"Yet ISIS [Islamic State] did not emerge in a vacuum. In part it is a product of the United States-led war and military occupation of Iraq," the Human Rights Watch (HRW) annual report said.
The watchdog also named Syria's and Iraq's "sectarian" governmental policies and "international indifference to those governments' serious rights abuses" as important factors. Funding of extremist groups by Gulf states have also contributed to the rise of Islamic State, the report stated.
Islamic State, a radical Sunni jihadist group, came to prominence fighting Assad's forces during the civil war in Syria in 2012. Since then, the militants have occupied large areas of neighboring Iraq, including its second largest city Mosul, and has declared an Islamic caliphate over territories under its control in both countries. The group is infamous for its brutal methods that include public crucifixions and beheading hostages.
US courts and police continue to discriminate against minorities despite recent waves of protest over racial profiling and police killings of unarmed black men, a report by an international rights group revealed.
In a 656-page annual report published Thursday, the human rights advocacy group said the US government should work with marginalized communities to fix the broken justice system.
"Those least able to defend their rights in court or through the political process — racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, children, the poor, and prisoners — are the people most likely to suffer abuses," the report stressed.
HRW stated that all races were engaged in drug offenses at comparable rates but arrests and prosecutions happened "at vastly different rates." Forty-two percent of federal prisoners serving time for drug offenses are blacks, the report pointed out, this in a total US population that is only 12.6 percent black.
The report also highlighted undocumented migrants falling victim to abuse by border US police and migration authorities.
The survey comes amid a public debate in the United States to establish a police review board in St. Louis, a Missouri county, where the killing of an unarmed black teen by a white policeman last summer sparked weeks of violent rallies. St. Louis protests spilled over into the rest of the country, triggering nationwide demonstrations against police brutality.
"The US has not prosecuted any US officials responsible for authorizing and carrying out abuses under the [CIA detention and interrogation] program, including torture," the Human Rights Watch group said Thursday.
In December, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) released a redacted summary of a CIA report that documented "enhanced interrogation techniques" used by CIA agents and authorized by top-level US government officials under President George W. Bush.
The HRW report said that the Obama administration "steadfastly refused to investigate, let alone prosecute, the Bush CIA's torture, even though that is required by the [UN] Convention against Torture".
Methods of interrogation described in the CIA report include waterboarding, mock executions, prolonged sleep deprivation, threat of sexual abuse, threats against family and others.
In addition, SSCI revealed that the intelligence agency knowingly withheld information and outright lied to the US Congress about its counterterrorism activities.
"In 2014, Australia introduced new overbroad counterterrorism measures that would infringe on freedoms of expression and movement," the Human Rights Watch (HRW) annual report said.
On August 26, 2014, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced new measures to prevent the proliferation of foreign fighters of Australian origin among the radical Islamic State (IS) group's ranks.
The $64-million ($50 million at the current exchange rate) funding was distributed among Australian law enforcement, intelligence and community bodies to counter home-grown terrorism.
"The law introduces an overly broad new offense of 'advocating terrorism' and extends use of control orders and preventative detention. It also makes it a criminal offense to travel to 'declared areas' abroad unless the travel is for a legitimate reason," the HRW report said.
The HRW report also expressed concern over Australian government efforts to access the private communications of its citizens, including cellphone data.
In September 2014, Australian police conducted a high-profile raid, searching for potential jihadists, after intercepting a phone conversation detailing an alleged IS campaign calling for the beheading of a random Australian, to be posted online.
"The appalling loss of civilian lives and property in Gaza was the predictable result of past fighting in which virtually no one responsible for violations was held to account," said Sarah Whitson, a regional director of the Human Rights Watch pressure group.
In its 656-page review of global human rights, HRW classified Israeli missile attacks against the Palestinian exclave and Palestinian rocket attacks that targeted Israeli cities as war crimes.
HRW said around 100 Israeli investigations into alleged war crimes by its troops during the 2014 Gaza attacks were self-investigated and resulted in "the nearly complete absence of criminal prosecutions," while Hamas, a militant Palestinian group that controls Gaza, "took no steps to prosecute Palestinian combatants for indiscriminate and unlawful rocket and mortar attacks at Israeli population centers".
"There has been no real accountability for laws of war violations by either side", the watchdog pointed out.
In July 2014, Israel launched a military operation against Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. The United Nations estimates that the conflict killed 71 Israelis and nearly 2,200 Palestinians most of whom were identified as civilians.
The human rights watchdog slammed Israel for blocking imports of construction materials into Gaza, where more than 100,000 houses were destroyed in Israel's July mortar attacks. The ICC and HRW also condemned Israel's plans to expand its illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank territories, while demolishing thousands of Palestinian homes.
HRW also criticized Israel's seven-year blockade of the poverty-stricken Gaza area, saying the ban on nearly all exports had caused unemployment and poverty levels to skyrocket.
It said children in Israel-controlled areas were routinely arrested on stone-throwing charges and taken into custody at night, at gunpoint. As of October 31, the Israeli military had also detained 457 Palestinians without charge, shackling them to beds after they went on hunger strike.
At the same time, the Palestinian Authority's security services in the West bank were implicated in attacks on peaceful protesters, the harassment of journalists, and a summary execution of Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel.
