Founded | 2008 |
---|---|
Focus | Defending and advancing digital rights |
Location | |
Area served | Arab world |
Key people | Mohamad Najem |
Website | smex.org |
SMEX (formerly Social Media Exchange) is a Lebanese non-governmental organization with a mission to advocate for digital rights in the Arab world. [1] [2] It is based in Beirut. [3] Its executive director is Mohamad Najem. [4] SMEX was established in 2008 as Social Media Exchange. [5]
Bread & Net is an annual unconference that has been held by SMEX in Beirut since 2018 that brings together activists, technologists, policy-makers, and others to discuss global and regional digital rights and other human rights. [6]
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people living in Lebanon may face discrimination and legal difficulties not experienced by non-LGBT residents, although they have more freedom than in other parts of the Arab world. Various courts have ruled that Article 534 of the Lebanese Penal Code, which prohibits having sexual relations that "contradict the laws of nature", should not be used to arrest LGBT people. Nonetheless, the law is still being used to harass and persecute LGBT people through occasional police arrests, in which detainees are sometimes subject to intrusive physical examinations.
Multiple forms of media including books, newspapers, magazines, films, television, and content published on the Internet are censored in Saudi Arabia.
Tell Abyad is a town in northern Syria. It is the administrative center of the Tell Abyad District within the Raqqa Governorate. Located along the Balikh River, it constitutes a divided city with the bordering city of Akçakale in Turkey.
The Internet is accessible to the majority of the population in Egypt, whether via smartphones, internet cafes, or home connections. Broadband Internet access via VDSL is widely available. Under the rule of Hosni Mubarak, Internet censorship and surveillance were severe, culminating in a total shutdown of the Internet in Egypt during the 2011 Revolution. Although Internet access was restored following Mubarak's order, government censorship and surveillance have increased since the 2013 coup d'état, leading the NGO Freedom House to downgrade Egypt's Internet freedom from "partly free" in 2011 to "not free" in 2015, which it has retained in subsequent reports including the most recent in 2021. The el-Sisi regime has ramped up online censorship in Egypt. The regime heavily censors online news websites, which has prompted the closure of many independent news outlets in Egypt.
Joumana Haddad is a Lebanese author, public speaker, journalist and human rights activist. She has been selected as one of the world’s 100 most powerful Arab women by Arabian Business Magazine for her cultural and social activism. In 2021, she was on Apolitical's list of 100 most influential people in Gender Policy. She is founder of Jasad, a quarterly Arabic-language magazine specialized in the arts and literature of the body (2009–2011). Haddad launched a new TV show in November 2018 on Alhurra highlighting the topics of free expression and critical thinking. In September 2019, she founded a youth centered NGO in Beirut called the Joumana Haddad Freedoms Center. In February 2020, in partnership with the Institut Français in Lebanon, she launched the first International Feminisms Festival in the Middle East with a group of local and international co-organizers.
The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) was a non-governmental organization devoted to promoting freedom of expression across the Middle East and North Africa. It was founded in the year 2004. Based in Cairo, Egypt, the organization was founded by prominent Egyptian attorney and human rights activist Gamal Eid, who also served as the ANHRI's executive director. The ANHRI collected publications, campaigns, reports, and statements from almost 140 Arab human rights organizations across the region and republished them in a daily digest on its website. The group focused on supporting free expression, especially via the internet and mass media, and worked on behalf of persons regarded as having been detained on political grounds. It also advocated against censorship by Arab governments.
Lydia Canaan is a Lebanese singer-songwriter, humanitarian activist, and diplomat. She is noted for her four-octave vocal range, songwriting, and unique vocal stylings, and is credited as the first Lebanese artist in music history to achieve global success. Widely regarded as the first "rock star" of the Middle East, she is cataloged in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum's Library and Archives.
Keith David Watenpaugh is an American academic. He is Professor of Human Rights Studies at the University of California, Davis. A leading American historian of the contemporary Middle East, human rights, and modern humanitarianism, he is an expert on the Armenian genocide and its denial, and the role of the refugee in world history.
Majal is a regional not-for-profit organization focused on "amplifying voices of dissent" throughout the Middle East and North Africa via digital media. Founded in Bahrain, the organization "creates platforms and web applications that promote freedom of expression and social justice."
Mashrou' Leila was a Lebanese four-member indie rock band. The band formed in Beirut, Lebanon in 2008 as a music workshop at the American University of Beirut.
The Arab Commission for Human Rights is an Arab world non-governmental human rights organisation that was founded in 1998.
The Arab Spring or the First Arab Spring was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in Tunisia in response to corruption and economic stagnation. From Tunisia, the protests then spread to five other countries: Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain. Rulers were deposed or major uprisings and social violence occurred including riots, civil wars, or insurgencies. Sustained street demonstrations took place in Morocco, Iraq, Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman and Sudan. Minor protests took place in Djibouti, Mauritania, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara. A major slogan of the demonstrators in the Arab world is ash-shaʻb yurīd isqāṭ an-niẓām!.
Women played a variety of roles in the Arab Spring, but its impact on women and their rights is unclear. The Arab Spring was a series of demonstrations, protests, and civil wars against authoritarian regimes that started in Tunisia and spread to much of the Arab world. The leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen were overthrown; Bahrain has experienced sustained civil disorder, and the protests in Syria have become a civil war. Other Arab countries experienced protests as well.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people generally have limited or highly restrictive rights in most parts of the Middle East, and are open to hostility in others. Sex between men is illegal in 9 of the 18 countries that make up the region. It is punishable by death in five of these 18 countries. The rights and freedoms of LGBT citizens are strongly influenced by the prevailing cultural traditions and religious mores of people living in the region – particularly Islam.
Beirut Pride is the annual non-profit LGBTIQ+ pride event and militant march held in Beirut, the capital of the Lebanon and aiming to decriminalize homosexuality in Lebanon.
Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor is an independent, nonprofit organization for the protection of human rights. Its main objective is to raise awareness about human rights law in Europe and the Mediterranean-North Africa area and to influence the international community to take action against human rights violators.
Sarah Hegazi, also spelled Hegazy or Higazy, was an Egyptian socialist, writer, and lesbian activist. She was arrested, imprisoned and tortured in Egypt for three months after flying a rainbow flag at a Mashrou' Leila concert in 2017 in Cairo. Hegazi, who lived with PTSD resulting from the prison torture she had experienced in Egypt, was granted asylum in Canada, living there until her suicide.
Maha Nazih Al-Hussaini is a Palestinian journalist, human rights activist, director of strategies at the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor in Geneva, Switzerland, and a member of the Marie Colvin Network of Women Journalists. She is a based in Gaza. She started her journalism career by covering Israel's military campaign on the Gaza Strip in July 2014.
Osama Khalid is a medical doctor and a Wikipedia administrator from Saudi Arabia who was sentenced to a 32-year prison sentence in 2020. According to human rights activists, his arrest and prison sentence was because he contributed information deemed to be critical about the persecution of political activists in Saudi Arabia. According to the joint statement by Washington-based whistleblower organization DAWN and Beirut based digital rights group SMEX, the arrest of Osama is speculated to be part of a crackdown on Wikipedia adminstrators. However, the charges pressed on him by the Saudi regime are "swaying public opinion" and "violating public morals” by posting content “deemed to be critical about the persecution of political activists in the country".
This Arab Is Queer: An Anthology by LGBTQ+ Arab Writers is a LGBTQ+ anthology featuring the memoirs of eighteen queer Arab writers, hailing from eleven Arab countries and the diaspora, some of whom are internationally bestselling while others use pseudonyms. The book is edited by Elias Jahshan, a Palestinian-Lebanese-Australian journalist living in London.
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