Alkarama is pleased to announce that the NGO response to the Dublin Statement on the Process of Strengthening the UN human rights treaty body system has been adopted by a group of 20 international non-governmental human rights organisations, including Alkarama.

12 October, 2010 - Geneva, Switzerland - Haithem Al-Maleh (هيثم المالح), prominent Syrian human rights defender and lawyer, will be the recipient of the Alkarama Award 2010 for Human Rights Defenders. The award will be presented on 10 December 2010 at the annual Alkarama Award for Human Rights Defenders, which will take place at the International Conference Centre (www.cicg.ch) in Geneva, Switzerland.

As part of a seminar on "Human Rights in the Arab world", during the Human Rights Council's 13th session held at the Palais des Nations, Alkarama presented its annual report 2009.

Download the report

"Secret detention should be explicitly prohibited" recommends a major new study on secret detentions jointly published by several independent United Nations human rights experts; Special Rapporteurs, Manfred Nowak and Martin Scheinin and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, on 27 January 2010. The stark reality which is evident upon reading the report is that despite secret detentions carried out in the name of the so called 'global war on terror' and notably that carried out by the CIA extraordinary rendition project - secret detention centres, particularly in the Arab world, have always existed.