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Rights Organization Says Saudi Women Treated Like Children
by
findingDulcinea Staff
New York-based Human Rights Watch released a report Monday saying that women in Saudi Arabia are being treated as “perpetual minors.”
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Human Rights Watch interviewed over 100 women and concluded that the country’s guardianship tradition was “grossly discriminatory.” The findings have been published in a report titled “Perpetual Minors: Human Rights Abuses Stemming from Male Guardianship and Sex Segregation in Saudi Arabia.”
Under the guardianship system, women cannot “work, travel, study or marry, and can be denied access to health, judicial and other public services without first obtaining permission from a male guardian,” Arabian Business reports.
Public places such as restaurants and offices are segregated according to sex, and women must always be in the company of a male guardian while out in public.
“Saudi women won’t make any progress until the government ends the abuses that stem from these misguided policies,” said Farida Deif, women’s rights researcher for the Middle East at Human Rights Watch.
The current report follows two other studies about Saudi human rights lapses released by the organization in late March. Included in the abuses detailed in those reports were a “lack of legal counsel, and forced confessions,” according to The Christian Science Monitor.
On a Los Angeles Times blog, Borzou Daragahi stresses the implications of the report, considering the United States’ close alliance with Saudi Arabia and the kingdom’s role as an influential voice in the Arab and Muslim world.
But Mary Dejevsky of British newspaper The Independent questions the study, citing Qatar’s financial success: “When campaigners demand an end to such ‘misguided’ policies as segregation by sex, what they are actually saying is that Western ways rule. One look at the newly prosperous Gulf states should call that assumption into question.”
Under the guardianship system, women cannot “work, travel, study or marry, and can be denied access to health, judicial and other public services without first obtaining permission from a male guardian,” Arabian Business reports.
Public places such as restaurants and offices are segregated according to sex, and women must always be in the company of a male guardian while out in public.
“Saudi women won’t make any progress until the government ends the abuses that stem from these misguided policies,” said Farida Deif, women’s rights researcher for the Middle East at Human Rights Watch.
The current report follows two other studies about Saudi human rights lapses released by the organization in late March. Included in the abuses detailed in those reports were a “lack of legal counsel, and forced confessions,” according to The Christian Science Monitor.
On a Los Angeles Times blog, Borzou Daragahi stresses the implications of the report, considering the United States’ close alliance with Saudi Arabia and the kingdom’s role as an influential voice in the Arab and Muslim world.
But Mary Dejevsky of British newspaper The Independent questions the study, citing Qatar’s financial success: “When campaigners demand an end to such ‘misguided’ policies as segregation by sex, what they are actually saying is that Western ways rule. One look at the newly prosperous Gulf states should call that assumption into question.”
Headline Link: ‘Saudi Women Denied Basic Human Rights’
Arabian Business writes that the report said “authorities treated adult women like ‘legal minors’ and prevented them from having any control over their lives or well-being.” Also, despite the fact that the law has loosened the guardianship power, Saudi Arabian authorities continue to deny women many of their rights.
Source: Arabian Business
Background: ‘Slowly Opening Dialog About Human Rights’
Saudi Arabia has been working toward improving its human rights record ever since King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz created the 24-member Human Rights Commission two years ago. Nevertheless, Human Rights Watch released two reports in March describing “long detention without charges or trial, sometimes in solitary confinement, arbitrary arrests, lack of legal counsel, and forced confessions,” according to The Christian Science Monitor.
Source: The Christian Science Monitor
Opinion & Analysis: The report
In a Los Angeles Times blog entry called “Saudi Arabia: A nightmare for women,” Beirut-based writer Borzou Daragahi cites the findings of the Human Rights Watch report, and says that “the Saudi influence is even felt here in relatively libertine Lebanon, where more and more Sunni Arab women are taking to wearing the all-covering niqab.” She says that Saudi Arabia is growing more and more influential to Arabs and Muslims throughout the world now that Egypt is in “decline.”
Source: Los Angeles Times
In Britain’s The Independent, Mary Dejevsky says the report is “not only judging Saudi Arabia by standards it would consider alien, but demanding that it forsake the whole philosophical, cultural and social system on which it is built. That is, to put it mildly, unrealistic.”
Source: The Independent
An op-ed in The Australian objects to Griffith University in Queensland’s ties to the Saudi Arabian government. The piece says that in light of the recent Human Rights Watch report, “Griffith University has been foolish—at best—in virtually begging the Saudi Arabian embassy to bankroll its Griffith Islamic Research Unit for $1.3 million.”
Source: The Australian
Reference: The Human Rights Watch report
Human Rights Watch provides access to its 54-page report “Human Rights Abuses Stemming from Male Guardianship and Sex Segregation in Saudi Arabia.” The report states, “The religious character of Saudi Arabia, whereby the state is the guardian of religion and all that it requires in human conduct, has a direct bearing on women’s status in the kingdom.”
Source: Human Rights Watch
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