In June 2021, amid a drastic deterioration in the human rights situation and citizens’ growing anger at a lack of reforms, waves of pro-democracy protests rocked Eswatini, an absolute monarchy ruled by King Mswati III since 1986.

What started as an expression of outrage against alleged police brutality and impunity in the death of 25-year-old University of Eswatini student, Thabani Nkomonye, transformed into wider youth-led calls for democratic reforms across the country. The protests were mostly peaceful, but they turned increasingly violent towards the end of June when the government took a hardline stance against the demonstrations.

Eswatini authorities responded to the protests by banning demonstrations and deploying security forces to disperse the protesters and closed schools for an extended period of time. They also prohibited people from in-person delivery of petitions to state authorities calling for democratic reforms.

This report, based on 15 interviews conducted by Human Rights Watch in 2025, corroborates findings previously published by Human Rights Watch that the Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS) and the Umbutfo Eswatini Defence Force (UEDF) not only improperly used teargas, and rubber bullets, and physically assaulted civilians during the June 2021 unrest, but also shot indiscriminately at protesters and passers-by with live ammunition, killing scores of protesters and injuring hundreds more, including children. Additionally, it shines the spotlight on the absence of accountability since then and the precarious and desperate situation of victims of security forces’ abuses in 2021, calling for urgent action to be taken to remedy this.

On October 29, 2021, the Eswatini Commission on Human Rights and Public Administration released a preliminary report stating that 46 people were killed and 245 people suffered gunshot injuries, including 22 who sustained multiple gunshot injuries. The Commission noted that its findings likely underestimated the number of victims and called on the government to conduct a comprehensive investigation. Victims told the Commission that members of the Eswatini armed forces and police shot them, but the Commission declined to identify the perpetrators in its preliminary report. As of this writing, the Commission had not released a final report.

Despite the Commission’s findings, and previous calls by international bodies including Human Rights Watch, the government has failed to conduct a thorough investigation into the security forces’ use of lethal and other excessive force during the 2021 pro-democracy demonstrations. In over four years that have ensued, not a single member of the security forces has been held to account for the students, activists, and passers-by who were killed, and the hundreds more who were injured. Instead, the government has intensified its crackdown on dissenting views by arresting government critics on spurious charges, hindering peaceful assembly, and ignoring longstanding calls for democratic reforms.

Human Rights Watch’s research found that the security forces violated multiple rights during the 2021 protests, including the rights to life and to security of the person, and the prohibition on torture or other ill-treatment. The authorities also violated the rights to freedom of assembly, association, and expression, as well as to information.

Report by the Human Rights Watch