In its second annual report, the Gulf Center for Human Rights (GCHR) documents the worsening the situation for human rights defenders in the Gulf region in 2013. The report, “Rising Human Rights Challenges in the Gulf Region and Beyond”, documents human rights violations throughout the 10 countries in the wider Gulf region and Syria, whose conflict has significant regional implications.

“Across the region, those who lobby for the promotion and protection of human rights, document rights violations, express dissenting views, align with the political opposition or, in some cases, simply deliver humanitarian aid have been painted as threats to state security and consequently punished,” says the GCHR report. 

Indeed, in almost every country reported on, authoritarian regimes severely restrict the rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association in an effort to silence dissent. For example, governments are restricting freedom of expression on the internet through new laws that criminalize criticism online. Governments are meeting peaceful protestors with violence.  Would-be reformers have been imprisoned, including GCHR’s founders, Bahraini rights defenders Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja and Nabeel Rajab, to whom the report is dedicated. Al-Khawaja is serving a life prison sentence, while Rajab will have served nearly two years in jail if he is freed on 24 May 2014, as expected.

According to the report, “this wave of repression against human rights defenders is a clear backlash against the growing confidence and expanding vision of human rights activists in the wake of the Arab Spring.”

As well, the report notes that rights defenders who seek to cooperate with international human rights bodies have faced reprisals both at home and abroad, including human rights defenders who have lobbied at the UN.  “Human rights defenders have been subjected to arbitrary arrest and detention, ill-treatment at times amounting to torture, unfair trials and disproportionate prison sentences,” says the report. 

The report concludes that greater international attention is necessary to ensure the protection of those who risk their lives in both the exercise and promotion of human rights throughout the Gulf.

To that end, GCHR welcomes the development last year in March by the UN Human Rights Council which passed its first ever resolution affirming the specific rights of human rights defenders. “This is an important step that will help defend those who work tirelessly to defend human rights in the region – not only with little positive recognition for their work, but under extreme situations of death threats, life in prison and torture,” noted GCHR Co-Director Khalid Ibrahim.

As described in the report, in 2013, GCHR undertook missions to Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen, and trained nearly 150 human rights defenders from the region on security, UN mechanisms, and human rights documentation, among other topics. GCHR also helps provide assistance to human rights defenders in distress, through training and grants, as well as trial monitoring.

The Full Report is Available HERE