Ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the UN Abdulaziz Alwasi was elected on Wednesday as the chairman of the UN Commission for Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, says the British newspaper The Guardian.
According to the Guardian, the selection took place without objections.
Executive director of the Finland department of the human rights organization Amnesty International Frank Johansson says he is surprised by the decision.
– If you think that the purpose of this UN body is specifically to promote women’s rights and gender equality, then yes, the chairman should do the same, Johansson tells .
Now there is a big contradiction between Saudi Arabia’s own actions and the goals of the UN Commission, Johansson emphasizes.
In Saudi Arabia, for example, women cannot marry without the permission of a male guardian. Married women, on the other hand, must obey their husbands “reasonably”.
“Disobedience” is considered, among other things, to refuse sex without a “legitimate reason”.
The selection of Saudi Arabia as chairman has received widespread criticism from human rights organizations.
– The choice shows a terrible disregard for women’s rights all over the world, Louis Charbonneau from the human rights organization Human Rights Watch (from HRW) wrote in X.
Discrimination even increased
Saudi Arabia itself has emphasized that it has promoted women’s rights in recent years. Among other things, women have been given permission to drive a car.
However, according to Johansson, the direction is partly the opposite. He mentions, for example, the law reform regarding the status of women from 2022.
Saudi Arabia has claimed the law as a step towards equality, but Amnesty disagrees.
– According to Amnesty’s interpretation, the law to some extent cements gender-based discrimination in all areas of family life, from marriage to divorce, child custody and inheritance, and it in no way protects women from violence against them, says Johansson.
Johansson mentions as another example the criminal law reform in Saudi Arabia, which aims to create a criminal law in the country. So far, judges in Saudi Arabia have applied Islamic Sharia law on a case-by-case basis and arbitrarily.
In connection with the information leak, Amnesty has obtained a draft criminal law, and that does not bode well for human rights either.
– In our view, it actually increases that discrimination based on the law, says Johansson.
A huge campaign to raise the image
Saudi Arabia has used a crown prince in recent years Muhammad bin Salman the management has a huge amount of money to raise its image. Among other things, it has organized spectacular entertainment and sports events.
Amnesty’s Johansson believes that the pursuit of the presidency of the UN Commission on Women’s Rights may be part of this same image-polishing campaign.
See in the video below how Saudi Arabia has polished its image with the help of social media influencers.
According to The Guardian, Saudi Arabia actively lobbied for the chairmanship, which was originally going to Bangladesh.
Human rights organizations have criticized the countries that belong to the commission for quietly accepting the decision.
The commission includes 45 rotating member countries, of which the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Austria are currently EU countries.
– If the countries supporting human rights had raised a big enough fuss, the decision would not have happened, HRW’s Charbonneau said, according to the Guardian.
– But everyone was just silent. Someone could have demanded a vote on the matter, but that wasn’t done either, which I think is ridiculous, he continued.
According to Johansson, good things could come from Saudi Arabia’s presidency if, as a result, the country would significantly improve the status of women.
– But there’s not a lot of faith in that at the moment, when you see which direction the country is going.