Human Rights Watch’s annual report is similar to the AI report and can be put to the same use as suggested above. It is also heavily country focused and not made according to methodology that includes comparable indicators. But, like the AI, it provides the number of data about different cases of violations, the categories of violations, their magnitude and frequency. The sample that they have is much smaller then the AI sample. 66 countries were included into last report. HRW has a smaller number of permanent offices, some 7 8 regional offices; center is based in New York, with offices in Brussels, London, Moscow, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, and Washington. They also set up temporary offices in regions where were conducting their investigations, and they have staff in a number of other countries that conducts different types of research. Current offices are in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, London, Brussels, Moscow, Sarajevo, Tashkent, Tblisi, Hong Kong, and Rwanda. HRW has seven divisions covering Africa, the Americas, Arms, Asia, Children, Women, and the Middle East and North Africa, as well as Europe and Central Asia. The countries included into reports are the following (but other publications can include countries that are not the part of this sample):
In Africa: Angola, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan.
In the Americas: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, United States.
In Asia: Afghanistan, Burma, Cambodia, China and Tibet, East Timor, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam.
In Europe and Central Asia: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovakia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Kingdom, Uzbekistan, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
In Middle East and North Africa: Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan, Israel, the Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, and Palestinian Authority Territories, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen.
The issues covered in their reports are concerned with the issues of fairness of elections, rights of political participation and with that related harassment and suppression of opposition and civil society groups. They are also concerned with the media freedom, political prisoners, and police abuse, as well as the right on the fair trial and due process. They deal as well with the issues like women rights, gay and lesbian rights, refugees and minorities issues.
Country reports are not made using some standard methodology or indicators. The report focuses is on the cases of rights violations that took place and describe their type, frequency and magnitude. Since not all countries show the same pattern of rights violations different country reports have different emphasis and different level of details. Apart from country reports they also have regional summaries, and thematic publications that are dealing with different issues mentioned above with reference to general trends and across individual cases, like women rights and refugees, as well as the number of other issues. Apart from this thematic and territorial reports they have a number of more focused publications that contain large number of information about human rights problems and developments.
They do not have indicators, they do not compare countries and do not rank them, but they provide lot of different data that can be used for assessment based on other indicators. The only problem is the number of cases that is somewhat too small.
To conduct research, Human Rights Watch sends members of their staff researchers to talk with people who either experienced the abuse themselves or witnessed it. Researchers work with local activists and other experts, then write up the findings in reports. The criteria on the basis of which countries are included into report are not mentioned.
The HRW report can be useful in the same way the AI report can be. By using their raw data for assessment on the basis of indicators that are developed for the purpose of GD assessment. The data HRW provides can be used in combination with the AI data since they cover the same material, but HRW covers relatively few countries.
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