Human Rights Violations at Home, Abroad

(Beirut) – The United Arab Emirates (UAE) was responsible for serious human rights violations at home and abroad in 2020, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2021. The government held peaceful critics in jail, fostered labor abuses against low-paid migrant workers, and contributed to abuses abroad in Libya and Yemen.

UAE prisons and detention centers hold detainees in dismal and unhygienic conditions, and overcrowding and denial of medical care are widespread, putting detainees at heightened risk of serious complications of Covid-19. On June 10, Human Rights Watch reported on the prison administration’s inadequate response to Covid-19 outbreaks in at least three detention facilities. Prisoners living with HIV are denied regular access to life-saving medication and are particularly vulnerable to Covid-19. Repeated calls for the UAE authorities to open prisons and detention facilities to inspection by international and independent monitors have gone unheeded.

“UAE authorities jail peaceful critics on baseless charges, and the Covid-19 pandemic further threatens the lives and well-being of vulnerable detainees in abuse-ridden detention facilities,” said Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Despite presenting itself as an open and rights-respecting country and amid mounting allegations of serious abuses, the UAE forbids inspection of its prisons and detention centers by independent, international monitors.”

In the 761-page World Report 2021, its 31st edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices in more than 100 countries. In his introductory essay, Executive Director Kenneth Roth argues that the incoming United States administration should embed respect for human rights in its domestic and foreign policy in a way that is more likely to survive future US administrations that might be less committed to human rights. Roth emphasizes that even as the Trump administration mostly abandoned the protection of human rights, other governments stepped forward to champion rights. The Biden administration should seek to join, not supplant, this new collective effort. 

Read more at hrw.org
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