October produced one genuine labour reform, one court decision that closed a seventeen-year file, and a set of cases that show how far enforcement still lags behind the law. Below is what changed in policy, what happened in the courts, and what moved on the environment across the region.
Policy & Law
Saudi Arabia dismantles the kafala system
The kingdom completed the replacement of its sponsorship system with a contract-based employment framework, affecting an estimated 13 million migrant workers. Workers may now change employers after their contract expires without the current employer’s consent, exit visas are no longer required for most categories, and passports must be returned to their holders.
This is the most consequential labour reform in the Gulf in a decade, and it removes a structural feature that international labour bodies had criticised for years. The open question is coverage: domestic workers were historically excluded from full protection, and the reform’s value will be decided by enforcement rather than by the text. Source
46 states confront Iran’s death penalty at the Human Rights Council
In a joint intervention at the UN Human Rights Council on 1 October, 46 states condemned the escalating use of capital punishment in Iran. UN special procedures followed on 9 October with a call for an immediate moratorium, noting that the cases brought to their attention were “so riddled with procedural unfairness” — torture, coerced confessions, denial of access to chosen counsel — that execution should be ruled out on that basis alone.
The European Parliament adopted a resolution on 8 October by 541 votes to 11, calling for the scope of sanctions to be broadened and for Iran to be referred to the International Criminal Court. OHCHR · European Parliament
Egypt: a human rights strategy drafted while the press is prosecuted
The government has opened consultations on its second National Human Rights Strategy, including a public survey and invitations to civil society to submit recommendations. In the same weeks, six journalists from the fact-checking platform Matsada2sh were arrested, and the editor-in-chief of Mada Masr was convicted and fined.
A coalition of Egyptian and international organisations responded on 30 October with a statement whose argument is difficult to answer: participation under fear is not participation. A strategy that asks civil society to name abuses while prosecuting those who document them cannot be assessed on its text alone. Joint statement
Türkiye: the Opuz case is closed, the file is not
On 2 October the Committee of Ministers ended its supervision of Opuz v. Türkiye, the 2009 judgment that established that a state’s failure to protect women from domestic violence can amount to gender-based discrimination. The closure reflects real legislative change: new offences, higher penalties, restricted use of mitigating factors, more violence-prevention centres, electronic monitoring and AI-assisted risk assessment.
Supervision of M.G. v. Türkiye continues, with the Committee asking for evidence that the reforms produce systemic effect and that impunity is actually prevented. Council of Europe
Cases
Saudi Arabia executed a man for acts committed at fourteen
Hassan Zaki al-Faraj, 29, was executed on 17 October alongside four other men from the Eastern Province, all convicted in connection with protests held when he was a child. Saudi Arabia formally abolished the death penalty for crimes committed by minors in 2020; the sentence in this case was handed down in November 2022, two years after that change.
Rights groups report that al-Faraj was held in prolonged solitary confinement and subjected to torture while in custody. Another defendant from the same wave of cases, Youssef al-Manasif, remains at imminent risk of execution for alleged participation in protests at fifteen. The kingdom carried out 347 executions in 2025, the highest number on record. Source
Egypt: six journalists charged under counter-terrorism law
Between 28 and 29 September, National Security Agency officers arrested the entire editorial team of Matsada2sh — Mohamed Ashraf Abu Omeira, Abdallah Kadry, Islam Barakat, Mohamed Adel, Mohamed Mahmoud and Omar Helal — across several governorates. Several reported beatings, electric shocks, blindfolding and threats against relatives, and said they were forced to sign and record confessions.
They were charged under Case No. 8083 of 2026 with joining a terrorist group, funding terrorism and publishing false news. Detention was extended under articles 40 and 41 of the Counter-Terrorism Law, provisions that permit custody in security facilities for up to 28 days and, during that period, denial of access to family and counsel. The ICJ has described such provisions as having “effectively codified enforced disappearance.” ICJ
Egypt: Mada Masr fined and ordered closed
On 27 October a New Cairo misdemeanour court convicted Lina Attalah, editor-in-chief of Mada Masr, of operating a website without a licence, fined her three million Egyptian pounds, and ordered the site closed with its equipment confiscated. The charge rests on licensing rules that sit uneasily with the constitutional provision that newspapers are issued upon notification. Source
Iran: a death sentence for a social media post
A 23-year-old Iranian woman was sentenced to death for “blasphemy” over a social media post, according to reporting published on 19 October. In the same period, Taraneh Rahimi, 20, and Leila Abolhasani, 43, were sentenced to death following protests, and Rahimi’s sister Romina received a long prison term.
Iranian authorities also escalated action against artists, writers, poets and musicians, with arrests and incommunicado detention reported through the month. The pattern is consistent with what the UN fact-finding mission described in September: a system in which broadly defined security and morality offences convert expression into a capital charge. Center for Human Rights in Iran
Environment
Iraq launches its updated climate commitment
Iraq formally launched its Updated Nationally Determined Contribution on 7 October, raising its unconditional target to 3 per cent below business-as-usual by 2030 and 5 per cent by 2035, with a conditional reduction of up to 17 per cent by 2035 contingent on international finance and technology transfer — a potential total of 22 per cent.
Adaptation is prioritised in water resources, agriculture, health and the Mesopotamian Marshes, an ecosystem whose collapse would displace communities and destroy livelihoods. The targets are modest in absolute terms. The significance is that water and marshland protection are now named as national priorities rather than treated as sectoral afterthoughts. UNDP Iraq
Abu Dhabi sets a 2035 water security framework
The emirate’s Water Sector Steering Committee reviewed implementation of its integrated water strategy on 29 October, setting targets that include a 500 million cubic metre reduction in groundwater abstraction by 2030, groundwater net zero, and zero discharge of treated wastewater into the environment by 2035.
Agriculture is the focus, with four major irrigation infrastructure projects, 80 agricultural water meters installed in a completed pilot, and 18 model farms under monitoring. Source
Sharjah commits AED 5.2 billion to water and power
The Sharjah Electricity, Water and Gas Authority announced projects worth more than AED 5.2 billion on 31 October, including the emirate’s first independent reverse-osmosis desalination plant, designed to produce 410,000 cubic metres per day by the fourth quarter of 2028 and supply 1.4 million people. The plans sit within the UAE Water Security Strategy 2036, which targets a 21 per cent reduction in demand and 95 per cent reuse of treated water. WAM
What we are watching in November
Three files will move. The fate of Youssef al-Manasif in Saudi Arabia is the most urgent: diplomatic intervention has previously commuted sentences in comparable cases, and it remains the only mechanism short of abolition that can save him. In Egypt, the second National Human Rights Strategy will either publish a text that reflects what civil society actually submitted, or it will not — and the treatment of the Matsada2sh journalists in the coming weeks will indicate which. On the environment, the next round of climate negotiations will test whether the adaptation finance that Iraq’s conditional targets depend on materialises, or whether the region’s most water-stressed states are left to fund resilience alone.