Posts tagged : "Human rights"

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: Reports by the international organizations indicate that Saudi Arabia continues to remain a major human rights violator. In 2018, Saudi authorities carried on with their campaign of arbitrary detention, trial and conviction of peaceful protesters. 146 executions were carried out this year and the kingdom's involvement in the military campaign in Yemen claimed numerous innocent lives. A distinguished human rights lawyer tells the Organization for Defending Victims of Violence that despite introducing social reforms, Saudi Arabia remains a serial human rights violator and doesn't welcome criticism of its actions and policies. "The Saudi government is an authoritarian regime and doesn’t tolerate dissent of...

Kourosh Ziabari - International Policy Digest: The world is facing an unprecedented refugee crisis. About 68.5 million people worldwide have been forced from their homes including nearly 25.4 million refugees, half of whom are under the age of 18. Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Somalia are the major source countries of refugees and figures by the World Economic Forum show that 84% of refugees live in the developing countries. Turkey, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iran and Uganda are the world’s top refugee-hosting countries and Germany is the only European country which is on the list of the top 10 host nations. A lot has been said about the wars and conflicts that produce the refugees, the ability of the international community to deal...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: The humanitarian catastrophe in Myanmar’s Rakhine State has been described as the world’s most urgent refugee crisis. The roots of the ethnic conflict can be traced back to British colonial policy in what was then Burma, but it was the decision to strip the Muslim Rohingya minority of citizenship rights on the basis of their religion that laid the foundation for most recent abuses. While 135 national ethnic groups were recognized and granted certain rights, the Rohingya were effectively rendered stateless under the 1982 Citizenship Act, creating the world’s largest stateless minority. Decades of privation and humiliating restrictions culminated in violent clashes between the Arakan Rohingya...

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: A feminist activist and professor of sociology says it is largely hypocritical to speak of the United States' concern for human rights, whether nationally, within the U.S., or internationally, especially when it comes to Arabs or Muslims in general. Prof Nahla Abdo believes the approach taken by the U.S. administration to the Middle East as a "troubled region" is predicated on interventionist attitudes, which largely characterize the U.S. foreign policy. "Any attempts by any Middle Eastern country to defy the U.S. and Israeli interests in the region is punished by military invasion, devastation, destruction and massacres," Nahla Abdo said. Nahla Abdo is a Professor of Sociology at Carleton University,...

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: Saudi Arabia has recently been severely reprimanded over its human rights violations by international organisations, mostly the Human Rights Watch, which has offered a disappointing picture of the situation in this country. Aside from its heavy involvement in the wars in Yemen and Bahrain, Saudi Arabia is still failing in several areas, including in criminal justice, women's and girl's rights and migrant workers. It's reported that over 9 million migrant workers fill manual, clerical and service jobs in the Persian Gulf country, constituting more than half of the workforce, but many of them suffer different sorts of abuse and exploitation, "amounting to conditions of forced labour." In January 2018, UN human...

Kourosh Ziabari - International Policy Digest: Working with children with autism is a challenge that few people embrace pro bono. Autism is a developmental disorder marked by difficulties with social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. Stereotyped behavior, compulsive behavior, ritualistic behavior, restricted interests and self-injury, problems in social development and communication are the major characteristics of children with autism, and absent support, these challenges can present long-term challenges for individuals. Melissa Diamond is an American social entrepreneur, community worker and writer who has founded and is the executive director of the organisation A Global Voice for...

Kourosh Ziabari - International Policy Digest: Thanks to a royal decree, Saudi women will be allowed to drive cars and motorbikes beginning in June this year. The decision to give the women in Saudi Arabia the right to drive was announced in September 2017 by King Salman and is considered a major step in the course of the normalisation of life in Saudi Arabia, a highly-conservative kingdom in which women have very limited rights and almost no representation in major decision-makings. A patriarchal society in which women are sometimes even treated as commodities with no role to play in social and political walks of life, Saudi Arabia has been incomprehensibly resistant to such changes as giving women the right to drive. Saudi Arabia...

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: Jane Elliott is a distinguished American former third-grade school-teacher, anti-racism activist, feminist and educationalist. She is known for implementing an exercise called "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes" in a classroom of third-graders in Riceville, Iowa, to figure out how racist her students were and gauge the amount of racial prejudice towards otheres among her young pupils. The highly-controversial test created divisions among the townspeople and made her a national icon of fight against racism. She did the exercise one day after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and her initiative became the basis of much of what is now known as "diversity training". She introduced this method to firms in the U.S.,...

Kourosh Ziabari - Organisation for Defending Victims of Violence: A mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on 14th February this year claimed seventeen lives, making the tragedy one of the world's deadliest school massacres. The suspect, 19-year-old Nikolas Jacob Cruz, who was the school's former student, was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder. An Associated Press report reveals the Broward County Sheriff's Office received a number of tips in 2016 and 2017 about Cruz's threats to carry out a school shooting, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had received information about his threats and concerning behavior in September 2017 and January 2018. Although this tragedy revived a...

Girls walking in front of walls of the former US embassy on Taleghani street, Tehran. Picture by Kamyar Adl / Flickr.com. Kourosh Ziabari - openDemocracy NAWA: Iranians are discussing many important and crucial things these days: things that the government might not be able to find an answer to in the foreseeable future. The Iranian government is not determined enough to implement change, nor does it have the authority and resources to embrace the reforms people are demanding. Meanwhile, in restaurants, coffee shops, streets, schools, newspapers and sometimes even on state TV, people are discussing and talking about reform. People ask valid questions that rarely find viable answers by those who are supposed to find answers: will...

Kourosh Ziabari - Organisation for Defending Victims of Violence: The Rohingya are an ethnic group in Myanmar, a Buddhist-majority country in the Southeast Asia, who are referred to as the world's most persecuted minority. Al-Jazeera writes that nearly all of the Rohingya in Myanmar live in the western coastal state of Rakhine and are not allowed to leave without government permission, in what is technically designed to be a ghetto for them. International human rights groups say there are about 1.1 million Rohingya living under very critical and unfortunate conditions and the majority of discriminations they've suffered have religious roots. Thousands of Rohingya Muslims have in the recent months fled Myanmar to seek refuge in...

Kourosh Ziabari - Organisation for Defending Victims of Violence: Humanitarian crisis in Gaza has entered its 11th year as the crippling siege by Israel is making the living conditions of Palestinians more complicated with time. The blockade in what is popularly referred to as the world's "largest open-air prison" means growing unemployment, people havng intermittent access to pure water, the economy is almost dysfunctional and poor infrastructure and lack of funding make the two-million population vulnerable to heavy rains and extreme weather. The former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories believes Israel is not doing enough to make the living conditions of Gaza...