AlKarama Dubai

Alkarama ( ar, الكرامة لحقوق الإنسان / ISO 233: / Dignity) is an independent Swiss-based human rights non-governmental organization established in 2004 to assist all those in the Arab World subjected to, or at risk of, extrajudicial killings, disappearances, torture, and arbitrary detention.
Acting as a bridge between individual victims in the Arab World and international human rights mechanisms, Alkarama works towards an Arab World where all individuals live free, with dignity, and protected by the rule of law.

Organization

Mission

Alkarama is an NGO defending the victims of human rights violations in the Arab world – including violations of the right to life, to physical and mental integrity, and to Civil and Political Rights – by using in priority international law mechanisms. Alkarama also helps to promote a culture of human rights in the Arab world.

Although it recognises the indivisibility of human rights, Alkarama has given priority to the defence of people subjected or at risk of extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearance, torture, and arbitrary detention, as Alkarama regards these violations of the right to life, physical integrity, and civil and political rights as common in this region.

To end these violations, Alkarama cooperates with local and national civil society for the promotion and protection of human rights, as well as governments and other entities likely to act on the human rights situation.

By engaging international mechanisms, Alkarama offers support and a last resort to the victims of these human rights violations, so that they achieve respect for their rights against the failure or inefficiency of their country's justice system.

Alkarama also works for a strong international system of human rights protection, which reinforces the regional, national, and local protection systems. In, particular, it contributes to fill the information gaps, and to increase the attention of international human rights protection mechanisms on human rights violations taking place in the Arab World. Alkarama encourages States to strengthen their national laws to defend and promote human rights.

Finally, Alkarama contributes to the promotion of the culture of human rights, by ensuring that the various groups that make up the civil society and are mobilising around it, know their rights and claim them, and feel protected by law.

Through its projects, Alkarama provides these actors the necessary tools so that they can assert their rights both nationally and internationally.

Goals

1. Document and denounce human rights violations in the Arab world

2. Provide moral and judicial assistance to the victims of human rights violations

3. Pursue the perpetrators of human rights violations and fight impunity

4. Encourage, and campaign for governments to respect human rights

5. Spread the culture of human rights in Arab societies

6. Train human rights defenders

7. Support any initiative which reinforces the protection of citizens against human rights violations

8. Be an effective organization

Focus

Alkarama focuses on the most serious human rights violations, i.e. violations that relate to the right to life, human dignity, bodily integrity and freedom. The idea behind Alkarama's specific mandate is that only when citizens are free from the most serious human rights abuses that individuals can freely and effectively call for all of their rights and ensure the rule of law in their countries.

(i) Extrajudicial Killings

According to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR):

Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions intervenes on cases of executions outside the legal framework or without the proper legal safeguards: capital punishment following an unfair trial, deaths in custody, deaths due to excessive use of force by law enforcement officials, deaths due to attacks by States security forces, violations of the right to life in armed conflict, genocide, and the imminent expulsion of persons to a country where their lives are in danger.

(ii) Enforced Disappearance

According to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (CED):

Enforced disappearance is considered to be the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorisation, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law.

A tool of repression

Many of the governments of the Arab World use disappearances to silence opposition members and terrorize the population.

Algeria is a notable example of this practice. Alkarama has presented over 1,000 cases of disappearances to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID). The number of disappeared in Algeria is estimated at between 10,000 and 20,000 – the Algerian government admitted to 6,164 in 2005; the Algerian national human rights institution, the Commission Nationale Consultative de Promotion et de Protection des Droits de l'Homme (CNCPPDH) to 8,023.

(iii) Torture

According to the Convention against Torture (CAT):

Torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Upon receipt of information about cases of torture from its representatives and civil society, Alkarama writes a communication to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture (SRT) with details of the case.

(iv) Arbitrary Detention

According to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD):

Deprivation of liberty is arbitrary if the case falls into one of the following three categories:

1. When it is clearly impossible to invoke any legal basis justifying the deprivation of liberty ..(Category I)

2. When the deprivation of liberty results from the exercise of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, insofar as States parties are concerned, by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Category II)

3. When the total or partial non-observance of the international norms relating to the right to a fair trial spelled out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the relevant international instruments accepted by the States concerned, is of such gravity as to give the deprivation of liberty an arbitrary character (Category III). (WGAD, Fact Sheet No. 26)

Arbitrary Detention in the Arab World: the United Nations' Opinion

Arab governments often arrest and detain political opponents and human rights defenders in order to quiet their criticism of government policies and behaviour. The opinions issued by the WGAD can then be used in local and international advocacy against these detentions, be brought up with the governments and authorities directly, and can lead to enough pressure to have these individuals released in some cases. Many governments are very sensitive to their international image and human rights record.

History

2004: Creation of Alkarama

Alkarama was created as a Swiss association in July 2004 by Qatari and Algerian human rights defenders – Abdulrahman Al Naimi, Rachid Mesli and Abbas Aroua – to contribute to an Arab World where all individuals live free, in dignity, and protected by the rule of law. With this goal in mind, the founders decided to address the most serious violations of human dignity, physical integrity and freedom, namely extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture, and arbitrary detention, with the hope that individuals who no longer fear being subjected to these violations can speak and act freely to call for their rights and ensure the rule of law in their countries.

At the time of Alkarama's creation, the United Nations (UN) mechanisms established to protect human rights worldwide rarely acted upon violations in the Arab region. Identifying this gap, Alkarama decided that in order to bring these violations to an end, Alkarama would act through the UN's mechanisms specific to bring these human rights violations to an end. In doing so, Alkarama would also fulfill its objective to contribute to a better understanding of human rights and raise awareness of the UN's human rights protection mechanisms in the Arab civil society

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