Saudi Arabia has won an uncontested bid to lead a United Nations body dedicated to women’s rights for the 2025 session, prompting condemnation from rights groups who said the kingdom had an “abysmal” record on empowering women.
On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the UN, Abdulaziz Alwasil, was elected chair of the Commission on the Status of Women, a UN body that aims to protect and promote women’s rights around the world.
Saudi Arabia’s state news agency wrote that the country’s new presidency “confirmed its interest in working with the international community to strengthen women’s rights and emancipation” and highlighted the steps the country had taken toward greater social and economic freedom for women.
But the decision drew fierce criticism from human rights groups. Amnesty International’s deputy director of advocacy, Sherine Tadros, said in a statement that Saudi Arabia had “an abysmal record of protecting and promoting women’s rights”. She argued that there was a “huge gap” between the aspirations of the UN commission and the “live reality for women and girls in Saudi Arabia”.
The commission, established in 1946, has 45 members selected based on geographic quotas. No screening process is required for a country to be elected to the commission, nor is it required to meet certain gender rights standards for membership.
Saudi Arabia was expected to win the presidency, which usually lasts for two years, and its candidacy was reported to be unopposed by other member states.
Women in Saudi Arabia, a conservative Islamic kingdom, were banned from driving until 2018 and were long subject to a pervasive control system called guardianship that required them to obtain permission from a male relative to travel abroad, marry and to make other important life decisions. For decades, religious police roamed the streets chasing unmarried couples and yelling at women to cover up.
Since 2016, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 38-year-old de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, has significantly relaxed many of these restrictions as he oversees a plan to reorganize the country’s economy. Women are pouring into the workplace in record numbers, and the gender segregation and strict dress codes that shaped public life are gradually dissolving.
Saudi women say it has become easier to divorce and gain custody of their children. Although they still need the approval of a male guardian to marry, a requirement in many Arab countries, some women have successfully appealed to judges to override their guardian’s decision.
However, in a World Economic Forum report on the global gender gap last year, Saudi Arabia was ranked 131st out of 146 countries. By law, the ruler of the kingdom must be a male member of the royal family. While several women have risen to senior positions, all of Prince Mohammed’s key cabinet members and closest advisers are men. Many migrant women in the country, especially domestic workers, face significant restrictions on their freedom of movement and other basic rights.
The crown prince has also overseen a sweeping crackdown on domestic dissent, arresting hundreds of Saudis across the political spectrum, including many of the country’s most prominent women’s rights activists and several women who have criticized government policies on social media. Loujain al-Hathloul, an activist who fought against the driving ban, was jailed from 2018 to 2021 and is still banned from traveling abroad.
“A country that imprisons women simply for standing up for their rights has no business being the face of the UN’s top forum for women’s rights and gender equality,” Louis Charbonneau, director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement on Wednesday. “The Saudi authorities should prove that this honor was not entirely unjust and immediately release all imprisoned women’s rights defenders, end male guardianship and ensure women’s full rights to equality with men” .
The Saudi government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Saudi women “received the means of empowerment and became active partners in the development and upliftment of the nation,” the kingdom’s state news agency said in its report.
In 2022, Iran was removed from the same UN committee in a US-led vote that came months after Tehran cracked down on uprisings led by women and youth demanding an end to the Islamic Republic’s rule. The resolution was the first time a member state had withdrawn from the UN women’s body.
Farnaz Fashihi contributed reporting from New York.
