Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS)

Fourteen international and regional rights organisations accuse the Egyptian government of trampling over even the minimum requirements for free and fair elections for the planned March 2018 vote.

In a month that included a malware surveillance campaign in Lebanon, Telegram being blocked in Iran and crackdowns in Tunisia, the release of Hisham Al-Omeisy was a welcome bit of good news.

A new report by the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Information warns that despite relative improvement in the state of freedom of association in Morocco, practices formerly beleaguering local and international rights organizations in the kingdom may reemerge.

FIDH and the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, with the support of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, have filed a criminal complaint relating to the potential role – via the sale of surveillance technology – of the French company Amesys (renamed Nexa Technologies) in widespread oppression under the Al-Sissi regime.

Our Middle East and North Africa round-up spotlights Bahrain’s first military trial of civilians since 2011, a growing crackdown on members of Egypt’s LGBTQI+ community, and a new player restricting Iranians’ internet access.

Human rights organizations condemn the crackdown on individuals in Egypt based on their perceived sexual orientation and gender identity.

Our monthly roundup spotllghts Egypt’s latest efforts to control the media (and rainbow flags), the Kurdish referendum (and aftershocks), a campaign to tackle self-censorship in Palestine and much more.

Hanan, a human rights defender and co-founder of the ÈAssociation of the Families of the DisappearedÈ group, was trying to get information about her forcibly disappeared husband when she was arrested herself and placed in preventative detention indefinitely.