Category: MENA
COVID-19 pandemic exposes cost of MENA governments’ lack of human rights standards for businesses
The Middle East and North Africa continues to stand out as a region with repeated and serious abuses of human rights. We are on the cusp of the 10th anniversary of the so-called Arab Spring, which erupted with such blazing hope for change among the next generation. In the years since, Egypt has sunk back ...
Arms sales are about profit and politics, not ethics
We must expose where public dollars are really being spent and boycott or divest from the enterprises that profit from selling munitions that kill. Western governments were quick to express their outrage at Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria to clear it of Kurds, resulting in the displacement of more than 275,000. Ten countries—including the United States, ...
MENA Businesses & Human Rights: How should we move forward?
Nine years after the so-called “Arab Spring” protests swept the Middle East and North Africa, with mostly young people calling for the end of autocracy and respect for their human rights, civil and human rights are more at risk than ever. Governments across the region engage in vicious, factional wars for control (Syria, Yemen, Libya); ...
Towards an effective UN role in combating impunity for crimes against journalists
Journalists do face grim challenges in their reporting whilst, there is a sharp rise noticed in the attacks against them worldwide. These attacks became a phenomenon due to the impunity for those aggressors. There is clear lack of accountability and there is failure from organisations concerned with journalists in their pursuit to offer proper advocacy ...
Stopping migration by making Gaza livable
The only long-term way to stem the flow of Gazans taking deadly risks to try to leave the Strip (such as digging cross-border tunnels or migrating illegally across the Mediterranean), and to attract home the former residents with the specialized skills the economy needs to thrive, is to end the Israeli/Egyptian blockade. This would once ...
The Gaza Strip: Reversing the Desire to Flee- II
Flight under conditions of duress or desperation is nothing new for Palestinians. Since 1948, when more than half a million Palestinians were forced to leave their homeland to make way for a new country in their midst, there have been several large waves of Palestinian outmigration or forced displacement. Yet this flight has in many ...
The Gaza Strip: Reversing the Desire to Flee- I
“Physically, the prisoner is powerless. But in spirit he gnaws unceasingly at the roots of the thorny hedge.“ — The Lager Echo, a prison camp newspaper on the Isle of Man, WW I. (Kenneth Helphand 2006) Densely populated with more than 1.8 million residents, the Gaza Strip is one of the most chronically unstable ...