As we approach the International Human Rights Day on December 10, our organizations join efforts to call again upon the Lebanese authorities to criminalize the practice of torture.

Lebanon ratified the Convention against Torture in 2000 and reaffirmed its resolve to combat torture when acceding to the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture in 2008. However, the practice of torture still prevails.

For more than 2 years and a half, the Syrian government has been carrying out large scale campaigns of arbitrary arrests and has jailed tens of thousands of civilians including peaceful protestors, civil society and political activists, aid workers and journalists, physicians and lawyers without sparing women, children, and pe

Alkarama has been campaigning for Sudan's accession to the CAT, a call that has also been made by the Independent Expert on the Situation of Human Rights in the Sudan in his latest report in 2013.

Alkarama today condemns a further Egyptian Minister of Justice move to hold a trial inside a prison rather than an official courthouse.

The 3 November hearing of 13 women was held in the infamous Damanhour prison, rather than in the misdemeanor appeal court of Sida Jaber as it was scheduled to be held, following the issuance of Minister of Justice decision No. 7587.

Next Wednesday, 20 November, will mark the second session of the trial of three Jordanian activists before the State Security Court (SSC), notorious for its disrespect of fair trial norms. The three activists named Hamam Mohamed Qafisheh, Ayman Abdelaziz Al Bahrawy, and Diaa Al Din Abdelaziz Al Shalaby were arrested on suspicion of producing and distributing posters displaying the R4BIA signs, associated with the Muslim Brotherhood protests in neighboring Egypt.

Today, the report on the second Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the human rights situation in Jordan was adopted by the UPR Working Group of the UN Human Rights Council. In view of the Jordanian authorities' failure to fully implement many of the recommendations made during its first review in 2009, a number of recommendations were repeated. Many of these recommendations again enjoyed the support of Jordan, but some crucial suggestions were unfortunately refused.

Alkarama is deeply concerned by the draft law on the "Organization of the Right to Public Assembly, Processions and Peaceful Demonstrations in Public Places" – known as 'the Demonstration Law' - which falls short of Egypt's international human rights obligations regarding the right to assembly.