The authorities responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with a new health emergency decree-law, which restricted freedoms of movement, expression and assembly, and used it to prosecute people for criticizing the government’s handling of the crisis or for breaking the emergency measures. Sahrawi human...

African leaders attending this year’s Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the UNFCCC must avoid mistakes made during the inaugural Africa Climate Summit, where leaders adopted the Nairobi Declaration on Climate Change and Call to Action (Nairobi Declaration), which in many ways failed to...

A majority of countries in Africa¹ have some type of “vagrancy laws”, meaning laws which consider people that are or are perceived to be poor, homeless or unemployed as criminals. Examples are laws against “vagrants” or “vagabonds” defined as people who do not have a fixed home or livelihood, laws...

Families of the dead and missing are trapped in limbo as their attempts to find out what happened to their loved ones and efforts to ensure justice, truth and reparation are being impeded in an apparent cover up by Spanish and Moroccan authorities, said Amnesty International on the eve of the first...

Opinion poll commissioned by Amnesty International and conducted in 15 countries, showed that a majority of the public, 53%, believe human rights should be a critical consideration in deciding who hosts major international sporting events.

At least four journalists and one academic have been denied the right to read and write in Moroccan prisons, Amnesty International said today, as the world observes World Press Freedom Day. According to the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, also known as the...

On 10 May, the case of prominent Moroccan human rights lawyer and ex-minister of human rights, Mohamed Ziane, opens before Rabat’s Court of Cassation. The Court of Cassation can determine that Mohamed Ziane is being held on an illegal basis, which would oblige the appeals court to reconsider its...

Reacting to the vast numbers of people worldwide expected to mark Earth Day on 22 April, Marta Schaaf, Amnesty International’s Director of Climate, Economic and Social Justice, and Corporate Accountability programme said: “Hundreds of millions of people around the world are expected to mark Earth...

Responding to the opening today of the trial of journalist Hanane Bakour who faces up to three years in prison and a fine after being accused of “publishing fake news by using electronic means that harm private life” for a Facebook post where she criticized the holding of a local election by the...

Severe violations of human rights continue unabated in both Algeria and Morocco, while many laws in each country are far from aligned with international standards, Amnesty International said today, following the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Reviews (UPR) of each country’s human...

Moroccan authorities should make sure that their investigation into a man’s unlawful death in police custody on 6 October 2022, is impartial and thorough. They should hold accountable, in a fair trial, the police officers that tortured the victim and did not provide him with adequate medical care....

This statement focuses on concerns raised in Amnesty International’s submission to the Committee about Morocco’s failure to comply with its obligations under the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families during the deadly incident...

Amnesty International Oral Statement to the UN Human Rights Council at their 52nd Session. 27 February – 4 April 2023. Item 6: Consideration of UPR reports: Morocco and Western Sahara