Annual Report

Regional Overview - Middle East and North Africa

At first sight, the pattern of widespread abuse that has long characterized human rights in the Middle East and North Africa remained firmly entrenched in 2005. Indeed, considering the appalling toll of abuses perpetrated by all parties to the conflict in Iraq, the continuing struggle between Israelis and Palestinians, and some of the views expressed by Iran’s new President, the picture could have appeared very bleak.

Despite this and the persistence of grave violations across the region, there were some signs to suggest that 2005 might come to be seen as a time when some of the old certainties began to look less certain and a new dynamic began to take hold. The wall of impunity behind which so many perpetrators of torture, political killings and other abuses had sheltered for so long began to fracture. Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussain was brought to trial on charges relating to executions of villagers in 1982, and an unprecedented UN Security Council-mandated inquiry implicated senior Syrian and Lebanese officials in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri.

In Morocco, the Arab world’s first truth commission shed important light on grave human rights abuses committed over a period of more than 40 years and brought acknowledgement and reparation for at least some of the victims, although not yet justice. In Libya, the authorities announced a belated investigation into the killing or “disappearance” of possibly hundreds of prisoners at Tripoli’s Abu Selim Prison in 1996.

Women, for so long subject to discrimination in both law and practice, finally won the right to vote in Kuwait and achieved greater recognition of their human rights in countries such as Algeria and Morocco. Even in Saudi Arabia, the exclusion of women from participation in the country’s first ever municipal elections sparked debate and growing pressure for change.

Only time will tell whether these were the first signs of real and overdue change or merely instances that bucked the trend. However, the emergence of an increasingly active and outspoken community of human rights activists was a further promising development. Using the Internet and the opportunities provided by the growth and popularity of satellite television, human rights activists were able increasingly to communicate information and share ideas unimpeded by national boundaries both within and beyond the region and to derive new strength and solidarity from the regional and global alliances to which they contributed.

However, 2005 also brought repression and misery to far too many people in the region as their human rights were abused or denied. Some were targeted because of their political views, others because of their religion or ethnicity, yet others for their sexual orientation. Throughout the region women were subject to varying degrees of discrimination and violence because of their gender. Countless others were unable to enjoy fully their economic, social and cultural rights.

Conflict, violence and crimes under international law

The persistence of armed conflict and other forms of political violence was the context for war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by several parties. Thousands of children and adult civilians were killed or injured in the continuing conflict in Iraq, many of them victims of suicide bomb attacks carried out by militant groups that frequently targeted civilians. Other civilians, including Iraqis and foreign nationals, were abducted and held hostage; some were released but others were killed by their captors. Troops of the US-led multinational force and Iraqi government forces also committed widespread abuses, including torture and unlawful killings of civilians, and detained thousands of suspects arbitrarily and without access to due process. In November, the Iraq conflict spilled over to Jordan when suicide bombers apparently linked to Iraq targeted three hotels in the capital, Amman, killing 60 people and wounding many others. In Egypt, bombs that targeted civilians exploded in Cairo in April and Sharm el-Sheik in July; 90 people were killed and at least 100 were injured.

New evidence emerged of human rights violations by governments and intelligence services in the Middle East/North Africa region and those in the USA and other Western countries in their close collaboration in the “war on terror”. AI interviewed detainees in Yemen who said that they had been briefly detained and tortured in Jordan and then held for many months in secret detention centres under US control, whose location they never learned, before being flown to Yemen. Yemeni authorities told AI that the detainees were being held at the behest of the US government.

There was increasing information to indicate that individuals suspected of terrorism by the US authorities had been secretly and forcibly transferred to countries, including Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and Syria, for interrogation. Senior US officials continued to proclaim their administration’s opposition to torture despite such transfers (“renditions”) of suspects to countries whose security services had long records of torturing detainees with impunity. Neither the USA nor any of the countries concerned disclosed the number of those transferred, where they were being held or their identities.

As a further sign of close collaboration, three countries – Lebanon, Libya and Jordan – signed bilateral agreements with the UK under which they agreed to accept individuals whom the UK authorities said were suspected of terrorism and wished forcibly to expel. All three countries, under the terms of these Memorandums of Understanding with the UK, were required to provide specific assurances that anyone returned under the agreement would not be tortured or treated inhumanely, in implicit recognition that these countries had failed to respect the guarantees against torture to which they had previously committed under international law.

Several countries invoked the “war on terror” as a justification for maintaining long-standing emergency powers, as in Egypt, or for introducing new legislation that threatened to violate human rights ostensibly in the interests of protecting national security, as in Bahrain. Scores of prosecutions on terrorism-related charges were mounted in countries that included Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia. In many cases, defendants appeared before special or ordinary courts whose procedures fell far short of those required by international fair trial standards. Some complained that they had been tortured and ill-treated while held in pre-trial detention and forced to “confess”. However, courts rarely ordered investigations or gave credence to such claims.

Impunity, justice and accountability

With few exceptions, perpetrators of human rights abuses continued to benefit from impunity as governments failed to hold them to account and ensure justice for their victims. In many countries in the region, security and intelligence services were given free rein to detain suspects for long periods, often holding them incommunicado and without charge and exposing them to torture and ill-treatment, confident that they did so with official acquiescence and without fear of intervention by the courts. Detainees were frequently tortured in Syria in pre-trial detention. In Egypt, Iran and Tunisia, defendants frequently complained of torture when they were eventually brought to trial only for courts to dismiss their allegations out of hand without investigation.

The problem was exacerbated by the continued prevalence of exceptional courts, including military courts empowered to try civilians. In Egypt and Syria, such courts were maintained under long-standing states of emergency. Special courts were also used to try and sentence political suspects in Lebanon and Oman. In Libya, the General People’s Congress abolished the People’s Court, a notoriously unfair special court that had previously sentenced many critics and opponents of the government to long prison terms or death. Despite this, neither in Libya nor in most other countries in the Middle East and North Africa could it be said that there was an independent judiciary, especially in cases having a political or security aspect.

Police and security forces also operated largely behind a shield of impunity when they used excessive force, causing deaths and injuries, whether in Iran and Yemen, where the victims were often members of religious or ethnic minorities; in Egypt and Morocco, where the targets included refugees and migrants; or in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where Palestinian children were among those killed with impunity by Israeli troops. In Iraq, both US and other foreign forces and those of the Iraqi government used excessive force with impunity.

Killings of civilians by Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups continued in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, although on a lesser scale than in recent years. While Israel used a wide range of judicial and extrajudicial means to punish Palestinians individually and collectively for killings of Israelis, Palestinian victims were denied justice and redress. Impunity remained the rule for Israeli forces who unlawfully killed and ill-treated Palestinians. In July Israel passed a new law denying Palestinians the right to claim compensation for death, injury or damage caused by Israeli forces. The Palestinian Authority also failed to take action against Palestinian armed groups responsible for unlawful killings and abductions amid increasing lawlessness.

The issue of impunity for past grave abuses came into sharp focus during the year. In Algeria, the government held a national referendum to win support for its plan to extend an amnesty to those responsible for the thousands of political killings, “disappearances” and widespread torture that were so much a feature of the internal conflict that raged from the early 1990s.

In neighbouring Morocco, however, an Equity and Reconciliation Commission appointed by King Mohamed VI completed its inquiries into “disappearances” and other violations committed between 1956 and 1999, and at the end of the year submitted its final report. Although its statutes categorically excluded the identification of individual perpetrators, the Commission represented a unique initiative within the region, one that appeared likely to clarify a good number of cases of past abuse and ensure both official acknowledgement of, and the payment of reparation for, some of the suffering to which victims and their relatives had been exposed. The independent Moroccan Human Rights Association, meanwhile, organized its own informal public hearings in which some victims named individuals they held responsible for past violations against them.

In Iraq, justice continued to be denied to countless victims of abuse. However, former President Saddam Hussain was finally called to account for some of the crimes committed when he was in power, crimes whose enormity was reflected following the discovery of mass graves in 2003. Facing charges related to only one of the many incidents of killings for which his government was believed responsible, it remained to be seen whether he would receive a fair trial. The initial conduct of the trial did not inspire confidence. Yet, for a once-powerful leader to have to answer to some of his victims was a breakthrough for a region in which impunity had been well-entrenched for so long.

In neighbouring Syria, senior government figures came under pressure as a UN investigation implicated them and Lebanese political leaders and security officials in the February bomb explosion that killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri and 22 others in Beirut. However, the killings and “disappearances” of thousands of Syrian and Lebanese nationals in past decades remained almost entirely uninvestigated.

Refugees and migrants

Most countries lacked a legal regime for the protection of refugees and asylum-seekers. Only seven – Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen – were parties to the UN Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. Long-standing refugee communities within the region continued to face discrimination and denial of their human rights by governments in host countries. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon remained barred from working in certain professions, despite some easing of restrictions during the year, and faced other limitations severely affecting their rights to education and adequate housing. Despite the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the situation for Palestinian refugees there and in the occupied West Bank continued to worsen because of land acquisitions, house demolitions, closures and other controls on movement imposed by the Israeli authorities and the increasing lawlessness arising from rivalry between Palestinian armed groups.

In Egypt, a three-month demonstration by Sudanese refugees and migrants seeking improvements in their living conditions, protection from return to Sudan and resettlement in a third country came to a head in December when police used force to disperse the demonstrators. At least 27 people were killed and others were injured.

Europe’s restrictive immigration policies contributed to the difficulties faced by several North African countries which refugees and migrants from further south sought to traverse in order to gain entry to Europe’s southern borders. The Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla emerged as particular pressure points. Between August and October, Spanish and Moroccan police used excessive force against people, mostly from West Africa, who sought to enter Spanish territory by climbing the border fences. At least 13 people were killed. Many others were rounded up by Moroccan police, transported to remote desert areas along the border with Algeria and dumped, left to fend for themselves without adequate water or shelter. Amid wide publicity and condemnation, both governments said they would investigate the killings, but no government officials had been prosecuted or disciplined by the end of 2005.

Women’s rights

Women continued to suffer legal and other forms of discrimination throughout the region, although 2005 saw a quickening process of change. In Kuwait, women for the first time became eligible to vote in the country’s national elections. In Morocco, King Mohamed VI announced that citizenship would be granted to all children born of women with foreign spouses and that a discriminatory law severely limiting this right would be reformed. In Algeria too, amendments to the Family Code removed some aspects of discrimination, although not enough to give women equal status with men.

That such changes represented something of a breakthrough said a lot about how much further change is necessary before women truly achieve equal status in the region. Violence against women, including within the family, remained widespread and insufficiently addressed by governments and state authorities. In Iraq, where increasing religious sectarianism emerged as a feature of the political breakdown, women came under greater threat of violence because of how they dressed and behaved.

Economic, social and cultural rights

Many communities faced denial of or were hampered from accessing basic economic, social and cultural rights. Marginalized people were particularly vulnerable, including Bedouins in Israel, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, members of ethnic and religious minorities in Iran, and migrants, especially women migrant workers in Gulf countries and Lebanon. For Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israeli policies and controls made life especially harsh. Palestinians were left without shelter by destruction of their homes; without livelihood by the seizure of land and closures; and without access to adequate health care due to road closures and checkpoints. Access to scarce water resources increasingly emerged as a likely flashpoint for the future.

Death penalty

Both Iran and Saudi Arabia continued to carry out executions – at least 94 and 88 respectively in 2005. In both countries the real totals were probably higher. Iran’s victims included child offenders, while a large proportion of those executed in Saudi Arabia were foreign nationals, including some who were sentenced after trials whose proceedings they did not understand.

In September, Iraq carried out its first executions since the death penalty was restored in August 2004, and the effective moratorium on executions that had existed in the Palestinian Authority since 2002 was ended by five executions. Algeria, Israel, Morocco and Tunisia remained abolitionist in practice.

Human rights defenders

Human rights defenders continued to face a momentous task as they sought to promote wider understanding and ensure more effective protection of the rights due to all people in the region regardless of age, gender, nationality, religion, sexual orientation or other defining characteristics. They faced many obstacles and in some cases put their lives on the line to defend their own and others’ fundamental rights.

Independent human rights organizations were active in a majority of countries, despite restrictive laws designed to regulate the operation of non-governmental groups. However, human rights defenders continued to be targeted for abuse or harassment, particularly in Iran and Syria. In Tunisia, the run-up to a UN-sponsored world summit in November was accompanied by an increase in state repression directed against leading human rights activists. The repression persisted through the summit itself which, ironically, aimed to advance international information exchange through the use of new technology. Sahrawi human rights defenders who documented abuses by Moroccan forces in confronting protests earlier in the year were jailed in Western Sahara.