Middle East

Saudi Arabia off UN’s blacklist over threat to stop funds

United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon poses with children (AP Photo/Toufik Doudou)

Saudi is removed from the blacklist for the same reason it was added — children.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said he temporarily removed the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen from a UN blacklist for violating child rights because its supporters threatened to stop funding many UN programs.

Ban on Thursday said he had to consider the very real prospect that millions of other children in the Palestinian territories, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen and many other places would suffer grievously if UN programs were defunded.

This was one of the most painful and difficult decisions I have had to make,” he said. UN secretary-generals are always subject to pressure from the 193 member nations. But in a rare rebuke, Ban said in this case some unnamed countries had gone too far, declaring “it is unacceptable for member states to exert undue pressure.

HUMAN RIGHTS

Saudi Arabia has long been criticised for its harsh social codes and punishments, imposed under its puritanical version of Sharia law.

Beheading:
Ali Mohammed al-Nimr was arrested in February 2012 when he was just 17 and accused of organising protests. He was sentenced to death by beheading and crucifixion, along with his uncle, a leading Shia cleric. Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, said last month he did not expect the sentence to be carried out. However, murderers, drug dealers and others convicted on purely criminal charges are often beheaded in public.

Womens’ rights:
While women did in 2105 get to register to vote and can stand for local elections, they are still required to have permission from a “guardian” such as a father, husband or brother to travel freely. Wearing modest clothes and a headscarf in public is compulsory. They are also banned from driving – subject of the country’s most visible civil disobedience campaign in recent years.

The regime in Saudi Arabia has been strongly criticized by human rights organizations.

Hashtags #SueMeSaudi and #SaudiArabiaIsISIS has many hits every minute, and many want to mark their opposition and to show their distance to the brutal dictator regime in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia practice Wahhabism ideology, a strictly fundamentalist orientation within Sunni Islam, which in practice is the state religion in the country. It is also ideology direction that has inspired al-Qaida and DAESH.

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