Last week, Saudi Arabia was chosen to chair the United Nations’ leading gender equality forum, the Commission on the Status of Women. Even before the choice was finalized, rights organizations were issuing warnings.
Other countries “should oppose the candidacy of Saudi Arabia, which has an egregious women’s rights record,” the rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) wrote a week beforehand
After the decision was made on March 28, they were even more upset. “Whoever is in the chair, which is now Saudi Arabia, is in a key position to influence the planning, the decisions, the taking stock, and looking ahead, in a critical year for the commission,” Sherine Tadros, head of Amnesty International’s New York office, told the Guardian
. “Saudi Arabia is now at the helm, but Saudi Arabia’s own record on women’s rights is abysmal, and a far cry from the mandate of the Commission.”
Source: Why is Saudi Arabia heading top UN gender equality forum? – DW – 04/02/2024
I guess things must have changed a bit over the last few years:
Guardian:
Rape victim sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in jail
This article is more than 16 years old
· Saudi woman punished for being alone with a man
· Lawyer specialising in women’s rights suspended
Vicky Baker
Sun 18 Nov 2007 10.44 AEDT
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A judge in Saudi Arabia has ordered a victim of gang rape to receive 200 lashes – more than double her original sentence for being alone with a man who was not a relative – after she appealed against the lenient sentences given to the men who attacked her. He also jailed her for six months.
The 21-year-old woman, who was 19 at the time of the attack and is known by the Saudi media as “the girl from Qatif”, was raped 14 times by a gang of seven. Although her attackers were found guilty and sentenced to between 10 months and five years last year, she was simultaneously sentenced to 90 lashes as punishment for riding in a car with a man who was not a relative.
By appealing against this decision, the judge ruled on Wednesday, she was attempting to “aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media”.
At the appeal, the rapists’ sentences were increased to between two and nine years.
Really? I didn’t notice any fuss last year,when the UN made Iran Vice-President of their General Assembly, AND chair of a Human Rights forum!