Freedom House

In a second joint appeal, over 60 IFEX members and partners again call for the release of Moroccan journalist Ali Anouzla, after terrorism-related charges were laid against him.

IFEX members appeal to the King to end restrictions on news websites, nearly five months after Jordanian regulators blocked some 300 sites under a new licensing provision of the Press and Publications Law.

Broad surveillance, new laws controlling web content, and growing arrests of social-media users drove a worldwide decline in Internet freedom in the past year, according to a study by Freedom House.

Over 60 organisations signed a joint appeal to Moroccan authorities to free editor Ali Anouzla, jailed on 17 September for posting a link to an Al-Qaeda video on his news website alongside an article critical of the video.

Venezuela’s withdrawal from the American Convention on Human Rights removes Venezuela from the jurisdiction of the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights, leaving Venezuelans with limited recourse when they suffer abuses.

Unlike previous crackdowns on civil society in Egypt, the current attack is drawing strong backing from the Egyptian public, large segments of which either support or do not oppose the efforts of military leader Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, whose stated aim is to preserve national security and unity against an imminent threat.

On the eve of the G20 Leaders’ Summit in St. Petersburg, human rights organisations are calling on world leaders to denounce Russian laws that discriminate against LGBTI people and prevent non-governmental organisations from doing their work.

The death of Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi in August 2012 sparked hope that the ruling party would undertake reforms to loosen restrictions imposed on civil society, the media, and opposition parties. However, one year into the administration of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, Meles’s successor, not much has changed.