Saudi Arabia elected to UN women’s rights commission

Written by David Fletcher 28 Apr 2017
Saudi Arabia elected to UN women’s rights commission

The United Nations voted late last week to place Saudi Arabia on the Commission on the Status of Women for a four-year term beginning in 2018, despite that country’s appalling record on the treatment of women. The director of the Geneva-based UN Watch expressed his outrage: ‘Electing Saudi Arabia to protect women’s rights is like making an arsonist into the town fire chief.’ Every Saudi woman must have a male guardian who makes all critical decisions on her behalf. Men control a woman’s life from her birth until death. Saudi Arabia even bans women from driving cars. The most recent human rights report notes that despite being allowed to participate in municipal elections in 2015, the state of women’s rights in the kingdom remains generally abysmal. In 2015, Saudi Arabia reduced a Sri Lankan woman’s sentence for adultery from execution by stoning to three years in prison.

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