On 20 March 2015, UPR Info and a group of 46 NGOs, including Alkarama, called upon UN Member States to focus on the quality and not the quantity of recommendations issued during the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), which should be stronger and more specific.
"As the third cycle of the UPR is due to start in 2017, States are repeatedly calling for a decrease in the number of recommendations, claiming that a too high number of recommendations undermine their effective implementation," says Rachid Mesli, Legal Director at Alkarama. "On the contrary, we argue that weak and vague recommendations are the issue. What really undermines the promotion of human rights is the sole acceptance by some states of the least binding recommendations."
On 16 September 2014, the members of Alkarama's legal department met with the experts of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) to express their main concerns about the growing problem of enforced disappearances in the Arab world. On 18 September, Alkarama also met with experts from the Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) to inform them about the systematic resort to this particularly serious practice in Iraq, the first Arab country to have signed the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
In his last report to the Human Rights Council, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon raised cases of retaliation against persons who have cooperated with the United Nations, ranging from threats, travel bans, arbitrary detention and torture, which he says are only the "tip of the iceberg". Last May, Alkarama had provided the Secretary General with a report on the state of reprisals against human rights defenders in the Arab world.
In this article, Alkarama responds to the recent false accusations of supporting terrorism on behalf of Qatar, allegations peddled by Lebanese daily, As-Safir and echoed in other "news" sites in the region.
Today, Alkarama has provided the United Nations Secretary General with a report on the state of reprisals in the Arab world and in particular on individuals who have suffered from harassment and intimidation for their cooperation with the UN.