Egypt’s ruling Muslim Brotherhood is trying to stifle civil society while pursuing reconciliation with bastions of the previous authoritarian regime.

“Almost three years after an uprising fuelled by the old regime’s venality, Egypt’s cash-strapped Islamist government is making amends with …

Tunisia is making progress in its efforts to dismantle “terrorist” cells, Prime Minister Ali Larayedh said today. But he declined to apply the “terrorist” label to the radical Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia (right) that has been linked with Al-Qaeda and …

Egypt’s ruling Muslim Brotherhood came under attack today for “normalizing” relations with corrupt elements of the former regime, as the non-Islamist opposition received “a gift from the heavens” from the courts and the US Ambassador to Cairo lamented the “high …

The Václav Havel Human Rights Prize is awarded each year by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in partnership with the Václav Havel Library and the Charta 77 Foundation to reward outstanding civil society action in the …

Russians are “now observing the end of an epoch that began with Gorbachev’s perestroika,” says a prominent analyst.

“These are simply the last remnants of freedom, freedom of scholarship and freedom of information,” said Lev D. Gudkov (above), the director …

Laws on blasphemy and apostasy are being used to silence political dissent and suppress government critics, according to the U.S. State Department’s annual report, which documents a pronounced decline in religious liberty that has generated growing religious intolerance and …

Russia’s NGO law branding overseas-funded groups as foreign agents is impeding the country’s civil society development, says a former Finance Minister.

“The law on NGOs as foreign agents that the Duma has passed is a clear restriction of …

Afghanistan’s parliament has rejected a law banning violence against women in “a severe blow to progress made in women’s rights in the conservative Muslim country since the Islamist Taliban was toppled over a decade ago,” Reuters reports:

President Hamid …

“Amid an intensifying crackdown on nongovernmental groups that receive foreign funding, Indian activists are accusing the government of stifling their right to dissent in the world’s largest democracy,” The Washington Post’s Rama Lakshmi, reports from New Delhi:

India …

“Together, the EU and the US account for around half of global GDP and almost two-thirds of global military spending,” say two leading rights advocates. “A coordinated, transatlantic approach to human rights would mean the world’s rising authoritarian powers could …