On March 14, 2018, the Alkarama Foundation participated in a side event organised by Conseil pour la Justice, l'Égalité et la Paix (COJEP) and the International Centre for Justice and Human Rights (ICJHR) at the Palais des Nations in Geneva to discuss the current human rights situation in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
March 17, 2018 marks one year since Osama Al Najjar completed his three-year prison sentence in the UAE, yet the well-known blogger and human rights defender remains detained against his will to date.
On January 25, 2018, the United Nations Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) adopted a draft report following the review of the United Arab Emirates (UAE)’s human rights record on January 22, 2018. The report contains 230 recommendations made by United Nations Member States to the United Arab Emirates, related to issues including the state’s widespread practices of torture and arbitrary detention.
On November 9, 2017, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) published an Opinion calling for the immediate release of Taysir Salman, a 44-year-old Jordanian journalist who has been detained in the UAE since 2015 – during which time he was disappeared for 80 days – as a result of a Facebook post.
On October 5, 2017, Alkarama sent an urgent appeal to the Special Rapporteur on the right to education concerning the cases of 119 Qatari citizens who have been prevented from pursuing their education in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as a result of the diplomatic dispute between the two countries.
On September 15, 2017, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) issued an Opinion on the case of a Lebanese citizen, Ahmed Mekkaoui, in which the UN experts qualified his detention as arbitrary and called for his immediate release.
On 29 June 2017, Alkarama submitted its report on the human rights situation in the United Arab Emirates to the Human Rights Council, in view of the UAE’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) which will be held in January 2018.
