Here is the 26th annual review of human rights practices around the world. Using data from the events of 2015, it summarizes key issues in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide.
Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth in the introductory essay points out how the politics of fear has driven
many countries to scale back human rights, using as reasons the dread of terrorist attacks and mass refugee flows.
"The tarring of entire immigrant or minority communities, wrong in itself, is also dangerous," Roth says. "Vilifying whole communities for the actions of a few generates precisely the kind of division and animosity that terrorist recruiters love to exploit."
Other human rights issues singled out in essays are making legal representation of transgender people a global priority; ending child marriage; meeting the Global Development Goals' promise to girls; and coming to terms with the global overuse of detention for children.
Autocrats and abusive governments have restricted the human rights of adversaries with laws that curtail their activities and cut off their needed international funding. Roth observes: "The wisdom enshrined in international human rights law provides indispensable guidance to governments that seek to keep their nation safe and serve their people most effectively," Roth said. "We abandon it at our peril."
