputy Governor Andrei Belostotskiy said that four local private clinics stopped performing medical abortions and expressed hope that all the remaining clinics would do the same.
In recent years, authorities have made it harder for clinics to provide medical abortion services by enforcing burdensome requirements to have an operating room, an in-patient ward, an anesthesiologist, and an emergency care doctor in attendance.
Refusals to Provide Abortions
In February, the governor of Vologda, a region with over a million residents, publicly shared his plan to put an end to abortions in the region. Subsequently, media outlets reported that medical personnel started to systematically and arbitrarily refuse to perform the procedure, in blatant violation of Russian law. Forcing women to continue pregnancies due to systemic or arbitrary refusals violates the right to health and, as human rights bodies have found, may amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.
When local medical facilities refuse to provide abortions, women are forced to travel to other regions to obtain abortion care. Anna Minina, a woman in Vologda region, sought an abortion in February 2025. Minina told the feminist association “ONA” that medical professionals refused to provide abortion care, forcing her to travel over 200 kilometers to neighboring Yaroslavl to access abortion care. Another local resident said in an interview that she too was denied an abortion, despite undergoing all necessary procedures and consultations, and also had to travel to Yaroslavl.
Some regional and local officials continue to enforce Russia’s law guaranteeing access to abortion. Local prosecutors issued 19 formal warnings to Vologda health care facilities over the arbitrary refusals to perform abortions and brought at least two cases against hospitals. In one case, a hospital official testified in court that the regional health ministry had verbally instructed them to stop performing abortions. Judges found both hospitals guilty and imposed fines.
However, medical personnel continued to arbitrarily refuse to provide abortion care, and the governor stated that no abortions were performed in the region in July 2025, compared with 112 in July 2024.
On the regional government’s official social media page, numerous women criticized the reported “successes” in lowering abortion rates, pointing out that women who seek abortion care end up traveling to neighboring regions, such as Yaroslavl.
Pressure on Women and Girls to Continue a Pregnancy
Authorities and healthcare providers in many regions systematically gave women and girls biased and sometimes inaccurate information to dissuade them from having abortions, creating another arbitrary barrier to accessing abortion care. In July 2025, the federal Health Ministry updated reproductive counseling instructions for healthcare providers that make it mandatory for all women requesting an abortion to undergo a “consultation.”
The explicit purpose of the mandatory psychological “consultation” is to “save” the pregnancy. These guidelines portray Russia as a “global ideological center of support for traditional spiritual values” and instruct providers to emphasize the benefits to women of early childbearing and having multiple children.
They prohibit doctors from bringing up the option of abortion. If a woman or girl nevertheless insists on terminating the pregnancy, they are required to attend another session with a psychologist who, in violation of professional principles, is often set on persuading the patient to continue the pregnancy. As a psychologist from an Ivanovo hospital described it, “we bring in a lawyer and a priest, so that the woman could make the one and only correct choice, to keep the child.” The participation of priests in such “consultations” has been increasingly reported across the country.
Tatarstan officially launched the program of mandatory “consultations” in 2024, with 64 percent of women who had sought an abortion withdrawing their requests after “consultation,” double the number in 2023, according to the region’s health minister.
Chechnya and Ingushetia reported that 100 percent of women in those regions who had requested an abortion in February to September 2025 continued the pregnancy after a consultation. Dagestan apparently experienced a sudden and sharp increase in the withdrawal of abortion requests, reporting that in August and September 2025 that 99.75 percent of women who had sought an abortion instead registered for prenatal care, compared with an average of 52 percent earlier in the year.
Mandatory counseling, biased information, and religious involvement in clinical decision-making are inconsistent with WHO’s guidance and violate standards of informed consent and non-coercion.
According to the government’s own information, authorities in multiple regions provide financial incentives to doctors for not performing abortions. For example, in Vologda, doctors receive 5,000 roubles (US$64) for each woman they “convince” to continue the pregnancy, and a bonus of 25,000 roubles ($320) after the baby is delivered. Providing financial incentives to deter women from exercising a legal medical option violates international standards on informed consent and reproductive autonomy.
Abortion is a common health intervention and very safe when carried out using a method recommended by WHO, appropriate to the pregnancy duration. However, Russian health officials and practitioners pressure women to continue pregnancies by falsely claiming that a large proportion of women experience infertility after an abortion. Some doctors and websites of medical facilities misinform their patients that 15, 20 and even 25 percent of women experience infertility following an abortion and that an abortion results in incurable psychological trauma.
Under international human rights law, everyone has the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, which includes the right to seek and receive information concerning health issues, and to make informed decisions about their health care. Government refusal or failure to use scientifically and medically appropriate research and health education to inform health policy is inconsistent with its obligations to the public and undermines the right to health.
In October, Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova announced the planned creation of a federal register in 2026 that will include all pregnant women and girls and the outcomes of their pregnancy—presumably, including abortion—“for monitoring purposes.” While Golikova emphasized that “all the data will be strictly protected,” Russian authorities have consistently failed to safeguard personal information, including medical records, and this new move threatens to undermine privacy rights and the obligation of governments to do no harm through collecting health data, which should be done with full transparency and in consultation with women and girls.
Anti-choice activists have intimidated and harassed doctors who perform abortions. They have also conducted “inspections” of medical facilities during which they attend pre-abortion consultations under false pretences and then report to the authorities whether doctors, in their view, made sufficient efforts to convince women to reconsider. They also organized “training,” including funded by the government, for medical personnel on how to convince women to continue the pregnancy.
Bans on “Incitement to Abortion”
Since 2023, 25 Russian regions have made “incitement to abortion” a punishable offense, based on a Human Rights Watch review of regional legislative databases. Under these laws, individuals face fines of up to 50,000 roubles ($632), and legal entities, up to 500,000 roubles ($6,325). Another five regions also ban incitement to abortion without any stipulated penalties. At least 19 other regional parliaments are also considering such bans.
Most bar “incitement” through deceit, persuasion, bribery, or suggestion. Six extend the definition of incitement to “other” methods, creating additional risk of broad and arbitrary application. The head of the State Duma Committee on Family Protection criticized the definition in regional legislation as “unclear,” expressing concern that it could apply even to discussions with close relatives, but this has not led to any changes in these laws.
In December, a judge in Saransk fined a local resident 5,000 roubles ($63) under Mordovia’s “incitement to abortion” ban. The charges stemmed from allegations by his partner that he offered to pay for an abortion when she told him she was pregnant with twins. Mordovia was the first region to outlaw such “incitement” in 2023.
Legislators are already discussing the introduction of a similar federal law. Russia’s federal “gay propaganda” law, adopted in 2013, had been preceded by “gay propaganda” prohibitions in several regions.
In November 2024, Russia adopted a law to ban “childfree [lifestyle] propaganda.” In December 2024, anti-extremism police in Russia-occupied Sevastopol brought charges under the law against a woman over her old social media post that supposedly promoted “forgoing childbearing in favor of a carefree lifestyle.” The “offending” post, which the authorities described as “misanthropic,” featured a photo of a prominent film director who supposedly wanted to “make movies, not children.” In January 2025, a Russia-installed court fined her 50,000 rubles ($632).
Russia’s Obligations Under International Human Rights Law
As a party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Russia has legal obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. These include the duty to ensure the availability, accessibility, acceptability, and quality of health facilities, goods, and services. This requires states parties to ensure “the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas concerning health issues.”
In its General Comment No. 22 on the right to sexual and reproductive health, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights said that the right to sexual and reproductive health is “indivisible from and interdependent with other human rights” and “essential to the realization of the full range of [women’s] human rights.” It has also specified that sexual and reproductive health care and information should be characterized by non-discrimination; physical, financial, and information accessibility; and a lack of barriers.
Both this committee and the committee that oversees compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women found that denying women and girls access to safe abortion, including abortion on request, can violate their rights, including their rights to life and health. In some cases, barriers to abortion access may even amount to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
The CEDAW Committee has highlighted that failing to provide necessary services that specifically affect women constitutes a violation of reproductive rights and discrimination. To comply with these international standards, states need to dismantle discriminatory practices and legal restrictions that prevent equitable access to reproductive health services. The treaty also requires states to eliminate discriminatory gender stereotypes, including those that portray women primarily as mothers, which underpin many of Russia’s current policies and narratives on “traditional values.”
Sweden Deporting Young People
Ayla, 21, Jomana, 18, and Ilya, 19, came to Sweden as children, though at different ages and under different circumstances. Today they face the same reality: all have been ordered to leave the country alone while their families remain.
These cases stem from Sweden’s increasingly restrictive migration policy, under which young people who turn 18 before obtaining permanent residency are no longer considered part of their parents’ family unit. The Swedish Migration Agency states that residency based on parental ties is granted only in exceptional cases involving “special dependency.” A normal parent-child relationship is not sufficient.
On February 17, 2025, a multiparty proposal to stop these deportations did not gain a majority in the Parliamentary Committee on Social Insurance, despite cross-party recognition that the practice separates families.
Jomana Gad, 18, arrived in Sweden at age 4 and faces deportation to Egypt. “I have my whole life here,” she told media, describing her hopes for education and work. Ayla Rostami, 21, who arrived at 15, recalls seeing Sweden as a place of freedom. Ilya Taheraki, 19, came at age 8 and applied for permanent residency at 15. He was rejected days after turning 18. He and Ayla now face deportation to Iran.
Young people cannot be deported from Sweden if they have permanent residency, but many children spend years in the country on temporary permits. Combined with long processing times and increasingly restrictive policies—including stricter family reunification rules, higher income requirements, and narrowed humanitarian protection such as limits on “particularly distressing circumstances”—the safeguards that keep families together have weakened. As a result, some “age out” at 18 and lose their right to remain in the country as they can no longer claim residency based on ties to their parents.
Sweden is a party to both the European Convention on Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, under which failing to prioritize the best interest of the child and to protect the private and family lives of children and young adults within the context of immigration is a violation of the country’s international legal obligations.
Instead, Sweden should halt deportations that separate young adults from their families and ensure children’s asylum and family reunification cases are processed without delays that cause them to age out of protection. The government should also create clear pathways to residency reflecting the years individuals have spent in Sweden, including schooling and community ties, and reintroduce humanitarian grounds for “particularly distressing circumstances.”
Philippines: Planned Climate Relocations Threaten Rights
(Tokyo) – Philippine authorities relocating communities displaced in 2021 by Typhoon Odette have ignored the rights of residents, especially those with disabilities, Human Rights Watch said today. Initiatives for relocation on Siargao island in the southern Philippines have lacked meaningful consultation, accessible information, and inclusive participation, undermining rights and putting residents at risk of future extreme weather events.
After the StormClimate Change, Planned Relocation, and People with Disabilities in Siargao, Philippines
View the web feature hereIn December 2021, Typhoon Odette—known internationally as “Rai”—swept across the Philippines, including Siargao, flattening homes, killing hundreds of people, and displacing thousands. Entire coastal communities were left without shelter, clean water, or access to public services. People with disabilities and their families described significant obstacles in evacuating and staying safe during and after the storm. Since then, the Philippine authorities have sought to permanently move entire communities to areas designated as safer, called planned relocation, without adhering to international standards aimed at protecting the rights of those affected.
“Siargao island authorities have relocated people, including those with disabilities, to sites that are inaccessible and lack basic services,” said Emina Ćerimović, associate disability rights director at Human Rights Watch. “The Philippine government needs to fully consult people with disabilities and the wider community to ensure that future planned relocations uphold their rights.”
Between May and September 2025, Human Rights Watch interviewed 48 people, including 25 people with disabilities and their families who live in 4 municipalities on Siargao island—Del Carmen, Pilar, San Isidro, and Santa Monica—community representatives, climate change experts, United Nations representatives, and government officials in Manila, Butuan City, Surigao City, and Siargao.
Click to expand Image Overview map of Siargao and nearby islands where Human Rights Watch conducted research on unplanned relocations and planned relocations in the aftermath of Typhoon Odette, internationally known as “Rai.” Analysis and Graphics © 2026 Human Rights Watch“My husband carried me on his back through the floods,” said Jocelyn Iytac Eguna, 65, who has a physical disability, describing the typhoon that devastated Siargao and nearby islands. “I felt I had lost hope and really wanted to die. It’s really difficult for me. Other people can just run away but I had to be carried.”
Following Odette, the Philippine government instituted a No-Build Zone policy in coastal and riverbed areas of Siargao, part of the protected conservation area, to prevent residents from returning to their homes “for their own safety.” However, the authorities did not meaningfully consult displaced communities about their needs and preferences for the future, nor did they offer those displaced adequate alternative housing or sufficient information on plans to provide a durable solution.
Click to expand Image Satellite imagery shows designated No-Build Zone (NBZ) established by the national government on the aftermath Typhoon Odette, prohibiting the building of residential homes in this area, October 1, 2023 © 2026 Airbus. Google Earth. Source: No-Build Zone (NBZ )= The boundaries of the NBZ have been traced by georeferencing and digitalizing a map produced by DENR-PAMO-SIPLAS and provided by Del Carmen’s Mayor’s office to Human Rights Watch on February 5, 2026. Graphics © 2026 Human Rights WatchIn the past decade, storms in the Philippines have displaced at least 43.8 million people. As climate change accelerates, the number of those displaced is expected to increase. A recent study found that human-induced climate change has “more than doubled the likelihood of a compound event like Typhoon Odette.” In November 2025 alone, two back-to-back typhoons in the country affected more than 12 million people, causing hundreds of fatalities and displacing more than 466,000 people, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Under the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, competent authorities have the primary duty and responsibility to establish conditions for a durable solution for people displaced by disasters. International standards set out three durable solutions for the displaced: dignified return, local integration, or permanent planned relocation to a new, comparable site. Most residents displaced by Typhoon Odette immediately returned and rebuilt homes in the No-Build Zone, where they face an uncertain future.
Because people’s lives, livelihoods, and identities are deeply tied to their homes, climate adaptation and disaster prevention measures that allow people to remain in place should be prioritized whenever possible. According to the UN Guidance on Planned Relocation (2015), planned relocation should be considered only as a last resort to protect life and health, and based on consultation with affected communities or at their request.
Municipal governments on Siargao have responded in various ways to the typhoon and the No-Build Zone designation. Immediately afterward, the San Isidro municipal government undertook, without consulting the affected families, an unplanned and inadequately supported relocation of 40 families from the San Isidro riverbank to Josephath, a site uphill, which has undermined their rights. Community members and local government officials said that relocated families have inconsistent access to water and difficulties in accessing the river and services in the community. People with disabilities are particularly at risk of injury and lack of access due to the inaccessibility of the site.
Similarly, the Pilar municipal government, with support from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), moved several families to a site that the local community said floods regularly, undermining the whole purpose of relocation. As a result, during extreme weather, the families remain cut off from access to the rest of the village, including the local primary school, which also serves as an evacuation site.
The municipalities of Santa Monica and Del Carmen, which are currently developing planned relocations, should learn from these mistakes and act to ensure a rights-respecting process, Human Rights Watch said.
Mayor Alfredo Coro of Del Carmen acknowledged that the municipality had yet to consult affected communities but expressed his commitment to make the planned relocation human rights-centered and disability-inclusive. If Del Carmen’s planned relocation successfully upholds human rights, it could serve as a model for municipalities across the Philippines, and perhaps in the 77 other countries where disaster-related planned relocations have been documented.
The Philippines is obligated under international human rights law to respect, protect, and fulfill everyone’s economic, social, and cultural rights, and to protect them from reasonably foreseeable climate change risks, including sea-level rise and other climate change impacts. Under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), authorities at all levels are obligated to ensure protection and safety of people with disabilities in situations of risk, including disasters.
As the national and local governments expand planned relocation in Siargao, it is crucial for them to safeguard human rights through meaningful consultation and accessible information. Ensuring the rights of those most at risk, including people with disabilities, will result in better protection and safety for all, Human Rights Watch said.
“The Philippine government and international donors should provide local authorities in Siargao with sufficient support to develop durable solutions for those uprooted by Typhoon Odette or increasingly exposed to climate risks,” Ćerimović said. “Climate change magnifies existing inequalities, and past failures in Siargao underscore the urgent need for authorities to ensure inclusive, rights-based solutions, including through planned relocation.”
Relocations on Siargao Island
Typhoon Odette
On December 16, 2021, Typhoon Odette made landfall in the Philippines, including on Siargao, claiming hundreds of lives and destroying numerous buildings, affecting 99 percent of the Siargao’s population. People with disabilities and their families described facing significant barriers while evacuating and trying to stay safe during and immediately after the storm.
Jocelyn Iytac Eguna, 65, who has a physical disability and uses crutches, has lived all her life on Halian, a small, flat island in the Dinagat Sound two hours by boat from Siargao. When Odette struck, her house was damaged and she became trapped inside with her husband. Feeling she was a burden, she urged her husband to save himself. “But my husband said he wouldn’t leave me because I have a disability,” she said through tears:
My husband carried me on his back through the floods, with electric wires damaged and down, and coconut palms falling around us. He carried me all the way and stayed with me. I felt I had lost hope and I really wanted to die. It’s really different for me: other people can just run away and I couldn’t. I needed to be carried. The next few days were difficult: there was no food; we survived mostly on coconut water.
Eguna said the trauma left her with deep psychological wounds. When asked if she had received any psychosocial—mental health—support, she responded, “None. You are the only one who had come to ask me how I feel.”
Many other people with disabilities described similar experiences:
Ronie Ticmon Ruaya, 50, a polio survivor who also lived all his life on Halian, said he decided to stay home with his wife and his children during the storm: “It’s really difficult because of my disability.… If you don’t have polio, you can just immediately run fast, but because of my condition, I just can’t.”Mary Jane Bual, from Jaboy in Pilar, also decided not to evacuate. Her 16-year-old son has intellectual and physical disabilities, and she said he does not always understand or respond well to changes. “It’s hard to explain to John Francis why he needs to leave the house,” she said. “We could have just forced him to leave by carrying him. But we decided to stay and shelter together.”An aunt of a 12-year-old boy with developmental and physical disabilities on Halian described his extreme distress as the family tried to shelter inland without adequate protection from the storm and elements. “It’s really a big difference [compared with other children], because he can’t speak,” she said.Following Typhoon Odette, the national government instituted a No-Build Zone policy alongside Siargao’s coast to prevent displaced residents from returning to their homes. The government stated it was for safety reasons, but ultimately neither the national nor local authorities provided communities with durable solutions through rights-respecting planned relocation. The authorities did not meaningfully consult with the communities about their needs and preferences, and most received no visits from the authorities. In the days and weeks that followed, without any other options, most returned and rebuilt their homes there.
Applicable International Law and Standards
International human rights law on planned relocations is set out in various human rights treaties that the Philippines has ratified, notably the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It is also established in international standards and guidance, such as the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Framework on Durable Solutions for Internally Displaced Persons, which authoritatively interprets to comply with international legal obligations, and the Guidance on Planned Relocation, to help governments plan and carry out relocations of communities at risk in a rights-respecting manner.
With regard to the specific needs of people with disabilities, Philippine government officials acknowledged national laws and policies guaranteeing disability rights, including the National Adaptation Plan of the Philippines, the Magna Carta for Disabled People, and the National Resettlement Policy Framework. But they said that no practical measures are in place to safeguard disability rights, including to inclusion and participation, accessible information, protection and safety, accessibility, or access to public services.
Unplanned Relocations: Pilar and San Isidro Municipalities
Click to expand Image Jimilito Gonzales shows the height water reached inside his home, built after Typhoon Odette, after flooding caused by extreme rainfall on January 16, 2023, in Jaboy, Pilar, Siargao, Philippines. © 2025 Emina Ćerimović/Human Rights WatchIn Siargao’s Pilar municipality, the local government with the support from IOM relocated several families from Jaboy village to a nearby site. Community members reported—and Human Rights Watch observed—that the new site floods regularly, cutting residents off from the rest of the village and the only evacuation site. This is particularly dangerous for Jimilito Gonzales, a 48-year-old man with an intellectual disability, who doesn’t know how to swim and relies on his brother to reach safety. His brother said:
We carry him there [to the village]. I would place him on the makeshift raft made of banana leaves and push the raft. Sometimes, the water is up to our necks, and sometimes it’s above our head and we need to swim and push the raft.
IOM confirmed that the organization’s primary support was in providing climate resilient housing for the site, but that they also supported pre-relocation assessments and consultation efforts in Pilar. IOM emphasized that responsibility for determining site suitability rests with the local government and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, which, according to IOM, issued a certification confirming the site’s suitability for relocation, noting that the area had a low flood and low landslide susceptibility rating. Nevertheless, IOM acknowledged that assessments based on historical hazard data can be limited in their ability to foresee future hazards. To address this, IOM said it is collaborating with governments to improve site assessment methodologies, including by modeling future risk patterns, and interviewing community members with lived experience.
Satellite imagery comparison before and after the passage of Typhoon Odette on December 16, 2021, showing the destruction across Jaboy village, Pilar, Siargao island. (From left to right): December 4, 2020 © 2026 Planet Labs PBC. January 6, 2022 © 2026 Planet Labs PBC. Analysis and Graphics © 2026 Human Rights Watch.
Click to expand Image Satellite imagery from October 10, 2022 shows a relocation site less than 100 meters from Jaboy village, Pilar, Siargao island. The land occupied by those houses within the relocation site appeared partially inundated after the passage of Typhoon Odette on December 16, 2021. Image: October 10, 2022 © 2026 Vantor. Google Earth. Analysis and Graphics © 2026 Human Rights WatchRegarding consultation, IOM said they consulted affected families in Pilar, including by sharing information about the site and arranging visits before relocation. However, a relocated resident said that “we had no choice,” as they had lost their homes and the site was the only land available, despite being known to flood regularly.
IOM representatives as well as local government officials acknowledged that land availability is a major constraint and said they had not received formal complaints about flooding in Jaboy from the local government or community members. Nonetheless, based on the concerns reported by Human Rights Watch, IOM said it was committed to “coordinate further with the communities and local and national partners to understand what further support is needed, explore comprehensive solutions, and advocate for potential means through which these needs could be met.”
Click to expand Image Water stains mark the exterior walls of homes after flooding caused by extreme rainfall on January 16, 2023, in Jaboy, Pilar, Siargao, Philippines. © 2025 Emina Ćerimović/Human Rights WatchThe IOM reiterated that long-term responsibility lies with the local government, and recognized the need to build capacity at local levels.
While other community members who remained in Jaboy believed that the municipal government had a plan to relocate them to safer areas, Pilar’s representatives said there were no such plans for Jaboy.
Immediately after Typhoon Odette, authorities in San Isidro municipality relocated several families from the riverbank in San Isidro to Josaphath, an uphill location originally intended as temporary. Officials and an elected representative said in May 2025 and again in September that the site had become permanent because it is considered safe from flooding, and it was easy to move people there because the local government already owns it.
However, community members and local government officials agreed that the site lacks regular access to water and the steep road isolates people with disabilities. Zenaida Tomines, 52, who has a physical disability, said she fears another big storm since the evacuation site—a primary school—is down the same steep road. “I am afraid for my own safety because of my disability,” she said. When Human Rights Watch asked San Isidro officials about plans to address the accessibility problem, they said there were no plans to address it.
A close-up view of San Isidro main center shows the destruction of dozens of houses across the village after the passage of Typhoon Odette on December 16, 2021. (From left to right): September 24, 2019 © 2026 Vantor. Google Earth. December 19, 2021 © 2026 Vantor. Google Earth. Analysis and Graphics © 2026 Human Rights Watch.
Click to expand Image Satellite imagery from May 10, 2025 shows an area at the end of a steep road where 40 families, including people with physical disabilities, were relocated from the bank of the San Isidro River after the passage of Typhoon Odette on December 16, 2021. Image: May 10, 2025 © 2026 Airbus. Google Earth. Analysis and Graphics © 2026 Human Rights WatchPlanned Relocation: Del Carmen Municipality
Typhoon Odette caused severe destruction in Del Carmen, the island’s largest municipality, destroying nearly 5,000 homes and displacing thousands of residents. Essential services, including water and electricity, were widely disrupted. Local authorities believe that their eight-year effort to restore the mangrove forests prior to Typhoon Odette had helped reduce the storm’s impact.
A close-up view of Del Carmen village before and after the passage of Typhoon Odette that made landfall on Siargao island on December 16, 2021. (From left to right): June 15, 2019 © 2026 Vantor. Google Earth. December 19, 2021 © 2026 Vantor. Google Earth. Analysis and Graphics © 2026 Human Rights Watch.
To carry out the No-Build Zone policy, the municipal government has been preparing permanent planned relocation sites. The authorities intend to relocate about 1,000 households to three sites, including the entire population of Halian island, which the authorities say will become uninhabitable due to rising sea levels. Other high-risk coastal communities in downtown Del Carmen are also expected to be relocated, though timelines are unclear.
In the nearer term, the municipal authorities intend to relocate about 250 households from Halian to Mabuhay, on Siargao. The authorities selected the site because it provides easy access to the ocean, which enables the predominantly fishing community to maintain their traditional livelihoods, reflecting some consideration of residents’ livelihood needs.
The Del Carmen government has been working closely with the Philippines Department for Housing Settlement and Urban Development (DHSUD) and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to secure approvals and funding for the relocation. Mayor Alfredo Coro told Human Rights Watch that the municipality is committed to building the first 10 houses even if they do not have full external support.
Click to expand Image Estimated travel time by boat from Halian island to reach Del Carmen Port. The Halian community is planned to be relocated to Barangay Mabuhay, approximately 4.5 kilometers by road from Del Carmen downtown. Analysis and Graphics © 2026 Human Rights Watch Click to expand Image © 2026 Human Rights WatchSo far, however, the Del Carmen authorities have not consulted with those they intend to relocate or taken steps to learn of their needs and concerns. A representative of the DHSUD in Butuan City, which oversees Siargao island, said in September that if approved the project would include social preparation and consultations “to ensure community acceptance.” This approach, however, does not meet international standards for meaningful consultation since it suggests a predetermined outcome rather than information exchange, genuine engagement, and collaborative decision-making.
When responding to a question on ensuring inclusion of people with disabilities in Del Carmen’s planned relocation efforts, the representative said: “We have really good laws, but implementation is slow. [There is] a lack of funding, not a lack of willingness to respond to the needs of people with disabilities.” In a May 2025 interview, Mayor Coro conceded that disability-specific rights and needs had not been discussed.
Existing plans reviewed by Human Rights Watch did not incorporate accessibility or disability-inclusive design, including accessible routes. Mayor Coro said he was committed to adapting the plan to respect human rights, including disability rights. “We are more active in collaborating with people with disabilities sector [and encourage them] to be more vocal of their demands, so we can hopefully provide services that they want.”
Key Human Rights Issues Relating to Planned Relocation
Consultation
Under international human rights law, planned relocation needs to be preceded by meaningful, informed, and participatory consultation with affected communities, as required by the rights to an adequate standard of living, and access to information, among other rights. Beyond ensuring that planned relocation is a measure of last resort, national and local governments have an obligation to ensure that affected communities are meaningfully involved in decisions about a potential move. This includes the right to be informed, offer input at multiple stages of the process, and to have their views taken into account before any final decisions are made. The Guidance on Planned Relocation emphasizes that planned relocation should be voluntary and conducted in a way that respects the human rights, dignity, and safety of all.
Mayor Coro acknowledged that consultation had been lacking: “We didn’t consult much the community, because we wanted to first ensure we would have legal opinion to identify the land that can be used. We don’t want to provide false hope, without first finalizing the relocation site.”
A government official from Del Carmen said that a public hearing for the relocation of the Halian community was held on Siargao island in September 2025, making participation nearly impossible for Halian residents, particularly people with disabilities, due to the costly two-hour boat ride. The official confirmed that only people in positions of authority were invited and that organizing the consultation in Halian was beyond their budget.
For people with disabilities, who have historically been excluded from decisions affecting their lives, the right to be closely consulted and actively involved is crucial. Article 4(3) of the disability rights treaty obligates governments to closely consult with and actively involve people with disabilities through their representative organizations in policy development, planning, and implementation.
The UN Guidelines on Consulting Persons with Disabilities details how inclusive consultation helps ensure that policies, strategies, and programs are effective; that barriers to inclusion are identified and addressed, and, in the context of planned relocation, that the process responds to everyone’s needs. Consultations should be timely and frequent, and include reasonable accommodations, accessible information and communication, sufficient preparation time, and physical accessible venues.
Philippine law and policies, notably the Philippines Post-Disaster Shelter Recovery Policy Framework, identifies consultation as a core component of recovery efforts.
People with disabilities and local government representatives in Siargao said that authorities did not meaningfully consult or involve people with disabilities in the relocation plans, including those carried out San Isidro and those planned for Del Carmen. None of those interviewed reported having been consulted or involved in decisions regarding planned relocation.
Johanna Mary Pacle, 21, who has a physical disability and lives in Del Carmen’s No-Build-Zone, said, “As a person with a disability I am used to not being consulted. I would like consultation so I can learn more.”
Her father, Junuan Escanan, 48, said little information had been provided: “We are still waiting to actually see what plan the government has, it’s rather become a rumor now than reality. I don’t know where and when, it’s just talk.” He emphasized the importance of participation: “I was born in this home. I would like to be consulted if there are plans to move us.”
While some municipal officials said they were concerned about building expectations, early and inclusive consultation with communities is crucial for effective and dignified solutions. Evidence from the special rapporteur on internally displaced persons in a 2024 report shows that outcomes are better when relocated communities have information about options and are involved in the decision-making about whether to relocate.
Right to Information
Everyone interviewed for this report said that the authorities had provided no information about relocation plans, and what they knew was mostly rumors from other residents.
The right to information is a core component of a human rights-based approach to planned relocation. Moreover, the 2010 Framework provides that “[n]ational and local authorities … need to provide IDPs [internally displaced persons] with all the information they require to choose a durable solution, while also ensuring that IDPs can exercise this choice without coercion.”
Relocation fundamentally alters people’s lives, and they have the right to receive information throughout all stages of the process, so they make informed decisions, including whether to relocate or remain. Information should be provided in a clear and accessible manner and should include anticipated disaster and climate risks as well as the social, physical, and economic impacts of the relocation.
The 2015 Guidance provides that adequate, advanced, up-to-date, and accessible information on the rationale for relocation, as well as alternatives considered, is essential to minimize the risk of forced evictions.
Under the disability rights treaty, the government is obligated to ensure that people with disabilities can “seek, receive, and impart information on an equal basis with others and in all forms of communication of their choice,” including accessible formats and technologies, such as sign language, Braille, and easy-to-read formats. The goal is to ensure information is accessible, understandable, usable, and supports autonomy and equal participation.
Arnold Alaban, 43, a vendor with a physical disability who lives in the Del Carmen No-Build Zone, said that he had not received any concrete information about the planned relocation efforts. “I’m not really informed about it,” he said. “I don’t know anything, just that it means that people have to move. No one spoke directly with me about it.”
Ruel de Rosario, 48, who also has a disability and also lives in Del Carmen, said that the last time he heard anything about the No-Build-Zone was immediately after Odette. “The DENR [environment department] posted signage over this area after Odette. The signage was removed after a couple of months.” He and others said they had never received official information about risks or plans for relocation, relying instead on rumors.
The lack of reliable information has raised concerns among many residents on Halian island and Del Carmen’s downtown coastal area that they will be forced to relocate without their consent. In May 2026, Mayor Coro said that they do not intend to forcibly relocate the residents and the same was reiterated by a Del Carmen official in January 2026 regarding the Halian community.
Right to Housing
Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognizes the right to housing as a component of everyone’s right to an adequate standard of living. Many current residents of Del Carmen are “tenured migrants,” people recognized under Philippine law for their long-term, subsistence living for which they are granted rights to stay in the protected area. The Siargao Islands Protected Landscapes and Seascapes Act recognizes the occupancy of families who lived on the land for five or more years before the island was designed as a protected area for conservation in 1996.
The law further provides protections in case “these areas are subsequently identified as crucial for conservation” to be transferred to “alternative sites ... provided that their transfer shall be undertaken using humanitarian considerations including payment of compensation, providing tenure to alternative land and facilities of equivalent standard, and other measures to reach agreement with the affected tenured migrants.”
The 2015 Guidance sets out that if the government later uses the vacated land, it “should ensure that land vacated in a Planned Relocation is used in a manner that … enables Relocated Persons to retain access to that land and its resources, to continue their preexisting livelihoods, and to maintain spiritual and cultural practices, for as long as practicable.” This would be applicable, for instance, to displaced residents from Del Carmen’s coastal communities whose land was used for an expanded port or tourism purposes, or those on Halian if tourism were expanded on the island.
People with Disabilities, Durable Solutions and Views on Relocation
Most people with disabilities and their families living in the four municipalities on Siargao island said that they wished to stay, citing their strong ties to the land, reliance on livelihoods linked to the ocean, and the ability to easily access needed services. Ruel de Rosario, 48, who has a physical disability, said, “I’ve lived here since birth. My mother, who is 77, lives here as well as my 18-year-old daughter.” Analyin Rosas, 27, who has a disability, said, “I’ve lived here since I was born, my father was also born in this house.”
To make informed decisions about whether to relocate or remain, community residents need information responsive to their concerns. Those in Siargao who expressed a willingness to relocate emphasized the need for clear information and assurances that they could work in the new site and earn an income sufficient for an adequate standard of living. They also hoped relocation would provide secure, permanent housing.
“I’d agree to be relocated to have a house of my own,” said Arnold Alaban, who sells small items to tourists at the Del Carmen port, “It would have to be not far from where I would be able to make a living.”
Rosas, said, “I’ve lived here since I was born. My father was also born in this house.” She has no independent income and lives with her year-old son at her father’s house. She said the relocation “would be okay, but we would need to be near the ocean since my father is a fisherman.” Her father and three adult brothers depend on coastal access to work as fishermen and boatmen for tourists.
For others, relocation raised concerns about losing not just work but their sense of identity. Hasael Compra, 44, who has a disability and has fished since he was 12, said, “It’s my skill, it’s my life, and my livelihood. When I am in the water [fishing], it doesn’t matter if it rains or it’s sunny or windy, regardless of the weather, I like being in the water.”
Suitability and Accessibility of New Sites
Experiences in some Siargao municipalities highlight that poor site selection may have negative consequences for all, but particularly people with disabilities. The officials did not adequately consider disability rights—such as accessibility, safety in situations of risk, or access to services—leaving people with disabilities cut off from accessing community services and at heightened risks during extreme weather events.
The national and local governments, in addition to ensuring that the process of planned relocation respects human rights, are responsible for ensuring an adequate standard of living at relocation sites, including adequate and accessible housing. The disability rights treaty and the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, as well as national law, such as the Philippines Accessibility Law, require the authorities to select sites accessible to all and close to services so that people with disabilities can live independently and participate in the community.
The site in Pilar is frequently flooded, putting people with disabilities at a particular risk. The San Isidro site, which was intended as temporary but became permanent, lacks consistent access to water and is located on a steep hill, making daily life especially difficult for residents with disabilities.
In Del Carmen as well as other municipalities planning relocation, the authorities have an opportunity to learn from the problems in Pilar and San Isidro and design a relocation process that addresses the rights of people with disabilities and their concerns. Rosario described his fears:
I am concerned it will be hard for us to be moved from our homes, and moved where? If there is a house, it would be a better option than if they just moved us to a land with no house. I have a disability now and cannot build it myself. My concern is also being transferred to a faraway place, where it would be hard for me to go to the market. I grew up here. I know everything around here. It’s near the center. I can obtain everything. I can use my wheelchair and get whatever I need.
The relocation site needs to be good for me as a person with disability. It needs to be accessible for people with disabilities, for the wheelchair to be able to get in and out. Transportation is really important because I cannot just walk to the town center, to get to the market or the pharmacy here. Living far away from here would also create additional expenses and limit my access to the market and the pharmacy. Here I can just use my wheelchair and get to all facilities I need.
Pacle similarly expressed a need for physical accessibility and access to work: “I want to be able to walk and use my wheelchair at the new site.”
The 2015 Guidance provides that planned relocation processes need to ensure access to employment opportunities. Relocation sites that isolate communities from employment opportunities or markets may violate human rights obligations. This is of particular concern to people with disabilities, who are protected from employment discrimination under article 27 of the disability rights treaty.
Recommendations
To ensure rights-respecting and all-inclusive planned relocations, local authorities on Siargao island, provincial authorities in Butuan City, and national authorities should:
Use relocation only as a measure of last resort. Exhaust all possible in-place risk-reduction and adaptation measures before considering moving people. Ensure displaced communities have access to basic services and will not be at greater risk during future extreme weather events.Ensure inclusion, participation, and consultation. Ensure the full inclusion of all affected people, including people with disabilities, in decision-making about whether and how to plan relocation. Consultations should be timely, accessible, and designed to ensure meaningful participation to protect everyone’s rights and needs.Ensure access to information. Provide clear, up-to-date, advanced and regular information about climate change impacts and plans at all stages of the relocation process in accessible formats (in the local language Surigaonon, Braille, sign language, easy-to-read, digital) and by using diverse communication methods. Access to information is essential to ensure that consent is informed and genuine, and to prevent forced evictions.Support rights-respecting durable solutions. Offer displaced families genuine options. Support those who want to relocate out of harm’s way to another site where their rights to adequate housing, education, health, water, accessibility, and culture are fully met. Ensure these options guarantee secure, legally recognized land tenure for relocated households and all individuals within them, including people with disabilities and women.Design new sites that reflect the rights and needs of persons with disabilities. Ensure that planned relocation sites incorporate universal design principles and that new housing, infrastructure, and services are accessible. New sites should be selected based on robust assessments, and located near services (including water, health, and education) and enable access to livelihoods to ensure an adequate standard of living. Ensure that policies and practice respect the rights of people with disabilities in every stage of planning and implementation.Develop and implement disability-inclusive policy. Ensure that the needs and rights of people with disabilities during planned relocation are included in all related national planning and policy efforts, including on resettlement and relocation, climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction, and internal displacement.International agencies and donors should build capacity of local governments undertaking planned relocations by providing financial and technical support, including on consultation practices and interview-based and future-oriented site assessment methodologies, to ensure that relocation sites minimize ongoing hazard risks and enable continued accessibility, an adequate standard of living and other human rights, and addresses the needs of at-risk groups, including people with disabilities.Myanmar Expels Timor-Leste Diplomat over War Crimes Case
On February 13, Myanmar’s military junta ordered the head of Timor-Leste’s Embassy in Yangon to leave the country within seven days. The expulsion comes after Timorese authorities opened legal proceedings against Myanmar junta officials earlier this month for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The case, filed by the Chin Human Rights Organisation in January, accuses 10 members of Myanmar’s junta, including commander in chief, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, of killings, rape, indiscriminate attacks, and other grave crimes. The case was brought under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows states to investigate and prosecute those responsible for grave international crimes regardless of where they were committed or the nationality of the victims and suspects.
Last October, Timor-Leste joined the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional bloc that includes Myanmar, as its first new member in over 25 years. President Jose Ramos-Horta made clear before joining ASEAN that his government supports the people of Myanmar’s struggle to end military abuses. Given its own history, Timor-Leste has also long supported international justice including by joining the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002.
The United Nations, Human Rights Watch, and others have documented the Myanmar junta’s escalating war crimes and crimes against humanity since the 2021 military coup. The military’s atrocities have been fueled by decades of impunityand insufficient global efforts to end its violations and hold perpetrators to account.
The Timor-Leste case sends a powerful message of regional solidarity for victims of Myanmar military atrocities. Justice efforts underway at the International Court of Justice and the ICC are vital, but they are limited to crimes committed before the coup. Universal jurisdiction is one of the few avenues to hold the military accountable for post-coup atrocities as well.
ASEAN’s response to the crisis remains feeble. While the junta has violated the ASEAN five-point consensus it committed to in 2021 and the binding ASEAN Charter, which enshrines the principles of democracy, rule of law, and human rights, the bloc has been divided between governments trying to enforce the ASEAN obligations and those unwilling to do so.
ASEAN countries have rarely, if ever, sought to promote accountability by prosecuting officials from other states in the region. ASEAN should support Timor-Leste’s willingness to hold those responsible for military atrocities in Myanmar to account.
February 17, 2026
China: Officials Pressuring Uyghurs in France
(Paris) – Chinese authorities have attempted to pressure two ethnic Uyghur activists living in Paris, including by asking one to spy on France’s Uyghur diaspora, Human Rights Watch said today. The case highlights the Chinese government’s increasing harassment of critics abroad and members of diaspora communities, abusive acts beyond China’s borders known as “transnational repression.”
“The Chinese government seeks to silence critical Uyghur voices in France through coercion, intimidation, and surveillance,” said Yalkun Uluyol, China researcher at Human Rights Watch. “French authorities should better assist Uyghurs to resist Beijing’s intimidation and surveillance by fully investigating these incidents and taking appropriate action.”
On January 15, 2026, a man claiming to be an official from Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, phoned Abdurahman Tohti, 37, and tried to pressure him to monitor Uyghur community activities in France. On January 29, the same caller—whose call was recorded and made public—contacted Mirkamel Tourghoun, 42, and demanded that he stop his activism.
Tohti said the caller asked him to monitor activities at the European Uyghur Institute (Institut Ouïghour d'Europe), which works to defend Uyghur rights, preserve Uyghur language and culture, and support the Uyghur diaspora across Europe. On January 20, the institute was scheduled to hold an opening ceremony for its new headquarters in Paris. Dilnur Reyhan, the prominent Uyghur academic who founded the institute, said that the Chinese Embassy had also exerted pressure on local French authorities, who had been invited to the ceremony, not to attend.
Tohti said that the caller demonstrated detailed knowledge of his life in Paris and claimed to have spoken to several people about him. “They told me you are desperate for your family and therefore, I thought you would like some help,” the caller told Tohti. “I can let you speak to your family, even reunite with them abroad.”
Tohti left Xinjiang in 2013 and has lived in France with refugee status since 2022. He has had no contact with his family since 2016, the beginning of the Chinese government’s abusive Strike Hard Campaign in the region. In June 2025, he obtained credible information that his father, mother, wife, and sister had all been sentenced to prison terms of from 20 to 25 years for “inciting ethnic hatred and ethnic discrimination,” a vague offense that the Xinjiang authorities use to punish peaceful expression of Uyghur identity. Tohti still has no information about his two children, who are believed to have been held for a decade in state-run orphanages, or his three other siblings.
Tourghoun is a Uyghur musician, filmmaker, and activist who came to France as a student in 2005 and sought asylum after Chinese authorities detained and interrogated him for filming in the Xinjiang region city of Kashgar right after the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The man who called him on January 29 tried to get him to reconsider his activism: “[Y]ou’ve reached the bottom…. What if we get rid of all this [political] pressure, and allow you to return and see your parents? Do you have such plans?”
Tourghoun, who made a recording of this conversation and posted it online, said that Xinjiang authorities had previously “forced my family to tears over the phone while asking for information about other Uyghurs and telling me to stop activism and comply with the government.” He said he refused the offer from the official to restore communication with his family because he wants “to put an end to the psychological torture.”
Human Rights Watch sought comment about the situation from the Chinese Embassy in Paris and the French Ministry of the Interior, but they have not responded.
In October 2025, following a complaint by the Chinese Embassy, a French court convicted Dilnur Reyhan for committing “damage to public property” after she reportedly threw red paint on a banner belonging to the Chinese Embassy at a music festival near Paris.
In July 2025, Chinese authorities arrested Tara Zhang Yadi, a Chinese student who had been studying in France, upon her return to China. She faces up to 5 years in prison, or up to 15 if found to be a ringleader, under charges of “inciting others to split the country and undermine national unity,” because she advocated for Tibetan rights while in France.
In January 2025, France’s domestic intelligence agency issued a memo identifying transnational repression as a national security threat that undermines the rights of people living in France and saying it would be treated as a government priority.
In June 2025, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released a report on transnational repression urging host governments to “conduct systemic investigations and establish effective mechanisms” to counter the practice. That month, leaders of the Group of 7 (G7) industrialized democracies issued a joint statement on transnational repression pledging to build global understanding, develop a resilience and response framework, and support targeted individuals. French President Emmanuel Macron should push for a coordinated action to materialize those promises during the G7 Summit in June, which is to be held in France.
The French government should adopt a rights-respecting legal framework and policies to address transnational repression. The authorities should investigate and appropriately prosecute those responsible for criminal offenses, while ensuring protection for targeted individuals and communities.
“The French authorities should take all necessary measures to press the Chinese government to end all forms of transnational repression in France,” Uluyol said. “France should use its leadership role at the upcoming G7 Summit in Paris to develop a coordinated response to China’s abusive tactics.”
Venezuela: Dismantle Repressive Apparatus
(Washington, DC) – Venezuelan authorities should take prompt measures to reform key judicial and electoral institutions and repeal abusive laws, Human Rights Watch said today.
Following US military strikes in Venezuela and the arrest of Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on January 3, 2026, Venezuelan authorities have released hundreds of political prisoners and said that the country is undergoing a process of “national pacification.” The Trump administration has continued to work with Maduro’s former vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, in what it describes as a three-phase plan of “stabilization, recovery and transition,” with a particular focus on changes to the oil sector.
“The release of political prisoners brings important relief, but the repressive apparatus the government used to detain them remains in place,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Venezuelan authorities should make real reforms to key judicial and electoral institutions and laws. Anything less would amount to a fake transition that may serve the Venezuelan and US governments but will not vindicate the rights of the Venezuelan people.”
According to Venezuelan human rights groups, the authorities have released about 400 political prisoners. About 600 others remain behind bars, according to the organization Foro Penal. The people released remain under criminal investigation, and face restrictions on their freedom of speech and their participation in protests, nongovernmental organizations and prisoners’ relatives told Human Rights Watch. Some opposition figures have been transferred to house arrest, including Juan Pablo Guanipa, an opposition leader who was released on February 9 and detained again hours later after he called on people to participate in protests.
Since 2014, Venezuelan authorities, often making use of the Attorney General’s Office and the judiciary, have committed widespread human rights violations including baseless, politically driven criminal prosecutions of political opponents, journalists, and human rights defenders. Nearly 19,000 people have been detained for political reasons, according to Foro Penal. The authorities have arbitrarily arrested and forcibly disappeared people. Many detainees have been held incommunicado, denied access to lawyers, charged en masse in virtual hearings, and subjected to ill-treatment and torture.
Over the last decade, Venezuelan authorities have also conducted unfair elections, marred by human rights violations and irregularities that have kept the playing field uneven. Following the 2024 presidential election, the National Electoral Council and the Supreme Court declared that Maduro had been reelected. The opposition collected tally sheets showing that Edmundo González, who is backed by the opposition leader María Corina Machado, won more than two-thirds of the votes cast across 81.7 percent of polling places. Independent observers from the Carter Center reviewed those tally sheets and concluded that they were accurate and legitimate.
Venezuelan authorities should take prompt steps to create the conditions for free and fair elections, including by reviewing the composition of the Electoral Council. Its current members took steps to prevent the registration of opposition candidates in previous elections.
Venezuelan authorities should also take steps to restore the integrity and independence of the judiciary. The judiciary stopped functioning as an independent branch of government in 2004, when then-President Hugo Chávez passed a raft of legislative changes and packed the Supreme Court with his supporters. The court has since unwaveringly supported the executive branch in repression of critics.
The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela (FFM) also found that courts of the special jurisdiction for terrorism cases, committed “systemic violations of due process.”
The FFM said that Attorney General Tarek William Saab “led the State action that resulted in human rights violations” following the 2024 elections. It concluded that Saab is part of the “Government’s repressive apparatus to give a semblance of legality to the serious human rights violations committed....”
Given his record, Saab’s continuing service as attorney general is incompatible with any meaningful effort at reforms to respect rights and uphold the rule of law, Human Rights Watch said.
The National Assembly should also amend or repeal laws that have enabled human rights violations including:
The 2024 Law on Oversight, Regularization, Operations, and Financing of Non-Governmental Organizations, which grants the government extensive regulatory powers over groups’ operation and financing and establishes vague grounds to dissolve them.The 2024 Simón Bolívar Organic Law against the Imperialist Blockade and in Defense of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which criminalizes any criticism of the authorities or advocacy for sanctions against Venezuela or targeting particular officials. Violators face sentences of up to 30 years in prison and a lifetime ban on holding public office.The 2017 Law Against Hatred, which imposes sentences of 10 to 20 years for anyone who publicly “promotes, encourages, or incites hatred, discrimination, or violence” and has been used to arrest critics under these broadly defined offenses.The 2012 Law Against Organized Crime and Terrorism Financing, which has been used to prosecute political opponents, protesters, and foreign nationals, among others, on alleged terrorism-related charges carrying sentences ranging from 25 to 30 years.The 2004 Law on Social Responsibility in Radio and Television, amended in 2010, which has been used to restrict free speech and press freedoms, and to censor and close media outlets.The Rodríguez administration should allow international human rights monitors, including the FFM and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, unfettered access to visit Venezuela and document the country’s human rights situation.
In February, the government allowed the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to briefly visit the country to monitor the release of political prisoners. The Venezuelan government should allow OHCHR to reestablish its office in Venezuela, which was closed in 2024, without undue restrictions, Human Rights Watch said.
On January 30, Rodríguez announced that the government was working on an amnesty law to benefit individuals detained for acts of political violence dating back to 1999, which is currently under discussion in the National Assembly. The current draft would require people to request amnesty before a court and would only benefit people detained “in the context” of specific events, such as the 2024 elections, and the 2017 and 2014 protests.
“The proposed amnesty does not ensure that everyone arbitrarily detained will be unconditionally released,” Goebertus said. “Its consideration by legislators should not be used as an excuse to delay the unconditional release of political prisoners or the broader structural reforms needed to restore Venezuela’s democracy.”
Senegal Arrests 12 Men Using Punitive Anti-LGBT Laws
The recent detention of 12 men in Senegal using homophobic laws have intensified concerns over the country’s criminalization of same-sex relations and the safety of people living with HIV and/or AIDS.
On February 9, gendarmes in Dakar arrested 12 men on various charges, including “acts against nature” and the alleged intentional transmission of HIV. The men could face up to five years in prison, with fines of 100,000 to 1,500,000 CFA (about US$180 to 2,700) for alleged same sex conduct, as well as up to ten years in prison for the alleged intentional transmission of HIV.
Senegal criminalizes consensual same‑sex conduct under article 319 of the Penal Code, which prohibits “acts against nature.” In a country where people already face violence and discrimination based on their sexual orientation or HIV status, high-profile negative media coverage of these arrests is fueling fear among the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. One activist told Human Rights Watch that community‑based health workers are extremely worried about potential legal repercussions if their contact details are discovered on the detained men’s devices.
Hostility toward LGBT people has intensified in Senegal in recent years. Members of parliament have twice—in 2022 and 2024—sought unsuccessfully to increase the custodial and financial penalties for “acts against nature.” In October 2023, in the town of Kaolack, 200 kilometers southeast of the capital Dakar, a mob exhumed the body of a man they believed to be gay, dragged it through the streets, and burned it in the town square. The spectacle attracted a large crowd, and videos of the incident subsequently went viral in Senegal.
Criminalizing same‑sex conduct and arresting people for their sexual orientation or gender expression violates multiple internationally protected rights, including to equality and nondiscrimination. Using condoms, lubricants, or HIV treatment as evidence of same-sex conduct; forcing HIV testing; and publishing someone’s HIV status breach privacy rights and relevant international norms and deter people from seeking care, undermining essential HIV prevention and treatment efforts.
The Senegalese government should act on its obligations to respect and protect LGBT people’s rights under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, including by releasing those arrested and repealing discriminatory and homophobic laws.
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