Status of human rights in the Arab region
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11349
http://www.cihrs.org/English/NewsSystem/Articles/548
The first Annual Report on human rights and the Arab region by
the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), entitled From
Exporting Terrorism to Exporting Repression, was released on the
5th of December, 2008, in anticipation of the 60th Anniversary of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In this report the Cairo Institute for Human Rights
Studies (CIHRS) finds that the status of human rights in the Arab
region in 2008 has increasingly worsened. Attacks
on the limited public and political liberties that exist have
escalated in most countries in the region.
CIHRS notes that, while Islamists are less frequently targeted,
there is an increase in repression of reformists, human rights
defenders and activists, the independent press and electronic
media, leaders of protest movements, and of other forms of
political action in Arab countries. This has been
accompanied by earnest attempts to export increasing domestic
repression outside the Arab region through the international
mechanisms of the UN and the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership
Initiative. Arab governments have made large
individual and concerted efforts to silence independent
Non-Governmental Organizations or erase them from public visibility
completely, while simultaneously undermining
International Human Rights Mechanisms (IHRM) of their ability to
promote human rights and provide protection for victims of
rights violations. Furthermore, these states have promoted
and created resolutions and policies at IHRMs that are designed to
undermine the very rights and freedoms these mechanisms are
designed to promote.
