حذرت منظمة العفو الدولية اليوم في تقرير جديد حول الأحداث المأسوية التي شهدتها السنة الفائتة من أنه من المرجح أن يستمر تسميم أجواء الشرق الأوسط وشمال أفريقيا في 2012 جراء العنف والقمع الذي تمارسه الدول، ما لم تستيقظ الحكومات في الإقليم والقوى الدولية إلى مدى عمق التغيرات المطلوبة منها للتعامل مع ما يحدث.

Repression and state violence is likely to continue to plague the Middle East and North Africa in 2012 unless governments in the region and international powers wake up to the scale of the changes being demanded of them, Amnesty International warned today in a new report into the dramatic events of the last year.

In the 80-page Year of Rebellion: State of Human Rights in the Middle East and North Africa, the organization describes how governments across the region were willing in 2011 to deploy extreme violence in an attempt to resist unprecedented calls for fundamental reform.

"Street Harassment is a global phenomenon that is largely overlooked, and even considered acceptable despite there being laws against it in many places including Pakistan. Street harassment includes making sexually explicit comments, ogling, whistling, following and groping.

The goal of reducing gender inequalities in political representation has been elusive in many different kinds of political systems, even though women have made substantial progress in legal rights, education, economic resources, employment opportunities, and healthcare in the same polities. This book argues that gender quotas are an important strategy to improve women's political representation in legislatures and political parties and it lays out the history of this approach across the globe.