Middle East

Geneva – Millions of people in Yemen are facing a severe humanitarian crisis, chronic deprivation, malnutrition and violence, the UN reports.

While the Islamic nonviolence movement is not monochromatic, among its varieties is a belief that Syria needs a civil state to protect religious and ethnic pluralism, maintain completely equal human rights for every single person without regard to their religious belief or lack thereof; protect individual freedoms, and make government accountable, with checks on its power.

The Israeli naval forces arrested on Tuesday ten fishermen while they were fishing off the cost of Gaza Strip and took them to an unknown destination, local source told Pressenza.
The source said that Israeli naval vessels surrounded two fishing boats in the middle of Gaza shores and detained ten fishermen while they were working.

Reporters Without Borders welcomes the release of Lina Ibrahim, a journalist of pro-government newspaper Tishreen. The news was reported on Facebook by a support group that had called for her release ever since her abduction on 25 October in Damascus suburb of Harasta. It was confirmed by other sources that she had been held by the mukhabarat (intelligence services) in AlKhatib

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader
Khalid Mashaal said Thursday that they began a new phase in relations and
agreed to activate the process of reconciliation, after a meeting in Cairo for the first time since 2007.

The two stated that this meeting will be the beginning of a new Palestinian partnership.

Reporters Without Borders expresses its grave concern over parliament’s approval yesterday of the first reading of a bill toughening Israel’s libel laws, despite strong objections from Israeli journalists. The bill, provides for a steep rise in the amount of damages payable for articles judged to be defamatory.

Egypt’s military rulers have completely failed to live up to their promises to Egyptians to improve human rights and have instead been responsible for a catalogue of abuses which in some cases exceeds the record of Hosni Mubarak, Amnesty International said in a new report.

Maimouna Alammar clutched her baby girl to her chest last Friday in her home in Daraya, a suburb of Syria’s capital, Damascus. Security agents appeared at her door at 8 p.m., with Maimouna’s younger brother Suhaib in shackles. They stormed the home searching for her husband, then demanded she hand little Emar Nassar over.

A town of about 200,000 Daraya is notable mainly for its grapes — and, truth be told, for its lack of social diversity. If Damascus is too full of people of different faiths, military sorts, and Baathist Party members, you beat a retreat to Daraya, where a calm coexistence has traditionally existed among only Christian Arabs, and the town’s majority: Sunni Arab Muslims.

“Another Iraq is Possible with Peace and Human Rights,”
agree 250 representatives of civil society organizations who met October 8-9 in Erbil, Iraq.

A final declaration from their work together has been just released in Arabic, French, Italian,
and English and lays out a vision for social activists working to promote national sovereignty
of Iraqi people.