By Sara Elghobashy
November 9, 2009
Saudi Arabia may not be known for its good human rights record, but they are trying to change that. No, no. Seriously. They are. Or it just seems like they are. Wait. Are they?
Earlier this month, King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia’s ruling monarch, gave the UN Human Rights Commission (HRC) the green light for a project that aims to raise awareness about human rights, in addition to proposing methods of implementing them through institutes that specialize in education, training and media. Will this mean a change in Saudi human rights culture? Well, maybe not.
Since its establishment in September 2005, the Saudi HRC has been perceived as a joke (and rightfully so). While they do help some people, a majority of their cases result in failure, especially when it comes to issues of women’s rights. Saudi Arabia seems to have a particularly hard time moving forward, especially when the public pushes back.
For instance, in June 2009, Saudi Arabia accepted a UN recommendation to end male guardianship, give women a full legal identity and prohibit gender discrimination. And what happened? Rawdah el-Yousif, a Saudi activist, launched a campaign entitled “My Guardian Knows the Best for Me,” mainly backed by upper class women - including two princesses - to stop Saudi Arabia from implementing a law that would ensure government agencies no longer required a guardian’s permission for women to marry, work, travel, study or gain access to health care. Those behind the campaign assumed that all Saudi women have pleasant, loving guardians that allow them to do what they want. They even went as far as to suggest that women who opposed guardianship should be punished. Isn’t that swell? Apparently, freedom to choose is a thought you should throw out the window.
So who is to say that the new human rights campaigns from the HRC will be met with open arms, especially when the hope for change was instantly overshadowed by more human rights violations? In the same week that Saudi Arabia announced the launch of the HRC campaigns, they also announced that they will execute three foreign nationals and behead and crucify a 22-year-old. (Umm ... bad PR move, KSA.) While I understand that the announcement of the campaign did not mean that the HRC will speed through implementing human rights in Saudi Arabia and that it will probably take years before the campaign has an effect on the Gulf state, it doesn’t exactly give me hope that change will occur when four planned executions are announced that same week.
So it seems that with every step forward in human rights, Saudi Arabia takes three steps back. As many in the world slowly lose faith that its human rights record will ever change, it should perhaps amp up its efforts to prove otherwise. I mean, I certainly wouldn’t mind being proven wrong in this case.
HASSAN AMMAR/AFP/Getty Images
No comments have been posted yet.