Articles

The Italian authorities are currently detaining Alkarama's Legal Director, Rachid Mesli, in the Italian prison of Aosta.

The Call for Nominations for the 2015 Alkarama Award for Human Rights Defenders is now open.

To nominate your human rights defender/organisation for the 2015 Award, please fill in the form available here before 7 September.

We are a coalition of human rights and humanitarian organizations working to protect and assist the civilians of Syria.

What is the Alkarama Award for Human Rights Defenders?

The Alkarama Award is a prize presented every year to an individual or an organisation that has significantly contributed to the promotion and protection of human rights in the Arab world. The prize-giving ceremony is held around Human Rights Day, 10 December.

Who is eligible for the Alkarama Award?

On the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, celebrated globally on 3 May, Alkarama wishes to highlight the cases of the following activists, whose right to freely exercise their profession of journalists has been violated. Far from being exhaustive, this list wants to raise awareness of the general public on those cases by providing a brief overview of the phenomenon in some specific countries.

Algeria: A TV Show Closed for Denouncing Corruption

At the launch of its annual report in Geneva on 26 March, Alkarama chastised Arab States for trying to undermine, not only the United Nations human rights system, but also Arab civil society, all this under the pretext of countering terrorism, a label that has become the weapon of choice for authoritarian regimes to stifle criticism.

On 20 March 2015, UPR Info and a group of 46 NGOs, including Alkarama, called upon UN Member States to focus on the quality and not the quantity of recommendations issued during the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), which should be stronger and more specific.

ABOUT ALKARAMA

On 16 September 2014, the members of Alkarama's legal department met with the experts of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) to express their main concerns about the growing problem of enforced disappearances in the Arab world.

In his last report to the Human Rights Council, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon raised cases of retaliation against persons who have cooperated with the United Nations, ranging from threats, travel bans, arbitrary detention and torture, which he says are only the "tip of the iceberg".