On 21 June 2021, Alkarama submitted to the UN Committee against Torture the list of issues and questions to be raised in the framework of Saudi Arabia's 3rd periodic review.
A treaty body composed of ten independent experts, the Committee against Torture is responsible for monitoring the implementation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment adopted on 10 December 1984 and ratified by Saudi Arabia on 12 September 1989.

On 1 July 2021, Alkarama sent an urgent appeal to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) regarding the situation of Mr Driss SEDRAOUI, President of the Moroccan League for Citizenship and Human Rights, who was arrested and imprisoned for having participated in a rally organised on 8 March 2021 in honour of International Women's Day.

The facts

Mary Lawlor, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, has called on Morocco to stop "targeting human rights defenders and journalists who defend human rights issues related to Western Sahara, and to allow them to work without reprisals".

Despite the absolute prohibition of torture by the Convention and more broadly by international law, these torturous practices persist in certain regions of the world. Even today, many States parties fail to fulfil their international commitments. Although, in accordance with the Convention ratified on 12 September 1989, torture is banned in domestic legislation, the reality on the ground is quite different.

Alkarama shares the grief of the family of Emirati prisoner of conscience Mohammed Abdul Razzaq Al-Siddiq and the human rights family in the death of human rights activist Alaa Al-Siddiq, who died following a traffic accident in Oxford, UK.

Alkarama expresses its shock and deep concern regarding the Egyptian Court of Cassation's decision on the death sentences handed down onto 12 individuals. These individuals are leaders of the "Muslim Brotherhood" group in Egypt, arrested in the Rabaa sit-in case in 2013, after prolonged arbitrary proceedings and trials lacking essential guarantees of justice.

The Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, has called on the UAE to immediately release five human rights defenders imprisoned since 2013, referring to allegations of torture, ill-treatment and unfair trials.

On 26 May 2021, Alkarama submitted the case of Mr. Abderrahmane Labreche, to the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Committee (HR Committee). This 57-year-old Anglo-Algerian citizen was arbitrarily arrested on 29 June 2012 by agents of the Department of Research and Security (DRS) at Algiers International Airport; after which he was secretly detained and subjected to torture and other ill-treatment until his release 14 July 2012.

The Iraqi authorities are regularly called to order by the United Nations (UN) Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) for failing to meet their obligations under the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, which Iraq ratified on 23 November 2010.

In a joint statement, United Nations human rights experts condemned the forced eviction of Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan neighborhoods in occupied East Jerusalem, and considered this as the spark that ignited the fuse of an all-out war.