News

The rights of citizens in Egypt to assemble and express their views are increasingly coming under threat. The government of Egypt has stepped up efforts to clamp down on dissent from political activist and civil society organisations. Political protests are being violently suppressed and a new law threatens the independence of civil society organisations.

In Uzbekistan it seems that promoting condoms and sterile needles to stop the spread of HIV is "immoral" and deserving of imprisonment in its notorious jails. The country, ruled by dictator Islam Karimov – andrecently lambasted by the UN Human Rights Committee – has given one of its leading Aids workers a seven-year sentence.

Work outside the home in southern Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province has become almost impossible for women due to constant threats and intimidation by insurgents. Convinced she will be killed if she continues to defy the threats, 39-year-old Ranna Tareen, director of Kandahar’s women’s affairs department and a well-known women’s rights activist, has decided to leave Kandahar and run for parliament in Kabul.

The Afghan authorities have cancelled the operating licences of 152 national and 20 international NGOs, accusing them of not being accountable. “All NGOs have to report [their activities] to the Ministry of Economy [MoE] every six months but these NGOs have not reported for almost two years and therefore they [their operating licences] have been annulled,” Seddiq Amarkhil, MoE’s spokesman, told IRIN, adding that the NGOs had the right of appeal.