Event
Middle East Delegation on Human Rights to Washington DC
Bahey Eldin Hassan, Heinrich Boell Foundation
July 6, 2010
On the occasion of the anniversary of U.S. President Obama’s Cairo Speech and the upcoming elections in Egypt, the North America and Arab Middle East offices of the Heinrich Boell Stiftung invited a delegation of human right activists from the Middle East. The delegation visited Washington, DC from June 28th to July 1st, to bring attention to the human rights situation in their home countries. It was organized in partnership with the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies.
The delegates were attending several bilateral meetings with high representatives of the U.S. administration, U.S. Congress and think tanks. They discussed the human rights situation in their home countries at the public event “Human Rights and Obama’s Policies in the Arab World” at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and two media appointments with Deutsche Welle and Al Hurra.

Delegates

Bahey Eldin Hassan, General Director, Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies
Amal Basha, President, Sister's Arab Forum for Human Rights, Yemen
Ibrahim Almugaiteeb, Director, Human Rights First Society, Saudi Arabia
Kamel Jendoubi, Director, Tunisian Committee for the Respect of Human Rights
Radwan Ziadeh, President, Damascus Center for Human Rights
Saif Nasrawy, Human rights activist and Journalist, Egypt/Iraq
Bassem Samir, Executive Director, Egyptian Democratic Academy
Kamel Laibidi, Tunisian journalist
Radya Nasrawy, President, Tunisian Association against Torture

Click here for the delegates' biographies

Amal Basha, Bahey Eldin Hassan, Ibrahim Almugaiteeb and Saif Nasrawi
Interview with Al-Hurra: Eye on Democracy 196
Human Rights activists Amal Basha, Bahey Eldin Hassan, Ibrahim Almugaiteeb and Saif Nasrawi are featured in the weekly program "Eye on Democracy" on Al-Hurra. Each week “Eye on Democracy” highlights the most important issues challenging freedom and democracy in the Middle East and North Africa. The show is hostd by Mohamed Alyahyai.

Click here to watch the interview (in Arabic only)

Publications on the Human Rights Situation in the Middle East
Almugaiteeb, Ibrahim (2010). Human Rights in Saudi Arabia - Current Conditions (5 pages, pdf, 490KB)

Ziadeh, Radwan (2010). Serious and Systematic Human Rights Violations in Syria (7 pages, pdf, 370KB)

Amal Basha, Michael Posner, Michele Dunne, Tamara Cofman Wittes, Bahey El Din Hassan
Human Rights and Obama’s Policies in the Arab World
A year after President Obama called for a new beginning in U.S. relations with the Muslim world, it remains unclear the role human rights play in Washington’s policies in the Arab region. While the recently released National Security Strategy includes the promotion of democracy and human rights abroad as a core foreign policy value, there are lingering questions as to how this will be translated into action.

Michael Posner, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Tamara Cofman Wittes discussed current U.S. policy toward human rights in the Arab countries at a July 1 event cosponsored by the Carnegie Endowment and the Heinrich Boll Foundation. Two leading Arab human rights advocates—Bahey El Din Hassan of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies and Amal Basha of the Sisters' Arab Forum for Human Rights in Yemen—discussed the human rights situation in the region and their perceptions of U.S. policies. Carnegie's Michele Dunne moderated.

Click here to listen to read the full article and to access the event's audio and video files.

Human Rights Activists Disappointed of Obama
In June 2009, President Obama caused great expectations with his Cairo speech. The speech was supposed to symbolize the beginning of a new era of mutual respect between Americans and the Muslim world. Obama also called for the respect of human rights. One year later, human rigths activists from the Middle East critizise Obama for not following up with policy actions.

Click here to read the full article (article in German only; for the audio file scroll down to the bottom of page)