Arab States

"Clearly, one cannot speak of sexual rights activism in Lebanon without speaking at length about internet usage, as both are tied together at levels from personal identity and relationships to political activism and mobilization," claims Nadine Moawad, the APC's EroTICs project partner. In this article, she assesses the role of the internet in the rise of sexual rights activism in Lebanon, and…

Natalia Fernández-Diaz identifies the difficulties of understanding feminist concerns regarding the needs and potential benefits of emerging technologies in what is usually known as ‘Arab countries’. Locating the relationship between women and ICTs in women’s movements, Fernández-Diaz interrogates the concepts of technologists, producers, users, victims and indirect beneficiaries in this complex…

Microsoft’s Bing tailors its search engine to serve different countries and regions and offers its services in 41 languages. It has a filtering system at the keyword level for users in several countries. Users in the Arab countries are prevented from conducting certain search queries in both English and Arabic.

The OpenNet Initiative (ONI) (a collaboration of the Citizen Lab at the…

The report published by an Iran CSOs Training and Research Center discusses the advent and development of the internet in Iran, censorship and its methods, weblogs and their role in the civil society. As documented by the study, the content filtering basically blocs all content concerning women.

The statement calls for the follow-up with the Iranian authorities to inquire about the reasons for the banning of the 2nd Civil Society Regional Forum on the Information Society for the West Asia and Middle East Region on August 23-25, 2005 in Kish Island.

The women's group statement on the blatant violations of human rights, freedom of expression, access to information and freedom of assembly by the Tunisian government circulated during the Phase II of the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis (November, 2005).