• One of the new female members of parliament, Azza al-Garf, is being taken to court by the New Women Foundation for advocating the repeal of 2008 legislation which banned female genital mutilation (FGM).

• In addition to a possible repeal of the FGM ban, the new parliament has been changing personal status laws to discriminate against women even more harshly than during the Mubarak era. One debate centers around whether to repeal the “Khulaa Law,” enacted to allow women to initiate no-fault divorce.

• Also at risk for repeal are last year’s custody amendments, which allowed women to have custody of children until they turn fifteen.

• Violence against women has not decreased since the revolution. Despite a judge’s ruling that “virginity tests” on protestors are illegal, there are allegations that SCAF continues the practice. In the recent protests at the Defense Ministry building in Cairo, over a dozen women were arrested. Some alleged that guards sexually assaulted them by inspecting their vaginas for drugs. Others complained of verbal and sexual abuse. These abuses follow the acquittal of a doctor accused of conducting these tests.

• Women make up less than two percent of the new parliament, occupying only 8 seats out of 508. Previously, quotas ensured a certain level of representation. Most recently, the 2010 law required 64 women members, but this was viewed as a tool of the old regime and discarded. There are no women running for president and women’s rights are not a major issue in the election. Some women’s organizations are insisting that the new president appoint a female as vice-president.

Pushing back against these assaults on women’s rights groups like Nazra for Feminist Studies, a partner of Human Right First, which is involved with The Women & Constitution Working Group. The group is proposing additions to the constitution to ensure protections for women, including equality and nondiscrimination.

Nazra has joined other groups opposing SCAF’s abuses of women, denouncing its “policies of suppressing freedom of expression and using the military judiciary as a tool to subjugate civilians and harass peaceful activists.” The groups report that “hundreds” of protestors have been abused, detained, and even killed since last year’s revolution, and that dissent is still as dangerous as it was under the Mubarak regime.

One positive development has been the grassroots movement to prevent violence against women. Human Rights First congratulates the founders of HarassMap for winning the “BOB” jury award for “Best Use of Technology for Social Good.” The Deutsche Welle International Blog Awards, or “The BOBs,” are presented annually to the blogs that “champion the open exchange of ideas and freedom of expression.”

HarassMap was featured by Human Rights First as an innovative use of social media to expose and prevent violence against women. The platform allows women to report sexual harassment by email, text, or Twitter, and then maps these instances using crowdsourcing. The HarassMap team then uses this information to follow up with communities where there have been many instances of harassment in order to increase women’s safety in these areas. Though HarassMap was founded before the Arab Spring, it had become a powerful tool for Egyptian women activists.

With continuing violence against women and legal setbacks, Egyptian women still struggle for basic human rights as Egypt stumbles on the path to democracy. But thanks to the inspiring resilience of women’s rights activists, there is hope.

On April 7, 2011, she was detained with her husband, Dong Jiqin, for “creating a disturbance” after allegations that the couple had destroyed a registration book and insulted the staff at their guest house. This detention was part of a post-Arab Spring crackdown by the Chinese government in an attempt to quash a potential “Jasmine Revolution.”

She was also accused of “fraud” because authorities argued that she claimed to be a lawyer despite revocation of her business license. Authorities revoked her license because she had aided victims of forced evictions in the lead up to the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

Ni and Dong’s case did not appear before the court until December 29, 2011. Then, on April 10, 2012, at a hearing that only lasted ten minutes, Ni was sentenced to prison for two years and eight months, Dong to two years. Both their pre-conviction detention of more than a year and the nearly four month delay in sentencing violate Chinese law.

This conviction is only the government’s latest attempt to silence her. Authorities convicted her in 2002 and 2008 for “obstructing official business” because she was protecting the rights of the forcibly evicted, including herself. Her house was also demolished in 2008.

As the international director for Chinese Human Rights Defenders stated, this recent verdict against Ni Yulan is a “defiant” message to the world that China has “nothing but disdain for human rights.”

The United States must demonstrate its support for activists such as Ni Yulan by demanding the release of all peaceful political prisoners.

As reported by the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, on November 26^th, the Bahrain Lawyers Society elected its new Board after a legitimate election supervised by the Bahrain Human Rights Society. In response, on December 7^th, the Ministry of Human Rights declared the newly elected board “void” and reinstated the previous board. Why? Evidently the majority of the new board included lawyers with opposition loyalties, and some lawyers had represented political prisoners imprisoned and interrogated by the regime.

To legitimize this intervention, Bahrain’s Ministry of Human Rights invoked the 1989 Law of Societies that  regulates NGOs. Though this kind of inference is a clear violation of the freedom of expression and the freedom of association, the government continues to rely on this law to limit the opposition’s ability to organize.

In September 2010, the government took similar action by disbanding the Bahrain Human Rights Society’s Board of Directors. This year, labor union leaders have been detained, tortured and sentenced to long prison terms, including Mahdi Abu Deeb and Jaleela al-Salman, President and Vice President of the Bahrain Teachers Association, and Rula Al Saffar, President of the Bahrain Nurses Association. Others targeted include the Bahrain Society of Photography.

In November, the report on human rights commissioned by the Bahrain King, the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), concluded that the regime had committed systematic human rights violations. In the post-BICI report Bahrain, the government continues to trespass on freedom of expression and association through attacks on protestors and restricting the activities of NGOs. These repeated attempts to control the voice of civil society indicate that the government’s attitude has not changed.

The US should acknowledge that Bahrain has made little progress in reforming its repressive behavior and publicly condemn the Bahrain regime’s attacks on civil society. The regime’s disregard of human rights should not be rewarded with an arms sale and US encouragement.

For more details about how Bahrain has failed to comply with BICI report recommendations, see the Human Rights First report: No More Excuses—Time for Radical Change.

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