Iraqi President Jalal Talabani announced Sunday that opponents of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki lack enough support for a no confidence vote. Maliki opponents say they delivered their petition to the president's office last week with signatures from 176 lawmakers, but over ...

Speaker Saad El-Katatni announced Saturday that parliament will try again Tuesday to form a 100 member constitutional assembly. This follows the failure of Wednesday's constitutional assembly agreement under the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces's  48 hour ...

In an interview with NPR, Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki described the challenges the country faces in preventing a reversion to dictatorship.  Marzouki spoke about the country's efforts to balance the power of the president and prime minister so that ...

Libya's lack of accountability and ineffective judiciary is leading to an environment of impunity among former rebel fighters said a Los Angeles Times article. According to Amnesty International's Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, the failure to investigate abuse on both sides is preventing the country from ...

The UN Security Council proposed a resolution Monday that would impose non-military sanctions against those trying to undermine the country's national unity government, potentially strengthening its transition to democracy. UN envoy to Yemen, Jamal Benomar, told the council last week ...

A court in Tripoli charged Abu Zeid Omar Dorda, the former head of intelligence under Muammar Gaddafi, with ordering attacks on protesters and arming his ethnic group for the purpose of inciting violence, among other allegations. Dorda, the first of ...

Libya's Supreme Security Committee (SSC) was accused of kidnapping and torturing Salem Forjani, a prominent surgeon and human rights activist. Several members of the SCC, a group tasked with controlling militia factions in Libya, confronted Forjani at a Tripoli hospital where they allegedly beat him in front ...

The Tunisian Union of Judges has called a strike in protest of the firing of 81 judges. Minister of Justice Noureddine Bhiri announced that the judges were fired under accusations of corruption and ties to the former regime, defending the ...

According to Al Jazeera,  joint UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan has held talks with Bashar al-Assad after the UN human rights office declared that more than 85 people who were killed in the Houla region were "summarily executed".  Annan "conveyed in frank terms ...

Reuters reported that voters were "dismayed at what many see as a painful second-round choice between an Islamist apparatchik and a throwback to Hosni Mubarak's era." The two remaining candidates are Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Mursi and former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq. Hamdin Sabbahi, ...

In Tunisia, the prosecutor of the military tribunal, has called for the death penalty in the trial of former leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali for his role in the deaths of 338 protesters during the uprising that ended his reign. ...

Zainab al-Khawaja, the daughter of prominent human rights activists Abdelhadi al-Khawaja, has been sentenced to one month in prison on charges stemming from a confrontation with the police during a protest rally. According to allegations, she abused a policewoman ...

Following Monday's suicide attack at a military parade drill in Sana'a, the "Friends of Yemen" gathered in Riyadh to provide political and financial support for Yemen. The coalition is co-sponsored by Britain, Saudi Arabia and Yemen with 27 countries and multiple ...

Today marked the beginning of Egypt's first post-Mubarak presidential election, and the first round will conclude Thursday evening. Fifty million people are eligible to cast their votes, and turnout was expected to be high. Many voters had already formed lines ...

The United Nations' Human Right Council (UNHCR) is reviewing Morocco's human rights record today, the second of four Arab countries undergoing the UNHCR's Universal Periodic Review (UPR); Bahrain was reviewed on Monday and Algeria and Tunisia are scheduled later in ...

Bahrain’s human rights minister Salah bin Ali Mohammed Abdulrahman led a delegation to the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the United Nations' Human Rights Council (UNHCR), making the case that the government is moving quickly to improve its ...

A Bahraini court fined Zainab al-Khawaja, the daughter of prominent opposition activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, for insulting a government employee and her lawyer said she was still detained pending charges in a different case. She was arrested a month ago for ...

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton signed a loan that guarantees $100 million dollars to be transferred to Tunisia as part of U.S. support to the country in its democratic transition. During the signing ceremony with Tunisian Ambassador to the United States Mohamed ...

In the first election since 1960, citizens of Benghazi voted in a local election that will test support for a proposal to set up autonomous rule for eastern Libya. Supporters of autonomy for Cyrenaica, the eastern province that includes ...