Libya

The recently concluded International Conference on Women and Law issued a declaration dubbed "Tripoli Declaration to Ensure the Women's Rights". The document stresses the role of women as essential in societies of today since women represent "half the world and a mother of the second half."

The chairman of Libya's International Organisation for Peace, Care and Relief (IOPCR) pledged on Monday in Geneva to support UNHCR's work on behalf of refugees caught in mixed migratory movements in North Africa.

Western criticism of death sentences handed to five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor by a Libyan court shows a lack of respect for the Libyan people, Libya's foreign ministry said late on Thursday (28 December 2006). The medics were sentenced last week for deliberately infecting 426 children in the late 1990s with the virus that causes Aids.

The European Union has criticised a ruling by a Libyan court sentencing to death five nurses and a doctor for infecting more than 400 children with the HIV virus at a hospital. Johannes Laitenberger, an EU spokesman, said they had yet not decided whether to take steps against Libya, but said he "did not rule anything out."

Libya's internal security agency has held an outspoken critic of Libyan leader Muammar al-Qadhafi in incommunicado detention for almost a month, Human Rights Watch said. Libya's Internal Security Agency detained Idrees Mohamed Boufayed, a doctor who had been living in Switzerland for the past 16 years, on November 5 during a visit to Libya, his family and Libyan organizations abroad report.

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