The Hafiz program has revealed the real unemployment rate in the Kingdom, said Mufleh Al-Qahtani, president of the National Society for Human Rights, in an interview with Al-Watan newspaper. Al-Qahtani stressed the importance of the program’s assessment and development. He criticized the limited role played by the executive departments in terms of facing the economic developments such as the stock market collapse and the price rise. Al-Qahtani warned of leaving the Bidoon (stateless people) problem unresolved and said that steps taken in this regard are not enough. He accused the authorities concerned of failing to deal with the issue objectively and rationally. He commended the transparency of Prince Mohammad bin Naif, interior minister, regarding prisoners arrested in national security cases. He did not want the prisoners’ issue to be misused by people with their own agendas. He commended the Ministry of Interior’s move to allow the society to open offices inside prisons. Following is text of the interview:
It has been nine years since the society was opened. Are you satisfied with what it has accomplished? What were the most prominent problems the society faced?
The society was established on March 9, 2004 in order to protect and enhance the human rights conditions in the country. Since then, the society observed the violations and educated public of their rights and the local regulations and the international agreements that the Kingdom signed.
The society also studied human rights related cases and filed its recommendations to the authorities.
The society’s mission was made possible by the royal decree that asked government departments to cooperate with it and allow it to work independently in the Kingdom.
This has caused a significant change in human rights conditions in the Kingdom. Now we can talk about human rights reports issued by the society from within the Kingdom and that government departments are interacting with these reports’ contents.
There is no doubt that changes made in the human rights cases are noticeable. But we look forward for more to be done.
Now we often hear the phrase “let’s refer to the human rights society” repeated in the community, families and inside government departments. This shows that human rights is becoming a culture and is spreading widely.
But it is important for this to be accompanied by proper education of the young generations. They need to know their obligations and rights and that rights cannot be obtained without delivering the obligations.
Overall, I can say that the change in human rights conditions is noticeable in the Kingdom. It is true it varies from one sector to another but we can feel the change. The public awareness is increasing and the government is supporting it. The difficulty we face is in some individuals and officials not being able to understand the concept of human rights. But this kind of difficulties is fading gradually with time.
The society has issued number of local reports on the human rights conditions in Saudi Arabia. How do you find the reactions? Did you notice improvement in the departments after they were criticized in these reports?
The society issues annual reports about its activities showing the cases it received and observed. These reports include details on steps taken by the departments after writing to them.
The society also issues periodic reports on human rights in the kingdom. Three periodic reports have been issued until now. These reports received local and international reactions. Internationally, these reports left a positive impact on the Kingdom’s reputation. Many foreign parliamentarians and diplomats who visited our office were impressed by the level of freedom of expression in Saudi Arabia.
Locally, these reports included detailed description of the current situation with suggestions and solutions.
How do you evaluate the response of the government departments to the society’s reports?
The society was impressed by a number of initiatives from ministries and administrations in response to its reports. The response is improving with time but there are some departments that are used to work in a certain way and they find it difficult to change. This is due to the slow procedures and decision-making. But they are actually trying hard to avoid repeating the same mistakes we notified them about. The society also noticed that many leaderships lack the sense of responsibility and they have poor administrative skills. This had a serious impact on human rights and delayed workflow. This led some government department to operate with low capacity.
From time to time, we hear about the Bidoon (stateless people). Do you have any statistics on them? What did the society do to help them?
The stateless people are people who don’t have Saudi citizenship and they don’t have any other official documents despite living in the Kingdom for years. They don’t have any other citizenship either. Some of them are originally from countries they don’t want to go back to. Or their countries won’t recognize their citizenship as some of our reports said.
There are thousands of complaints filed to the society about this issue. We are still working on solving their problems and the progress made until now didn’t meet our expectations. Some of those stateless people used to have some official papers but they got them canceled for different reasons. Some of them have papers showing that they served in some government departments for long times. Canceling their official papers deprived their children from education, health care and work.
Some of them got their tribes testifying that they are of Saudi origin but this didn’t help.
There are also people who were born in Saudi Arabia but didn’t obtain citizenship because of issues related to parents who came to the Kingdom for Haj or Umrah but never went back home. Some of those people do have citizenship of another country, but deliberately hide it to avoid getting deported. They are now considered stateless although they are legally not.
If their situation continues this way it will cause more problems to their children, grandchildren and the community at large.
It seems that the authorities failed to quickly deal with this issue objectively and rationally. This is shown through the replies the society received from the authorities in this regard despite the royal decrees that clearly direct them to resolve the issue as soon as possible. Besides, ignoring this problem is not only violating their human rights, but also will cause another major problem as their number is increasing .
Many decrees were issued to solve the raising cost of living in the Kingdom. Do you think they partially solved the problem?
Major economic developments happened in the few past years and they resulted in negative impacts on the Saudis lives especially those of law-income. The role played by the concerned department was limited and did not fulfill the need of the people to live a decent live. Thus, King Abduulah issued number of decrees to face the rasing cost of living including allocating huge amount of money for housing projects and increasing the amount of grants given by the credit bank.
Hafiz, the National program to aid the job seekers, received plenty of criticism. Do you think it helped decreasing the unemployment rate?
Hafiz has its advantages and problems. But surely it helped identifying the real unemployment rate and what is the age rate of the unemployed. But generally, the program needs to be developed and we wrote to the minister of labor about this issue.
The society issued a report on the number of the prisoners arrested upon national security cases. The number was surprising for some specially that it is less than what some parties claimed. Does this mean that there are some people exaggerating the number for other purposes?
We hope this is not the situation. Let’s just say the inaccurate numbers claimed by some people were resulted by ignorance and the absence of official information. The issue of national security prisoners should not be a subject of outbidding.
We appreciate Prince Mohammad bin Naif’s transparency in dealing with this issue by allowing the society to open offices in all intelligence jailhouses. We are allowed to practice our mission independently. We also appreciate the release of the great number of prisoners recently and we hope more would be released soon. There families waited for long and the longer they wait the more they suffer.
