Since 2011, Morocco has undertaken a series of institutional reforms affirming the protection of human rights. The 2011 Constitution embodies several rights and fundamental freedoms, and provides that secret detention is a crime of the utmost gravity. Despite these notable legislative reforms, the Moroccan authorities must do more to assure that certain provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), ratified by Morocco in 1979, are fully implemented.

On 8 December 2015, the prison personnel of Tora prison violently repressed a hunger strike launched by several prisoners to protest the denial of their medication and the harshness of their conditions of detention, forcing the urgent hospitalisation of several of them. Among the hunger strikers was 22-year-old engineering student from Cairo University, Mahmoud Talaat Abdelhamid, who, although his foot was broken during the prison crackdown, was denied the right to see a doctor.

On 5 November 2015, members of the Security Forces stormed into the house of 31-year-old security manager Ali Issa Ali Al Tajer and arrested him without presenting a warrant, taking him to an unknown location, where he was detained incommunicado for 25 days. On 30 November, he was charged with terrorism based on confessions obtained under torture.

On 9 December 2015, the United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT) expressed its concern over the practice of torture in Jordan in its concluding observations, issued after the Committee analysed Jordan's National Report and engaged in a constructive dialogue with the St

On the occasion of Human Rights Day, the Alkarama Foundation presented its 7th annual award for Human Rights Defenders in the Arab World on 8 December 2015 to Omani human rights advocate and former parliamentarian, Talib Al Mamari, in recognition of his important work defending human rights in his country, in particular since the crackdown on civil society that followed the 2011 protests.

In April 2011, car painter Jassim Al Shehab disappeared after his arrest by members of the Military Intelligence Division at a checkpoint in the Homs Governorate. Since then, his family has not been able to obtain any official information on his whereabouts.

In late December 2014, Hamrein Hussein, a 15-year-old Syrian Kurdish student from Amuda, was abducted on her way to school by a patrol of the People's Protection Units (YPG) – Syrian Kurdistan's armed forces – and forcibly enrolled.

On 3 December 2015, as members of the opposition coalition, the National Salvation Union (USN) were going to Ali Sabieh for meetings, they were stopped for a police control during which one of them, Mohamed Abdallah Dabaleh, was fired tear gas to his chest, leaving him unconscious.

On 25 November 2015, human rights defender Said Ali Said Jadad was arrested once more for "using the internet to disseminate material that would prejudice public order" after his sentence of one year in prison was upheld by the Salalah Court of Appeal on 18 November 2015. Known for his criticism of the Omani authorities' systematic repression of peaceful dissent, Said Jadad has been the victim of numerous acts of reprisals.

On 21 October 2015, members of the Homeland Security, together with other law enforcement officers, raided the 6th of October City building where independent NGO Mada Foundation for Media Development has its offices, arresting the 51-year-old head of the foundation, Hisham Ahmed Awad Jafar.