Group items tagged

torture inside the prisons

December 2013, 21 young women were handed prison sentences ranging from 11 to 15 years for assembling on a street in Alexandria.

Egypt was handed 300 recommendations by 121 member states

While we have four years to address the recommendations given during the session, we will amend the laws as soon as a new parliament is voted in

parliamentary elections by March 2015.

Women’s rights activists reacted to the interview with dismay.

"The statement by the head of Egypt's National Council for Woman, Mervat El-Tallawy, comes as a huge disappointment from a woman who has presented herself throughout her career as a defender of Women's rights,”

“Her views represent a serious blow to any hopes that the regime in Egypt will reconsider its oppressive policies against peaceful protesters and NGOs, in line with the recent recommendations made at the UN human rights review

locked into the cities and towns

they f

had to compete

Palestinians

Iraqis

Syria was already a refuge

March 15, 2011

small group gathered in the southwestern town of Daraa to protest against government failure to help them

government saw them as subversives.

He ordered a crackdown

And the army,

responded violently.

Riots broke out

attempted to quell them with military

what had begun as a food and water issue gradually turned into a political and religious cause.

interpretation of Islam

the Syrian government is charged with using illegal chemical weapons

All observers agree that the foreign-controlled and foreign-constituted insurgent groups are the most coherent, organized, and effective

astonishing as they share no common language and come from a wide variety of cultures

slam has at least so far failed to provide an effective unifying force

all the rebels regard the conflict in Syria as fundamentally a religious issue

pwards of $150 billion

a whole generation of Syrians have been subjected to either or both the loss of their homes and their trust in fellow human beings.

How the victims and the perpetrators can be returned to a “normal life”

First, the war might continue.

Second, if the Syrian government continues or even prevails, there is no assurance that,

t will be able to suppress the insurgency.

Third,

Syria will remain effectively “balkanized”

The IS fighters were able to lodge so easily in the Sunni Arab heartlands because the people there had been largely alienated by the sectarian policies and practices of the Shia Arab-dominated Baghdad government under Nouri al-Maliki, who was finally prised out of the prime minister's office in August 2014.

gislation to empower the Sunnis by devolving security and financial responsibilities to the provinces has not happened.

Nor have measures to reverse the persecution of former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, or the random arrests, detentions, and to assuage other Sunni grievances.

he US, who have about 3,500 military personnel training and advising Iraqi government forces on the ground, also seems to be aware that military muscle is not enough.

If that process continues and the militants are defeated, the way Iraq fits together - if it does - will be decided by who pushes them out, and how the resulting vacuum is filled.

osul is an almost wholly Sunni city with a population of about two million.

Some residents may still see IS - about 85% of whose fighters in Iraq are believed to be Iraqi - as their protectors against an Iranian-backed, Shia-dominated Baghdad government.

When the Iraqi army collapsed like a house of cards in the face of the IS eruption in June 2014, it was a motley array of hastily-assembled Shia irregulars, loosely banded into the Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) that prevented the militants reaching Baghda

Ramadi gave a boost to the embattled Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi.He has scant support even from his own Shia Daawa party, and is seen across the board by Sunni, Shia and Kurdish politicians as weak, hesitant, lacking in leadership and unable to stand up to the militias.But there was a down-side to the Ramadi victory too: heavy destruction, and the displacement of the entire population.

Nor can the formula that finally and slowly worked in Ramadi simply be applied at Mosul. It took government forces with coalition backing seven months to regain Ramadi. Mosul is 10 times bigger.

He omitted to mention coalition air support, which would also clearly be crucial to the campaign.Some Iraqi analysts believe outside ground forces would also be needed. US military leaders, while reticent, clearly want to up the pace and have not ruled out more boots on the ground. In the absence of serious moves towards national reconciliation, one senior government figure also saw a campaign to retake Mosul as a vital way of forging national unity.

“The national Libyan army is in control of Benghazi and only withdrew from certain positions for tactical reasons,” Haftar told Al Arabiya News Channel.

Ansar al-Sharia’s declaration comes a month after jihadist militant group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) announced an “Islamic caliphate” over their territory.

The extent of recent hostilities has increased Western worries that Libya is sliding toward becoming a failed state and may once again go to war.

Ansar al-Shariah, the hard-line Islamist group involved in the assault on the American diplomatic Mission in Benghazi in 2012

Their opponents, including the militias stocked with former Qaddafi soldiers

The ideological differences are blurry at best: both sides publicly profess a similar conservative but democratic vision.

an escalating war among its patchwork of rival cities and tribes.

Motorists wait in lines stretching more than three miles at shuttered gas stations, waiting for them to open. Food prices are soaring, uncollected garbage is piling up in the streets and bicycles, once unheard-of, are increasingly common.

Tripoli, the capital and the main prize, has become a battleground

The fighting has destroyed the airport

Constant shelling between rival militias has leveled blocks

Storage tanks holding about 25 million gallons of fuel have burned unchecked for a month

with daily blackouts sometimes lasting more than 12 hours.

many Libyans despaired of any resolution

In Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city, the fighting has closed both its airport and seaport, strangling the city.

the rush toward war is also lifting the fortunes of the Islamist extremists of Ansar al-Shariah, the Benghazi militant group.

The United Nations, the United States and the other Western powers have withdrawn their diplomats and closed their missions

“We cannot care more than you do,” the British ambassador, Michael Aron, wrote

Until now, a rough balance of power among local brigades had preserved a kind of equilibrium, if not stability

the transitional government scarcely existed outside of the luxury hotels where its officials gathered, no other force was strong enough to dominate. No single interest divided the competing cities and factions.

But that semblance of unity is now in tatters, and with it the hope that nonviolent negotiations might settle the competition for power and, implicitly, Libya’s oil.

In May, a renegade former general, Khalifa Hifter, declared that he would seize power by force to purge Libya of Islamists, beginning in Benghazi. He vowed to eradicate the hard-line Islamists of Ansar al-Shariah, blamed for a long series of bombings and assassinations.

General Hifter also pledged to close the Parliament and arrest moderate Islamist members

he has mustered a small fleet of helicopters and warplanes that have bombed rival bases around Benghazi, a steep escalation of the violence.

moderate Islamists and other brigades who had distanced themselves from Ansar al-Shariah began closing ranks, welcoming the group into a newly formed council of “revolutionary” militias

a broad alliance of Benghazi militias that now includes Ansar al-Shariah issued a defiant statement denouncing relative moderates like the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood. “We will not accept the project of democracy, secular parties, nor the parties that falsely claim the Islamic cause,”

the general’s blitz has now stalled, it polarized the country, drawing alarms from some cities and tribes but applause from others.

the loudest applause came from the western mountain town of Zintan, where local militia leaders had recruited hundreds of former Qaddafi soldiers into special brigades

the rival coastal city of Misurata, where militias have allied with the Islamists in political battles and jostled with the Zintanis for influence in the capital

the Misurata and Islamist militias developed a reputation for besieging government buildings and kidnapping high officials to try to pressure the Parliament. But in recent months the Zintanis and their anti-Islamist allies have stormed the Parliament and kidnapped senior lawmakers as well.

the newly elected Parliament, led at first, on a seniority basis, by a member supportive of Mr. Hifter, announced plans to convene in Tobruk, an eastern city under the general’s control.

About 30 members, most of them Islamists or Misuratans, refused to attend,

Tripoli’s backup airport, under the control of an Islamist militia, has cut off flights to Tobruk, even blocking a trip by the prime minister.

a spokesman for the old disbanded Parliament, favored by the Islamists and Misuratans, declared that it would reconvene in Tripoli

In Tobruk, a spokesman for the new Parliament declared that the Islamist- and Misuratan-allied militias were terrorists, suggesting that Libya might soon have two legislatures with competing armies

Each side has the support of competing satellite television networks financed and, often, broadcast from abroad, typically from Qatar for the Islamists and from the United Arab Emirates for their foes.

Hassan Tatanaki, a Libyan-born business mogul who owns one of the anti-Islamist satellite networks, speaking in an interview from an office in the Emirates. “We are in a state of war and this is no time for compromise.”

Fighters and tribes who fought one another during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi are now coming together on the same side of the new fight, especially with the Zintanis against the Islamists. Some former Qaddafi officers who had fled Libya are even coming back to take up arms again.

“It is not pro- or anti-Qaddafi any more — it is about Libya,” said a former Qaddafi officer in a military uniform

Beneath the battle against “extremists,” he said, was an even deeper, ethnic struggle: the tribes of Arab descent, like the Zintanis, against those of Berber, Circassian or Turkish ancestry, like the Misuratis. “The victory will be for the Arab tribes,”

women should wear "appropriate" clothing when they go out.

There have been multiple mass sexual assaults on women during protests the past three years.

security forces dragged a female protester to the ground, pulled up her top to reveal her blue bra and stomped on her chest.

female protesters at the time were forced to undergo humiliating "virginity tests" when detained by the military.

Violence is a "very intimidating weapon" against women participating in public life

"If there is no democratic climate, how would you benefit from these beautiful laws?" said Abdel-Hameed. "It will be the same as under Mubarak: you have a beautiful law but it's not implemented."

The document explicitly enshrines equality between the sexes and women's rights to education, work and high political office.

"It's not just more progressive than the 2012 constitution, it's more progressive than the 1971 constitution . from the gender perspective,

Women have only been allowed to be judges since 2007

guarantees their right to hold high positions in the judiciary

2010 court decision barred women judges from the State Council, a powerful judicial body that regulates disputes between individuals and the state and reviews legislation.

January she wrote to the State Council demanding it take on women judges in light of the constitution.

The Council replied b

two percent of the seats in the last parliament,

sought criminal action against the National Council for Women.

"the mentality of the decision-makers

is the main obstacle to the carrying out the promises of the constitution.

low representation of women in government.

lowest in the Arab world

violated appropriateness and manners"

We're tired of the government and officials .

creation of a Commission on Discrimination with real judicial power

more women judges; a

he presence of women in parliament and local council

and the nullification of the draconian protest law,

gender issues should be mainstreamed across all government bodies.

activate a unit specialized in fighting violence against women and "the health sector should take into account reproductive rights.

h clinics should provide contraception and treatment for STDs

women's issues are never a priority for anyone

parts of the constitution may make enforcing the women's rights provisions harder.

Egypt received 165 recommendations following its first review in 2010.

Seven Egyptian NGOs refused to participate in the UN UPR, citing a fear of reprisals by the Egyptian government.

in line with provisions set out in the constitution and “international norms”.

20 recommendations that dealt with the status of civil society organisations in Egypt and called for a revision of the current law

13 times among the 300 recommendations, with calls to amend the law and “bring it in line with international standards

Egypt was urged to ratify international conventions on the death penalty.

no international consensus on the death penalty

Iceland read “Ensure thorough, independent and impartial investigations into the mass killings in [Rabaa Al-Adaweya] Square in 2013 and hold the perpetrators accountable

ies” still have death as a punishment within their criminal justice systems.

50 countr

The US also recommended that Egypt “release those detained solely for exercising rights to freedom of expression or for membership in a political group, and ensure remaining detainees full fair trial guarantees on an individual level”.

included recommendations to tackle corruption, human trafficking, the promotion of human rights, and investment in education for young people.

UN human rights representatives

not to participate in the review.

decided

“the appalling deterioration in the state of human rights in Egypt”.

“reconsider its policies and orientation before Egypt slides into an abyss of unremitting terrorism and political violence”.

Egypt has until March 2015 to respond to the recommendations

Iraq ranked second-worst after Egypt, followed by Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen.

Egypt is now the worst country for women's rights in the Arab world, according to a poll of gender experts

sexual harassment was cited as the main factor.

A UN report in April said 99.3% of women and girls in Egypt had been subjected to sexual harassment.

Iraq was now more dangerous for women than under Saddam Hussein, with women disproportionately affected by the violence of the past decade.

A UN commission of inquiry,

Western powers,

said it could only have been carried out by Syria's government.

regime and its ally Russia blamed rebels.

More than 3 million people have fled Syria since the start of the conflict,

A further 6.5 million people, 50% of them children, are believed to be internally displaced within Syria,

the total numbe

half the country's population.

rebel groups are also deeply divided

most prominent is the moderate National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces

Iran and Russia have propped up the Alawite-led government of President Assad and gradually increased their support,

support of Lebanon's Shia Islamist Hezbollah movement.

The Sunni-dominated oppositio

Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Arab states along with the US, UK and France.

rise of radical Islamist militia in rebel ranks and the arrival of Sunni jihadists from across the world has led to a marked cooling of international and regional backing.