RIYADH, 30 May 2007 — In a move to encourage government bodies to cooperate with human rights organizations in Saudi Arabia, the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) announced yesterday that it would release another report. This report will specify the degree of cooperation each government body has shown to the society since its establishment.
Commenting on the cooperation of government bodies with the NSHR for its first report on the state of human rights in the country, released last week, Hussein Al-Shareef of the NSHR said it was unsatisfactory. “In general, the replies received by NSHR to its questions were not up to expectations.”
Al-Shareef divided the responses by government bodies into three categories: Those that responded quickly to the society’s requests; those that responded but left some questions unanswered; and those that did not respond at all.
“The coming report will mention the degree of cooperation by each government body as well as the number of cases it received, the number of letters sent to it and the number of replies the NSHR got in return,” Al-Shareef said, adding that government bodies that refused to cooperate with the NSHR will be named.
“These details will be published in the report which is currently being drafted by the Information Department,” he added. He said the new report would be released as soon as all the data had been collected and organized.
In its report released last week, the NSHR listed the basic human rights for citizens and residents living in the Kingdom. The report was the result of NSHR efforts in the Kingdom over the past three years.
Al-Shareef said the NSHR had written several letters to the Shoura Council as well as to government officials concerning the importance of rectifying current laws in the country in order to correct violations cited in the report. He added that both national and international treaties that the Kingdom had signed were violated.
He pointed out that the NSHR, like any other human rights body in the world, had no authority to redress violations but that after the release of a report, it was part of the NSHR’s mission to follow up on seeing that the violations were redressed. “We are not an executive body. We are not a ministry or affiliated to the government. We are not a justice body. We are not a legislative body,” he said. He emphasized that the only authority the NSHR had “was to list violations committed by governmental and nongovernmental bodies and bring them to public attention as a means of pressuring them to redress the violations.”
Al-Shareef said that since its establishment in Saudi Arabia, the NSHR’s main focus had been to inform citizens and residents of their human rights. He said that in addition to a newsletter that is published every month, the NSHR intends to use the media as a means of spreading awareness.
He said that the executive board had agreed to open 13 branches in the Kingdom but that the long time needed to open one — from five to six months — was because of the need to hire employees with sufficient knowledge and expertise. “We take into consideration when we open a branch in the country, the population of the region as well as the needs of its citizens and residents,” he said.
