JEDDAH, 3 April 2007 — “I felt optimistic when I read the news. It made me feel that effective reformations are actually happening,” said Hatoon Ajwad Al-Fassi, associate professor of history at King Saud University. She was responding to a directive issued by Interior Minister Prince Naif granting Saudi women the right to obtain duplicates of their children’s birth registers as well as documents related to themselves and their husbands from the Civil Affairs offices.

Al-Fassi said Saudi women had been demanding for a long time to have their and their children’s official documents.

“It is good that the Ministry of Interior has finally responded to their requests,” she said. “This decision gives women the ability to carry out their own government procedures on their own without needing help from someone who has abused her and her children.”

According to Al-Fassi, this decision benefits divorced women first and then women whose husbands have left them but not removed their names from the family card and who have refused to help them in completing official procedures.

Al-Fassi said, “Some men abuse their former wives by keeping their children’s papers and using them to pressure their mothers. This harms the children. If the mother does not have the children’s papers, they cannot go to school.”

Regarding the decision that male relatives above 17 can register newborns if fathers have not done so during the first 15 days, Al-Fassi said that women should be able to register their babies by themselves. “I think this decision needs more thought. There is still discrimination between men and women when it comes to issuing birth certificates.”

Al-Fassi said that women could always get their rights when they asked for them.

Suhaila Hammad, a senior member at the National Society for Human Rights, agreed with Al-Fassi’s comments. “Why do we prevent the mother from registering her child but allow males who are not yet adults that right? Why do we insult mothers by not allowing them to register their own newborn children? We should give women the legal powers they were given by Islam.”

She went on, “Most of the cases that we in the human rights society get involve women who do not have their own or their children’s official papers which are still being kept by the former husband. When women ask for the papers to enroll their children in school, the husband threatens to take the children from her. The women end up having to pay a lot to put their children into private schools which are less strict about this regulation than government ones.”

She added that she hoped this decision would be followed by other decisions that will help women. “I hope this will open the door for many decisions, such as one that allows a woman to travel without needing to get permission from her guardian. It is insulting and demeaning when a mother has to ask permission from her son or grandson in order to travel.”

This is in addition to the one of legally divorced women who are still on their former husband’s family cards. The women cannot travel unless the ex-husband gives permission. “We thank Prince Naif for this and ask the ministry for more decisions that favor women,” Hammad said.