No one is protected!! The Arab League and human rights: A new book issued by CIHRS

Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) has recently issued a new book in Arabic entitled “no one is protected: the role of the Arab League in maintaining Human rights Protection”. The book was partly the result of the collaboration of numerous research papers of a number of prominent Arab human rights activists such as Ahmed Shawki Benyoub, Bahey El Din Hassan, Mohamed Hussein, Amina El Moreiny, Joseph Scheckla, Ghassan Mekheiber, Mohamed El Sayyed Said, Mohamed Said El Tayyeb, and Negad El Borai. The book was compiled and edited by Moataz El Fegiery, Programs Director at CIHRS.

The research papers, which constitute the first section of the book, handle the contributions of civil society and human rights defenders in the criticism of the Arab Human Rights Charter. The papers embrace human rights guarantees and protection mechanisms in the Arab Charter for Human Rights, as well as regional human rights protection in the Arab world and other rights such as civil and political rights, women&#146s rights and children&#146s rights among the guarantees enshrined in the Charter and the international obligations of governments all over the Arab world. In addition, the papers set a comparison between the Arab Charter and the African one.

It is worth noting to state that these papers were presented in the regional conference entitled “Towards efficient regional protection of human rights; what Arab Charter for Human Rights?”, which was held in Beirut from 10-12 June 2003 as an initiative from the part of CIHRS in collaboration with and the Association for Defending Rights and Freedoms (ADDL) in coordination with the Euro Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN), and the International Federation of Human Rights (IFHR). The conference was the result to the Arab League&#146s invitation of the Permanent Arab Committee for Human Rights to a special meeting to examine the modernization potential of the Arab Charter for Human Rights.

The second section of the book includes a documentary file that traces the various developmental phases of the Charter up till May 2004 when it was amended, including the attitudes and stances of the Arab civil society, international human rights organizations, and the United Nations from the modernization process.