The 20th of March 2023 Foreign Affairs Council’s exchange of views on the situation in Tunisia will take place amid an unprecedented campaign to crush dissent and roll back human rights and freedoms Tunisians have worked hard to secure since the country’s 2011 revolution. We are deeply concerned, in particular, about the undermining of judicial independence, the arrests of critics and political opponents, the military trials of civilians, and the ongoing crackdown on freedom of expression and threats to civil society.

Earlier this month, a delegation of European diplomats visited Huwara and Za’tara, two Palestinian towns in the Nablus Governorate, where Israeli settlers launched brutal attacks. 

The abject failure of Spanish and Moroccan authorities to provide truth and ensure justice for at least 37 sub-Saharan African people killed and 77 others still missing following the deadly events that took place on the border of Spain’s Melilla enclave, smacks of a cover-up, said Amnesty International in a report published ahead of the six-month anniversary of the tragedy.

On 12 July 2022, Amnesty International, along with eight other international human rights NGOs sent a letter to the High Representative of the European Union and the 27 EU Foreign Ministers, calling on the European Union to initiate, table and foster broad support for a resolution to create a mandate of UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Russia at the next session of the UN Human Rights Council.

As the Czech Republic government prepares to assume the Presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU), Amnesty International calls to ensure that human rights are at the forefront of the Czech presidency’s mandate. This presidency comes at a time of increased challenges in Europe, including the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and its implications for the international human rights system, backsliding on the rule of law, the growing anti-gender movement and the discriminatory treatment of asylum seekers.

European leaders are putting short term interests ahead of human rights by supporting the Egyptian government as it continues its assault on human rights, said Amnesty International today, ahead of meetings at the EU-Egypt Association Council on Sunday 19 June 2022 and Monday 20 June 2022.

Civil Society Organizations are writing ahead of the upcoming EU-Egypt Association Council meeting to urge HR/VP Borrell and EU member states’ Foreign Ministers to use this opportunity to raise concerns over serious human rights violations and crimes under international law perpetrated by Egyptian authorities, and to set concrete and measurable human rights benchmarks as criteria for progress in the EU-Egypt bilateral relations.

Ahead of the first EU-Saudi Arabia meeting on human rights on 27 September, Amnesty International is calling on EU leaders to hold Saudi Arabia’s government to account for its campaign to silence dissent, which has accelerated in recent months.

The arbitrary arrest and imprisonment of Russian prominent anti-corruption campaigner and opposition figure Aleksei Navalny, and the concurrent arrests and detention on spurious charges of his colleagues from the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), civil society activists and peaceful protesters during mass public protests held at the beginning of the year and in smaller protests that followed, are the latest in a series of severe, brazen reprisals against all forms of dissent in Russia. The prosecution of Aleksei Navalny and of his colleagues and supporters is politically motivated and their deprivation of liberty is unlawful. They are being held in detention solely for their peaceful political activism and their exercise of the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. They must be immediately released.

This paper outlines Amnesty International’s key recommendations to the EU and EU member states participating in the Brussels V Conference on Supporting the Future of Syria and the Region.

Your Excellencies,

A court in Moscow has sentenced opposition activist and Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny to two years and eight months in a penal colony, amid a brutal crackdown on peaceful protests which saw at least 5,021 people detained on 31 January alone. The Simonovsky District Court granted a motion put forward by the Federal Penitentiary Service to replace Aleksei Navalny’s suspended sentence with jail time, and he will be held at a penal colony.