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Qatar

Siege countries top list of human rights violators

Published: 22 Sep 2017 - 01:44 am | Last Updated: 03 Nov 2021 - 12:28 pm

The Peninsula

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has said that countries such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt were included in the list of 29 countries threatening human rights activists, while enjoying the membership of the Human Rights Council currently even when they’re not committed to human rights. The Euro-Med considered it shameful for countries that violate human rights to arrest, hide and violate the rights of defenders.
The Geneva-based Euro-Med noted that the measures to prosecute and restrict human rights defenders are aimed at covering up serious violations of international law and international humanitarian law committed by those countries. A list was reviewed before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva by the UN Under-Secretary-General for Human Rights, Andrew Gilmore, on Wednesday. The Human Rights Council includes 47 countries, nine of which are in the black list. The list includes 29 countries of which 13 countries are from the Middle East and North Africa region mainly: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran and Israel.
The cases cited were far less compared to the documented ones, but some information have been kept secret for the sake of the safety of victims, said Gilmore. Some countries had justified their actions on the grounds that “the victims were either terrorists or informers for foreign entities and aim at the destruction of the country.”
In light of the results shown by the aforementioned list, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor calls on the Human Rights Council to take the matter seriously and adopt a stricter policy to protect human rights defenders, to hold national and international authorities responsible for the protection of human rights defenders, especially against the abuse of laws.