Saudi Arabia, A Nation Where Women Can't Drive Cars, Was Just Elected to the UN Commission on the Status of Women

Women aren’t allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia was just elected to the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Women are not allowed to obtain a passport without the permission of a man in Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia was just elected to the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Whenever a Saudi woman leaves the country, a designated man receives a text message that alerts him of her travel. And, in case you missed it, Saudi Arabia was just elected to the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

There is cultural understanding, and then there is rank stupidity. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is, without question, one of the most oppressive societies in the world with regard to women. Women there have nothing resembling the kinds of freedoms that would be available to them nearly anywhere else in the world. They are raised to be wives, not independent people. Their husbands, brothers, and even sons are able to beat the hell out of them with impunity. It is a human rights disaster that the eggshell-stepping West has decided to “respect”. Now, it seems, they have also seen fit to enshrine it as an example to follow.

In what is commonly known as the male guardianship system, Saudi women are required – from birth – to have a male guardian who is responsible for making nearly every major decision throughout their lives. The government claims to be reforming this medieval institution, but the steps have been incremental and there is still very little daylight between their current societal structure and anything resembling equity among the nation’s populace.

While women were able to vote for the first time in national history during the 2015 elections, more than 90% of registered voters were still male. Also permitted to stand for office, Human Rights Watch reported that a paltry 21 women were elected to municipal councils out of 2,106 openings. In celebration of this newfound diversity, the Saudi government promptly passed a law which decreed that female council members would have to perform their duties via video link in order to keep the chambers male-only. A “Girls Council” was also recently inaugurated to speed reforms along, but given that it is made up exclusively of men progress is likely to remain somewhat stilted.

Enter the United Nations, which on April 19 decided to hold up this dystopian nightmare as a leader of equal rights. The election was done by secret ballot and so it is unclear exactly which countries voted in favor, but by the numbers at least five EU states approved.

One of the guilty nations is Belgium, a country whose Prime Minister has admitted he “regrets” his nation’s vote, but no others have openly declared one way or the other. The United States, gratifyingly, was the nation that insisted Saudi’s participation on this commission was inappropriate and demanded a vote on the matter.

As we are now left with a situation which Hillel Neuer of UN Watch describes as “making an arsonist into the town fire chief”, one relevant question is just how important is the commission that Saudi Arabia joined.

According to the UN’s own website, the Commission on the Status of Women is “the principal intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women”. As may be expected, it is no easy task to determine exactly what this means or what the entity actually does. Descriptions of their yearly goals range from the overly broad, such as 2013’s “elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls”, to bureaucratic vagueness on the order of 2016’s “women’s empowerment and the link to sustainable development”. 

Whatever the concrete actions of the Commission might be, the UN is nothing if not a representation of where the international community stands. Most of their actions have no real-life implications other than the signal that they send to the rest of the world.

These signals, however, do have meaning. Take their recent vote to “condemn” Israeli settlements in Palestine. This amounted to nothing other than a collective “Harrumph!” from fellow member nations, but US-Israeli relations were materially affected by America’s decision to abstain. And those relations do matter.

When a nation like Saudi Arabia is promoted to a leadership position on an issue like women’s rights, the implicit admission is that the world condones how this country is comporting itself. This is not simply a disgrace, it is such an obvious one that it reduced the credibility of any future actions the UN might see fit to take. People may not often feel the UN’s actions, but they hear its voice. And their message to the women of the world on this occasion was, in more than one way, a slap across the face.