Saudi Arabia is now chairing the UN’s top women’s rights body, presiding until March 21st at a gathering of global leaders that is supposed to address gender equality amid a reported backlash against women’s rights, at the 69th annual session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women.
“It’s surreal. Electing Saudi Arabia to head the world body for protecting women’s rights is like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based independent human rights group.
“Despite cosmetic reforms, Saudi Arabia continues to subject women to legal discrimination, where they are effectively enslaved under a male guardianship system that was enshrined into law three years ago, ironically on international women’s day,” said Neuer.
“We call on the EU states and all other democracies who cheered yesterday’s adoption of a meaningless political declaration to end their silence and state for the record that this is absurd, morally reprehensible, and an insult to the oppressed women of Saudi Arabis. This is a dark day for women’s rights, and for all human rights,” said Neuer.
One of the world’s most patriarchal and misogynistic regimes now chairs the Commission on the Status of Women, which is touted on the UN website as the “principal global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women.”
https://twitter.com/HillelNeuer/status/1899399167824347387
Saudi Arabia’s Horrific Record on Women’s Rights
“Saudi Arabia’s persecution of women is gross and systematic, both in law and in practice,” said Neuer.
“Despite recent reforms, women in Saudi Arabia continue to face extensive discrimination, particularly due to the entrenched guardianship system requiring male approval for women to conduct basic activities. The June 2022 personal status law, touted by the Crown Prince as a ‘leap’ forward, codifies discrimination against women in family life and includes many of the horrific aspects of the guardianship system,” said Neuer.
“Women’s rights activists are currently being arbitrarily detained by Saudi Arabia for criticizing the government and advocating for greater freedoms for women, including on social media. In 2023, academic Salma al-Shehab was sentenced to 27 years in prison and a 27-year travel ban for her social media activity, while Nourah al-Qahtani was sentenced to 45 years in prison with a 45-year travel ban.”
“Saudi fitness instructor Manahel al-Otaibi, who was held incommunicado for five months after being detained in November 2023, was recently convicted of terrorism crimes and sentence to 11 years in jail for posting photos of herself without an abaya and advocating to end the guardianship system.”
“Why, then, did the UN name Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s worst oppressors of women as a world judge and guardian of gender equality and the empowerment of women?” asks Neuer.
“By elevating a misogynistic regime to its highest women’s rights body, the UN is sending a message that women’s rights can be sold out for backroom political deals,” said Neuer, “and it betrays millions of female victims in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere who look to the world body for protection.”
UN Commission Turns Blind Eye to World’s Worst Abusers of Women’s Rights
The UN’s commission on the status of women meets every year and has a unique opportunity to hold country violators of women’s rights to account. Yet instead, it systematically ignores them.
For example:
• The CSW has never adopted a single resolution on Saudi Arabia, which, notwithstanding recent limited reforms, subjugates women through its male guardianship system and jails and tortures women’s rights activists.
• The CSW has never adopted a single resolution on Yemen, which ranks at the bottom of the gender equality index (153/153) and where child marriage is pervasive with more than two thirds of girls being married off before age 18.
• The CSW has never adopted a single resolution on the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has been dubbed the “rape capital of the world.”
• The CSW has never adopted a single resolution on Pakistan, where violence against women is on the rise and conviction rates are low-between 2011 and 2017 over 51,000 cases of domestic violence were reported.
• The CSW has never adopted a single resolution on Iran, where women suffer discrimination under the law in key areas such as marriage, family law, age of criminal responsibility, inheritance, and court testimony. The CSW gives a free pass to Iran for its misogynistic modesty laws, under which women are routinely arrested and sentenced to harsh punishments. If a Muslim woman is found in a relationship with a non-Muslim man, she may be sentenced to be whipped. Women have been sent to jail for speaking out in favor of equal rights for women.
In fact, the CSW squanders a golden opportunity to demand accountability and compliance and gives a free pass on the world’s worst abusers of human rights. Instead, it adopts resolutions on general thematic issues joined by all CSW members, including these abusers to the extent they are members. For example, in 2018 CSW members joined in resolutions condemning torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence against women in the context of hostage-taking in armed conflicts; acknowledging the need to “accelerate the realization of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.” In 2021, CSW members reaffirmed “the commitments to gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls made at relevant United Nations summits and conferences,” among other things.
