Saudi officials continue to require women to obtain permission from male guardians to conduct their most basic affairs, like traveling or receiving medical care, despite government assertions that no such requirements exist.

The Iranian authorities are using prolonged harsh interrogations, beatings, sleep deprivation, and threats of torture to extract false confessions from detainees arrested since the disputed June 12 presidential election.

Leaders of the G8 group of industrialized nations meeting in L’Aquila, Italy on July 8, 2009, should condemn the violent attacks on peaceful protests, hundreds of arbitrary arrests, and harsh interrogations in Iran in the aftermath of the disputed June elections, Human Rights Watch said today.

Syrian authorities should immediately make public the fate of all detainees at Sednaya prison, at least nine of whom are believed to have been killed when military police used lethal force during unrest in the prison last July.

A ruling by the Abu Dhabi Federal Court of Appeal to suspend a local newspaper and fine its editor-in-chief further undermines press freedom in the United Arab Emirates.

If you think Lebanon is a complicated place, the state of Lebanese women's political participation should be no surprise. Lebanese women won the right to vote and to participate in national elections in 1952, 19 years before women in Switzerland. Yet, today, political participation by Lebanese women remains dismal at the national level.