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World Report 2016 is Human Rights Watch’s 26th annual review of human rights practices around the globe. It summarizes key human rights issues in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide, drawing on events from the end of 2014 through November 2015.

The book is divided into two main parts: an essay section, and country-specific chapters.

In the introductory essay, “Twin Threats: How the Politics of Fear and the Crush-ing of Civil Society Imperil Global Rights,” Human Rights Watch Executive Direc-tor Kenneth Roth details how fear drove two of the most important global developments of 2015. Fears of terror attacks and of the potential impact of refugee influx led to a visible scaling back of rights in Europe and other regions. Scapegoating Muslims and refugees, Roth argues, hurts and alienates popula-tions crucial to counterterrorism efforts. Efforts to weaken encryption of commu-nications and to intensify surveillance—the knee-jerk response of many governments to terror attacks—undermines privacy rights, can endanger critical infrastructure, and may distract from the focused investigative work that should be at the heart of counterterrorism efforts. In countries as diverse as China, Ethiopia, India, and Russia, another set of fears—in this case, fears that new dig-ital communications platforms will energize social and political movements— helped to drive a less recognized but disturbing and destructive global trend: the adoption by many countries of repressive new nongovernmental organization laws and policies targeting individuals and groups that try to hold governments to account, including social media users, civil society groups, and the funders who back them. Roth traces the ways in which human rights law can and should guide responses to these major global developments. “We abandon it,” he warns “at our peril.”

Most people never question the “boy” or “girl” designation they receive at birth. In the next essay, “Rights in Transition ” Neela Ghoshal and Kyle Knight examine the humiliating and violent treatment often endured by those who do. Across the world, transgender people are subject to discriminatory laws and policies that prevent them from accessing a range of rights and services, including health care, free expression, and privacy, and that in some cases ban their very exis-tence. Years of advocacy by intrepid transgender activists, combined with recent international pressure—including from the United Nations and Council of Eu-rope—has increased access to legal recognition for transgender people and eased the process by which they can achieve it. No new or special rights lie at the heart of such crucial efforts, argue Ghoshal and Knight, but rather a funda-mental “commitment to the core idea that the state or other actors will not de-cide for people who they are.”

Around the world, girls are forced into child marriages that are often ruinous for their personal growth and disastrous for their ability to realize basic human rights. Child marriage often means leaving school, domestic violence, a cycle of poverty, and an increased risk of serious health problems and death due to early childbearing. One in nine girls in the developing world marry before 15, and one in three by 18. The UN Sustainable Development Goals adopted in September 2015 aim to eliminate child marriage within 15 years, and many governments, donors, and civil society groups have rallied to the cause. But success, warns Nisha Varia, will not come easy and requires sustained political commitment to address social and cultural norms around girls’ sexuality; coordination across multiple sectors; learning about what works and for whom; and empowering girls themselves with information and access to services so that they can realize a potential that so many of their mothers—themselves child brides—have been denied.

Finally, in “Children Behind Bars,” Michael Bochenek looks at the global overuse of child detention. The UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, estimates that more than one million children are behind bars worldwide. Some of these children are serv-ing excessively long sentences, others are held for skipping school, running away from home, and other acts that should not be crimes, and some have never been tried for their alleged crimes. Migrant children are often held in immigra-tion detention. Children with disabilities may be institutionalized. All of these practices violate international standards. A UN study soon underway will hope-fully result in increased attention to these abusive practices and greater compli-ance with international standards. But as Bochenek notes, governments do not need to wait for this study; they can and should act now to develop alternatives to detention and ensure that children who are locked up receive schooling, health services, and humane treatment.

The rest of the volume consists of individual country entries, each of which iden-tifies significant human rights issues, examines the freedom of local human rights defenders to conduct their work, and surveys the response of key interna-tional actors, such as the UN, the European Union, the United States, and vari-ous regional and international organizations and institutions.

The report reflects extensive investigative work that Human Rights Watch staff undertook in 2015, usually in close partnership with human rights activists in the country in question. It also reflects the work of our advocacy team, which moni-tors policy developments and strives to persuade governments and international institutions to curb abuses and promote human rights. Human Rights Watch publications, issued throughout the year, contain more detailed accounts of many of the issues addressed in the brief summaries in this volume. They can be found on the Human Rights Watch website, www.hrw.org.

As in past years, this report does not include a chapter on every country where Human Rights Watch works, nor does it discuss every issue of importance. The absence of a particular country or issue often simply reflects staffing limitations and should not be taken as commentary on the significance of the problem. There are many serious human rights violations that Human Rights Watch simply lacks the capacity to address.

The factors we considered in determining the focus of our work in 2015 (and hence the content of this volume) include the number of people affected and the severity of abuse, access to the country and the availability of information about it, the susceptibility of abusive forces to influence, and the importance of ad-dressing certain thematic concerns and of reinforcing the work of local rights or-ganizations.

H U M A N  R I G H T S   W A T C H. WORLD REPORT 2016    

www.hrw.org