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30 October 2017 - NPWJ News Digest on Middle East and North Africa democracy
Articles
Algeria: Surge in Deportations of Migrants
By Human Rights Watch, 30 Oct 2017
Algerian authorities have been rounding up sub-Saharan Africans in and around Algiers and have deported more than 3,000 to Niger since August 25, 2017, without giving them an opportunity to challenge their expulsion, Human Rights Watch said today. Those expelled include migrants who have lived and worked for years in Algeria, pregnant women, families with newborn babies, and about 25 unaccompanied children. “Nothing justifies rounding up people based on their skin color, and then deporting them en masse,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “A country’s power to control its borders is not a license to treat people like criminals or to assume they have no right to be there because of their race or ethnicity.”
Bahrain calls for 'freeze' on Qatar's GCC membership
by Aljazeera, 30 Oct 2017
Bahrain will not attend the next Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit if Qatar attends, its foreign minister said in a series of tweets, in which he also called for Doha to be suspended from the bloc.
Iraqi Kurdish leader to step down over fallout from independence poll
By The Guardian , 29 Oct 2017
Masoud Barzani is to step down as Kurdish president after the contentious independence referendum he called backfired spectacularly, with the Kurds of northern Iraq stripped of a third of their territory and facing continuing attacks by Baghdad. The veteran Kurdish leader told a parliamentary sitting in Erbil on Sunday that he would not re-contest the presidency and asked for his powers to be dispersed. His decision comes six weeks after the poll, which returned a 93% yes vote but immediately prompted recriminations from neighbouring states and a rival political bloc.
Qatar introduces minimum wage for migrant workers
By The Independent, 26 Oct 2017
The tiny Gulf state host of the 2022 football World Cup, Qatar, has said it will introduce a minimum wage for workers amid global outcry over the alleged ill-treatment faced by migrant workers in the country. The announcement on Thursday by labour and social affairs minister Issa Saad al-Jafali al-Nuaimi comes the day before a meeting of the UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO) – which has previously warned that Qatar could face action over the appalling conditions faced by its two-million strong migrant work force.