Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

Saudi Arabia’s Human Rights Report Postponed | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
Select Page

Dammam, Asharq Al-Awsat- Member of the Shura Council and President of the Saudi National Human Rights Association (NHRA), a non-governmental organization (NGO), Dr. Bandar al Hajjar has yet to set a date for the issuance of Saudi Arabia’s first human rights report. This comes almost three months after the date the NHRA had initially announced at the beginning of this year.

Al Hajjar said that the reason behind this delay was primarily because of “ongoing additions and amendments and the documentation of more cases to be included in the final report so that it may be comprehensive and inclusive of all the association’s activities since its inception,” he told Asharq Al-Awsat last Tuesday, March 27th.

He added that the date for the report’s issue, “has still not been set and that the association is taking the required time to prepare it.” Al Hajjar denied the existence of taboos that the NHRA was avoiding in its composition of the report. He said, “There are no taboos that we fear. In fact, we are continuously confronted with further addendums and amendments while working on this report, which compels us to modify and add things. This is why we are preparing the report again.”

“Delays are a result of the continuous amendments in the report. The association’s objective is to issue a report that includes all the issues related to human’s rights that were addressed or supervised by the association,” he said. A number of the association’s members have divulged that the report will abide by international human rights standards as well as the edicts that were ratified by the Saudi government relating to human rights.

The findings of the study completed by the NHRA on the laws and regulations in Saudi Arabia concluded that they were in accordance with the international human rights legislations.