The Euro-Mediterranean Foundation of Support to Human Rights Defenders (EMHRF) which aims at supporting defenders in the South-Mediterranean countries published its 2009 Annual Report. The report focuses on the actions undertaken by the EMHRF during the year 2009.

More than six decades after the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and despite the progress accomplished after successive democratic reforms around the world, governments in the Middle East and North Africa region continue to use the threat of terrorism and extremist political-religious movements as a pretext to suppress peaceful dissent and add to their legal arsenal, which is already repressive in most cases, new regular laws and emergency decrees aimed at restricting the effective exercise of basic rights and freedoms.

Driss El Yazami, President of the EMHRF, then said “The year 2009 was marked either by missed opportunities for more open societies or by a worsening of the human rights situation in the southern Mediterranean”.

At the top of the list - in the absence of hard evidence on the totally intolerable situation that prevails in Libya - are the practices of the judicial and security systems in Syria and Tunisia, which are continuously slicing away the rights to freedom of expression, information, movement, association and assembly of human rights defenders in totally arbitrary fashion and with impunity.

Against this regional backdrop, in which human rights work becomes increasingly dangerous, defenders needed not only political support but also financial support provided in a timely, flexible and discreet fashion to enable them to overcome their difficulties and to develop plans to pursue their activities in promoting respect for all civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights and freedoms.

This report is published in French, in English and in Arabic.

This report is available on the EMHRF website: http://www.emhrf.org/usr/00000003/00000170.pdf