The UN cannot entrust Saudi Arabia with the promotion of women’s rights

Listen to the audio version of the article

Salma al-Shehab is a PhD candidate at the University of Leeds, England, and a mother of two. Amnesty International informs us that she is in a Saudi Arabian prison, sentenced to 27 years in prison for having written some tweets in support of women’s rights activists. She had returned home for a holiday and was arrested, interrogated without the presence of a lawyer, subjected to a sham trial and convicted on 25 January 2023.

Salma’s story and the equally painful story of women’s rights (not to mention the ferocious repression of dissent) in the reign of Mohammed bin Salman did not prevent the 45 members of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) from appointing the ambassador president on Wednesday Saudi Arabia at the United Nations, Abdulaziz Alwasil, during the 68th annual session. By acclamation, because faced with Saudi Arabia’s unique candidacy, the outgoing Philippine president asked if there were any objections. And silence fell in the room.

«Grotesque»: this is how Riccardo Noury, spokesperson for Amnesty International Italy, commented on the news. One can only agree.

That Riyadh is running is understandable, committed as it is to retouching its international image on the human rights front. However, the picture remains bleak: the 2022 law on the status of the person, Amnesty recalls, was described by the Saudi authorities as a step forward towards equality but in reality «reinforces gender discrimination in every aspect of family life: from marriage to divorce, from child custody to inheritance.” The wife must obey her husband “in a reasonable manner”; financial support depends on obedience. The first Penal Code currently under discussion is anything but progress. It guarantees impunity to those responsible for “honor crimes”, it does not punish marital rape.

If Saudi Arabia’s desire for accreditation despite the facts is evident, the silence of the other states is incomprehensible. Among the 43 countries on the Commission (one position is vacant) there are six from the European Union: the Czech Republic, Latvia, Austria, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. But there are also Switzerland, Korea and Japan. They didn’t have any objections? The presidency influences the agenda and path of this UN body.