Middle East & North Africa

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regional programme aims to strengthen the Rule of Law and to protect human rights in the region, including by ensuring that domestic frameworks are in line with international standards, that judiciaries are independent throughout the region, and that national courts are not charged solely with the adjudication of individual cases but are also responsible for ensuring accountability for serious human rights violations and upholding international rule of law and human rights standards.

The MENA programme advocates for the inclusion of human rights standards in the legal frameworks of the MENA region, including through the end of the abusive use by governments in the region of emergency, counter-terrorism and other restrictive laws that violate or severely limit the enjoyment of human rights. We promote an end to the use of exceptional and military courts to try civilians or to shield those responsible for serious human rights violations from accountability.

We work with national and regional civil society actors to promote access to justice for women, girls, migrants and other marginalised groups, and to pursue accountability for human rights abuses and crimes under international law.

We support litigation, including third-party interventions, before regional and international mechanisms, including the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights, UN human Rights bodies and the International Criminal Court.

We promote the establishment of new UN accountability mechanisms,

and meaningfully engage with existing ones, providing them with information, documentation and authoritative legal analysis, and assisting victims, domestic civil society actors and HRDs to engage with them.

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