On 2 July 2024, as part of an advocacy trip to Geneva during the 56th session of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), ALQST’s Head of Monitoring and Advocacy Lina Alhathloul highlighted the urgent need to address Saudi Arabia’s worsening human rights situation, and in particular the widespread violation of the rights of women in the country. She was speaking at a side event moderated by Michael Khambatta, Geneva Representative, Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR), ahead of the adoption of Saudi Arabia’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) on 4 July, alongside representatives of the GCHR, the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights (ESOHR) and MENA Rights Group.
Duaa Dhainy, Researcher at the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights (ESOHR), pointed out the Saudi authorities’ use of the Universal Periodic Review process as a tool to promote a positive image of themselves and the country as a whole. She noted that although the Saudi kingdom’s representatives had spoken of radical reforms at the previous HRC session, it remained impossible for any activist or human rights defender based in Saudi Arabia to participate freely in these sessions. Dozens of human rights defenders and activists continue to be tried and sentenced by the country’s Specialised Criminal Court, an exceptional jurisdiction that was set up in 2008 to try terrorism cases.
Dhainy referred to violations including extremely long arbitrary sentences; ill-treatment in prisons; enforced disappearances; and travel bans imposed on detainees and their families. She also noted the concerning decline in the number of sources in Saudi Arabia willing to communicate with human rights organisations, reflecting the authorities’ increasing criminalisation of such actions in recent years. Dhainy said the authorities in Saudi Arabia have used this repressive tactic as a means to further obscure inconvenient facts, especially concerning use of the death penalty. As a result, ESOHR has only been able to document 4% of the 1,370 death sentences issued since 2015, nine of them to minors; in the cases that ESOHR was able to track and document, widespread human rights violations emerged including torture, ill-treatment, and denial of the right to defend oneself adequately.
ALQST’s Lina Alhathloul focused on the Saudi authorities’ silencing of women human rights defenders (WHRDs). In previous years, she explained, Saudi Arabia had had prominent WHRDs who fought for the end of the male guardianship system and for women’s right to drive, and whose advocacy was public and structured, but following the rise of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (“MBS”) they had all been arrested, forcibly disappeared and tortured. The Saudi authorities, including the official Saudi Human Rights Commission, had failed to provide effective support to the WHRDs and repeatedly denied that any torture had taken place. As a result of this muzzling, as well as long prison sentences and arbitrary travel bans, and the threat of arrest for activists and their families should they speak out, it has become risky to stand in solidarity with these WHRDs or continue their work. Anyone who does so, even in a low-profile, less public way, is also considered to be a WHRD, Alhathloul explained.
During the MBS era we have seen an unprecedented rise not only in the number of WHRDs arrested, put on trial and jailed, but also in the different tactics employed to violate their rights. Alhathloul gave the two examples of Manahel al-Otaibi, a popular fitness instructor recently sentenced to 11 years in prison on charges relating to her feminist tweets and for online pictures of her going out in public without an abaya; and Salma al-Shehab, currently serving a 27-year prison sentence for tweeting in solidarity with WHRDs. Both of these women have been attacked by other inmates while in detention, which in Manahel al-Otaibi’s case left her with a broken leg that prison authorities allowed to go untreated when she was placed in solitary confinement after complaining about the attack. AlHathloul added that in all cases the lack of information, and the fact that calls are closely monitored and prison visits rare, makes it difficult to ascertain what is happening to activists in detention. This context of fear, repression, ill-treatment and the silencing of civil actors demonstrates that the Saudi authorities are clearly not serious about genuinely reforming the country.
Falah Sayed, Human Rights Officer, MENA Rights Group, commented that although the Saudi authorities have been keen to emphasise the supposed success of the social, political and economic reforms they have undertaken, human rights organisations are seeing the exact opposite, with an increasing crackdown on WHRDs in recent years. Manahel al-Otaibi, Loujain al-Hathloul, Salma al Shehab and Noura Al Qahtani have all been severely persecuted for speaking out in favour of human rights. Sayed also spoke about the Saudi Human Rights Commission (SHRC), which is officially mandated to undertake human rights-related tasks including raising public awareness on human rights, addressing human rights complaints, engaging in legislative work, and monitoring detention facilities but in reality is simply a tool used by the government to cover up human rights abuses. It’s basically an institution, Sayed said, that is there just to tick a box, to make it look like human rights are being addressed in Saudi Arabia.
She identified Loujain al-Hathloul and Salma al-Shehab as archetypal examples of this trend, having both been visited in prison by the SHRC. In both cases the SHRC, which is widely recognised and endorsed by governments and international bodies, ignored and even covered up evidence of abuses perpetrated against the women. Sayed described how the SHRC had failed to address allegations of human rights violations against other individuals too, such as the young men currently at imminent risk of execution for acts covered by freedom of expression that they committed when they were minors. She added that the SHRC’s legislative work essentially consists of praising the authorities’ adoption of new laws, and sometimes giving false or misleading statements on legislative changes. It never provides any objective analysis of laws that have been widely criticised for their impact on human rights. The 2022 Personal Status Law, for example, introduces some positive reforms, such as setting a minimum age for marriage, but it also establishes a system of gender-based discrimination in most aspects of family life. The vague wording of the law, meanwhile, allows judges discretion when adjudicating cases, which makes inconsistent and arbitrary interpretations more likely.
