The UN can not entrust Saudi Arabia with the promotion of girls's rights | EUROtoday

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Salma al-Shehab is a PhD candidate on the University of Leeds, England, and a mom of two. Amnesty International informs us that she is in a Saudi Arabian jail, sentenced to 27 years in jail for having written some tweets in help of girls's rights activists. She had returned dwelling for a vacation and was arrested, interrogated with out 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 girls's rights (to not point out the ferocious repression of dissent) within the reign of Mohammed bin Salman didn’t stop the 45 members of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) from appointing the ambassador president on Wednesday Saudi Arabia on the United Nations, Abdulaziz Alwasil, in the course of the 68th annual session. By acclamation, as a result of confronted with Saudi Arabia's distinctive candidacy, the outgoing Philippine president requested if there have been any objections. And silence fell within the room.

«Grotesque»: that is how Riccardo Noury, spokesperson for Amnesty International Italy, commented on the information. One can solely agree.

That Riyadh is operating is comprehensible, dedicated as it’s to retouching its worldwide picture on the human rights entrance. However, the image stays bleak: the 2022 regulation on the standing of the individual, Amnesty remembers, was described by the Saudi authorities as a step ahead in direction of equality however in actuality «reinforces gender discrimination in each side of household life: from marriage to divorce, from baby custody to inheritance.” The wife must obey her husband “in an inexpensive method”; 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 want for accreditation regardless of the info is obvious, the silence of the opposite states is meaningless. Among the 43 international locations on the Commission (one place is vacant) there are six from the European Union: the Czech Republic, Latvia, Austria, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. But there are additionally Switzerland, Korea and Japan. They didn't have any objections? The presidency influences the agenda and path of this UN physique.