Human Rights Watch

With the need to communicate and access information during the COVID-19 pandemic, rights organizations call on governments in the Gulf region to lift their ban on Voice Over IP platforms that facilitate voice and video internet calls.

While the release of 1,486 Bahraini prisoners is a positive step, this has so far excluded opposition leaders, activists, journalists and human rights defenders – many of whom are older and/or suffer from underlying medical conditions.

Officials are forging ahead with installing one of the world’s biggest surveillance camera systems equipped with facial recognition technology. The system is ostensibly intended to help in the fight against COVID-19 and ensure that everyone placed under self-quarantine stays off the streets.

The crisis presents serious risks to Kyrgyzstan’s prisoners. Askarov, a journalist and human rights activist, has spent nearly 10 years in prison. Nothing justifies his detention and he should be released, all the more urgently now on humanitarian grounds.

Children caught in a nationwide crackdown on protesters and dissidents have been abducted, arbitrarily arrested, and subjected to horrific torture at the hands of Egypt’s security forces according to a new report from Human Rights Watch.

Ilhomjon Yakubov is the former head of the opposition Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan and is living in exile in Lithuania. The assault is the latest in a long line of what appear to be politically-motivated attacks on critics of the Tajikistan government.

The cost of, and restrictions to the internet by way of shutdowns are the major obstacles for Ethiopians, especially in Oromia from accessing timely and critical information about COVID-19.

“Governments should avoid sweeping and overly broad restrictions on movement and personal liberty, rely upon voluntary social distancing, and move toward mandatory restrictions only when scientifically warranted and necessary and when systems to support those affected can be ensured.”