Middle East & North Africa

International Women’s Day: A plea to end conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence

Posted on 08/03/202408/03/2024 by cswpress in Burma, Iraq, Sudan, Syria

Warning: This blog contains details some readers may find distressing.

‘They destroyed my life; they sold and bought me like a sheep.’

Kofan was 14 years old when Islamic State (IS) terrorists abducted her from her village in Sinjar in northern Iraq in 2014. 

Over the subsequent decade she was sold as a sex slave multiple times, and at one point she was ‘owned’, along with six other women, by an elderly man called Abou Jaafar. The group of women were all brutally beaten and repeatedly raped while in captivity.

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Rosh Hashanah celebrations at the Heliopolis Synagogue in Cairo, Egypt. Credit: Facebook/JCC Cairo

An encouragement to President Sisi to go further in the promotion of freedom of religion or belief in Egypt

Posted on 25/09/202325/09/2023 by cswpress in Egypt, Middle East & North Africa

Earlier this month, on 15 September, the Jewish community in Cairo gathered at the Heliopolis Synagogue in Cairo to celebrate Rosh Hashanah.

The occasion, which marks the start of the Jewish New Year, is always significant, but in this context it was even more meaningful, as it marked the first time in 70 years that the community has been free to publicly celebrate it in all of Egypt.

It had been a while coming, as in recent years the Egyptian government has implemented a number of initiatives to benefit the Jewish community. For example, just over two weeks before the community gathered for Rosh Hashanah in Cario, the Egyptian Prime Minister, Mostafa Madbouly, joined Tourism Minister Ahmed Issa to re-open the Ben Ezra Synagogue – also in the capital – after years of careful restoration.

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A protester holds a sign that reads 'Woman Life Freedom' during demonstrations following the following the death of Iranian woman Zhina ‘Mahsa’ Amini.

‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ – Iran faces a crisis with freedom of religion or belief and gender equality at its core

Posted on 08/03/202308/03/2023 by cswpress in Iran, Middle East & North Africa

Iran is enduring its most turbulent period since the 2019-2020 pro-democracy protests, with gender equality and a lack of freedom of religion or belief at its very core.

Since September 2022 distressing news reports have been emerging of violence meted out on Iranian citizens protesting for change – the arbitrary application of the death penalty, extrajudicial killings (including of minors), maiming, excessive sentencing, and the suspicious deaths of several protestors after being released from detention, to highlight a few.

In the face of these violations an initially slow and largely reactive international response accelerated, and a special session of the UN Human Rights Council in November 2022 which established an independent, international fact-finding mission to investigate alleged human rights violations related to the protests, was followed by Iran’s expulsion from the UN Commission on the Status of Women in December 2022. Then in January 2023 the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union announced sanctions on 10 additional Iranian individuals and one additional Iranian entity.

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Bob Chan is beaten inside the grounds of the Chinese consulate in Manchester, UK.

As China, Eritrea, Iran and more extend repression beyond their own borders, we must do better

Posted on 09/01/202309/01/2023 by cswpress in China, Eritrea, Iran

In November last year, Ken McCallum, the Director General of the UK’s Security Service known as MI5, claimed that his agency had identified “at least ten” potential threats to kidnap or even kill British or UK-based individuals perceived as enemies of the Iranian regime. He added that the Iranian intelligence services “are prepared to take reckless action” against opponents in the West, including by luring individuals to Iran.

Coming at a time of intense civil unrest in Iran following the death in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for incorrectly wearing her hijab, McCallum’s comments highlighted a concerning issue that applies to several of the countries CSW works on: repressive regimes are becoming increasingly unafraid to reach beyond their borders.

China

Perhaps one of the most obvious examples is China, a global superpower which regularly uses its economic and geopolitical influence to shape decisions in international fora such as the Human Rights Council, and routinely metes out sanctions against Western parliamentarians and others who openly condemn the widespread violations taking place in the country.

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Understanding religious extremism in the Middle East and North Africa

Posted on 25/01/2022 by cswpress in Middle East & North Africa, Syria

Terrorism has been one of the main sources of global insecurity over the past three decades, often fuelled by sectarianism and religious extremism, as the individuals and groups responsible use religious doctrine to justify their actions.

In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, the rise of political Islamist movements, which reached their zenith with the emergence of Islamic State (IS), is arguably the main cause of religiously-motivated terrorism, and is likely to remain so for a long time. In other parts of the world, however, extremism related to Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism has also resulted in acts of terrorism.

While it’s clear that religiously-motivated terrorism is not confined to any one religious group, the approach to tackling this threat often focuses on one solution: security.

When it comes to understanding terrorism in the MENA region, however, there are often multiple factors at play. These include economic, theological, political and even psychosocial narratives which exploit feelings of victimhood, exclusion, and injustice to manipulate and galvanise potential recruits. Therefore a solution must also be multifaceted.

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