Human Rights

 The Egyptian government referred the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) to investigation on the “NGOs foreign funding” case which led previously to the closure of five international organizations operating in Egypt and to jail  sentences for some of their  staff members. In A new statement, 22 Egyptian NGOs including CIHRS itself condemned the latest measure and consider it …

Whereabouts Unknown for More Than 75 Held After Protests HRW (New York) – Iran’s intelligence and security forces have rounded up and detained scores of Ahwazi Arabs, including several children, in what appears to be an escalating crackdown in Iran’s Khuzestan province, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said today. According to activists and family members, many arrests took place …

Out of School, Doing Risky Work for Low Pay – HRW (Jerusalem) – Israeli settlement farms in the West Bank are using Palestinian child labor to grow, harvest, and pack agricultural produce, much of it for export, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The farms pay the children low wages and subject them to dangerous working conditions …

In these difficult times, the government’s public messaging has been polarizing. By Amira Elghawaby The governing party was quick to issue an email blast this week requesting support for its stand against the imaginary mob of niqab-wearing women clamoring to gain citizenship in Canada. “This isn’t how we do things here,” reads the Conservatives’ pitch for support, echoing Prime Minister …

A long-delayed US Senate report published on Tuesday revealed that the CIA’s interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects did not produce any useful intelligence and was a lot more brutal than initially acknowledged. The CIA also misled Congress and the White House with inaccurate claims about the usefulness of the program in thwarting attacks, the Senate Intelligence Committee said. When the 500-page …

December 10th is International Human Rights Day. The UN General Assembly proclaimed that date to focus attention on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the common standard for all peoples and all nations. While Canadians like to believe that our country is a positive model for the rest of the world, the continued incarceration of Omar Khadr is a …

International rights group Human Rights Watch urged the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to release 25-year-old Lujain al-Hathloul and 33-year-old Maysa al-Amoudi from confinement – the two were held after al-Hathloul tried to drive a car into Saudi Arabia. The rights group urged the kingdom to release the two immediately given that they were reportedly detained for driving, and called for …

The United Nations on Tuesday warned that Egypt must rein in its security forces and look into human rights abuses against protesters, calling the political tension in the country “alarming”. The UN rights office said that it was deeply concerned by “the seriously damaging lack of accountability for human rights violations committed by security forces in the context of demonstrations”. …

The United Nations on Tuesday strongly urged the US to investigate racism within its judicial and law enforcement systems, after a white police officer who killed an unarmed African-American teenager was not indicted. “I am deeply concerned at the disproportionate number of young African Americans who die in encounters with police officers, as well as the disproportionate number of African …

Local Iranian media on Thursday reported that an Iranian-Canadian journalist, Hossein Derakhshan, dubbed “the blogfather” was freed from prison after being handed a 19 year jail term for traveling to Israel. Derakhshan was arrested in November 2008 after his visit to Israel, Iran’s arch-foe, using his Canadian passport, on what he called a trip to breed understanding between Israelis and …