JEDDAH, 7 October 2005 — The Saudi Council of Ministers has granted the Human Rights Commission the right to rectify and review all systems in the Kingdom related to human rights.
According to Al-Watan, the Human Rights Commission will also have the right to access prisons and detention centers at any time and submit reports to the prime minister without the need to obtain official permission. The newspaper also said the commission would be active 60 days from the date of inception.
The commission’s responsibility includes monitoring government sectors, carrying out procedures related to human rights and making public all violations. According to the rules of the organization, government sectors must provide the commission with whatever is requested of them, such as statistics or information.
The documents establishing the commission state that HRC reports directly to the prime minister and aims at protecting and reinforcing human rights in the Kingdom and hold them to international standards. Furthermore there would be awareness campaigns on behalf of the Human Rights Commission, subject to the Shariah law.
“We are going to cooperate and assist each other in everything regarding human rights,” said National Society for Human Rights senior member Suhaila Hammad. She said the official statement obliged the commission to work together with the (NSHR).
The official statement gives the commission a wider range of rights than the NSHR which was established in March 2004. The NSHR is only confined to making suggestions, addressing them later to the appropriate authorities and waiting for their response. Those authorities, however, are not obliged to make any changes sought by the society.
The Human Rights Commission will be headed by Turki ibn Khaled Al-Sudairi as president with the rank of a minister. He will have a vice president and 24 members, all appointed directly on an order from the prime minister.
The procedure of forming the HRC is totally different from the NSHR. “The NSHR has 40 members. Four members have recently been suspended as there might be conflict of interest as they joined the government recently,” said Hammad. “The NSHR was only meant to be a civil institution,” said Hammad. She explained that the government was aiming to increase the number of civil institutions such as the Saudi Journalists’ Association and the coming Writers League. “We demand the establishment of more civil organizations. If we joined the government, we would be lost,” she added.
Hammad said that on the organizational level the commission is “almost the same as the NSHR.” The organization’s administration and public affairs department is charged with coordinating with international human rights organizations and following up cases of abuse of Saudis abroad. Similar action was initiated by NSHR which took up the case of Saudi detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and the missing Saudis in Syria.
Lawyer Khaled Abo Rashed says that the commission suggestions are not binding. “The commission will study the regulations, make recommendations and present its proposals to ministers.”
