Asia

The Afghan Women’s Writing Project is participating in a worldwide campaign this month to end early marriage in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other countries where girls are forced by their parents to marry when they are as young as ten years old.

FIDH – International Federation for Human Rights PEN International Article 19 IFEX Joint press release   Stifled Southeast Asian Voices: NGOs Unite Against Criminalization of Free Expression on the Internet http://www.fidh.org/stifled-southeast-asian-voices-ngos-unite-against-criminalization-of-free-13931 Geneva, 11 September 2013 […]

The Uzbek government continues to force its citizens to work in cotton fields, in hazardous conditions and for no or negligible pay. Meanwhile, the Government has indicated no interest in ending the forced-labour production system.

In various parts of the world human rights defenders brave legal harassment, arbitrary detention, ill treatment, torture and sometimes death, in seeking to secure freedom and dignity for all. In challenging serious abuses of State […]

Armanshahr Foundation and Roya Film House, headed by Guissou Jahangiri and Roya Sadat respectively, organised “The First International Women’s Film Festival-Herat” at the ancient citadel of Herat, 7-9 March 2013, marking 8 March, the International Women’s Day. More than 1500 people attended. The Festival Secretariat had received 100 films from 20 countries, out of which 10 films from Afghanistan and 25 films from other countries were screened. Several filmmakers from Afghanistan, Iran, Tajikistan and India were guests of the Festival.

In the past few weeks, the human rights situation in Bahrain has rapidly deteriorated ahead of planned mass protests on August 14th. With many of the country’s most prominent Human Rights Defenders behind bars, local […]

The 15th anniversary of the establishment of Armanshahr Foundation/Open Asia was celebrated in its 100th Goftegu meeting during which the winners of the first and second Simorgh peace prize were announced.

One year on from the disputed presidential election of June 2009, Iranians who want to criticize the Government or protest against mounting human rights violations face an ever-tightening gag as the authorities and the shadowy […]

IRAN’S POWER STRUCTURE Armed forces — Iran’s regular armed forces (the military) were allocated responsibility for external security after the revolution. Although there is a joint general command with the Revolutionary Guards, and the Supreme […]

Iran Human Rights Abuses against the Baluchi Minority Introduction State repression of Iran’s ethnic minorities, which have been demanding greater recognition of their cultural and political rights, has intensified in recent years. With potentially hostile […]