Saudi Arabia won an uncontested bid to lead a United Nations body dealing with women’s rights during the 2025 session. This brought condemnation from human rights groups who argued that the kingdom has an “appalling” record on women’s empowerment.
On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the UN, Abdulaziz Alwasil, was elected chairman of the Commission on the Status of Women, a UN body that aims to protect and promote the rights of women around the world.
The Saudi state news agency wrote that the country’s new presidency “affirmed its interest in working with the international community to strengthen women’s rights and empowerment” and highlighted the progress the country had made toward greater social and economic freedom for women.
But the decision drew scathing criticism from human rights groups. Amnesty International’s deputy director for advocacy, Sherine Tadros, said in a statement that Saudi Arabia has a “terrible record of protecting and promoting women’s rights.” She argued that there was a “huge gap” between the UN commission’s ambitions and the “lived reality for women and girls in Saudi Arabia.”
The commission, founded in 1946, has 45 members who are selected based on geographical quotas. There is no vetting process required before a country is elected to the commission, nor is there a requirement that it meet certain gender rights standards to become a member.
Saudi Arabia was expected to win the presidency, which typically lasts two years, and its bid was reported to have drawn no dissent from other member states.
Women in Saudi Arabia, a conservative Islamic kingdom, were not allowed to drive until 2018, and they were long subject to a pervasive surveillance system called guardianship, which required them to get permission from a male relative to travel abroad, to get married and do other things. important life decisions. For decades, religious police officers roamed the streets hunting unmarried couples and yelling at women to cover up.
Since 2016, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 38-year-old de facto Saudi ruler, has significantly eased many of those restrictions as he oversees a plan to restart the country’s economy. Women are entering the workplace in record numbers, and the gender segregation and strict dress codes that shaped public life are gradually disappearing.
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 overrule their guardian’s decision.
Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia was ranked 131st out of 146 countries in a World Economic Forum report last year on the global gender gap. By law, the ruler of the kingdom must be a male member of the royal family. Although several women have risen to high-ranking positions, all of Prince Mohammed’s key cabinet members and close advisers are men. Many female immigrants to 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 from across the political spectrum, including many of the country’s most prominent women’s rights activists and several women who criticized government policies on social media. Loujain al-Hathloul, an activist who campaigned against the driving ban, was imprisoned from 2018 to 2021 and is still banned from traveling abroad.
“A country that jails women simply for standing up for their rights should not be the face of the UN Summit Forum on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality,” Louis Charbonneau, director of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement on Wednesday. “The Saudi authorities must demonstrate that this honor was not entirely undeserved and immediately release all detained women’s rights defenders, end male guardianship and guarantee women’s full rights to equality with men.”
The Saudi government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Saudi women “have been given the means of empowerment and have become an active partner in the development and upliftment of the country,” 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 spanned months in Tehran’s crackdown on uprisings by women and youth demanding an end to the Islamic Republic’s rule. The resolution marked the first time a member state was removed from the UN women’s body.
Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting from New York.