Another Update on Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia has many human rights issues and has been pointed out by many different NGOs and even the United Nations Human Rights Council. Each issue comes to a cost to human rights for the Saudi Arabian people, but the many of these issues come from the traditional culture or also known as harmful culture that the Arab people have followed for many centuries. The government base of Saudi Arabia comes from its interpretation of Islamic law or of Sharia and the 1992 Basic Law. The Basic Law sets out the system of governance, rights of citizens, and powers and duties of the government. The law also provides that the Qur'an and the Traditions of the Prophet Muhammad serve as the country's constitution. The U.S. Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor gave an annual Country Report on Human Right Practices last year and points out even human rights issue that a particular other country has and the details of that issue. For Saudi Arabia the issues were: “The following significant human rights problems were reported: no right to change the government peacefully; torture and physical abuse; poor prison and detention center conditions; arbitrary arrest and incommunicado detention; denial of fair and public trials and lack of due process in the judicial system; political prisoners; restrictions on civil liberties such as freedoms of speech (including the Internet), assembly, association, movement, and severe restrictions on religious freedom; and corruption and lack of government transparency. Violence against women and a lack of equal rights for women, violations of the rights of children, trafficking in persons, and discrimination on the basis of gender, religion, sect, and ethnicity were common. The lack of workers' rights, including the employment sponsorship system, remained a severe problem”. This long list is the human rights issue that were found or that suck out, and it can be seen that Saudi Arabia has many to fix or figure out how to resolve in order to improve human rights for its people. Though human rights in this country do have a long way to go, there is still effort and forward progress being made but a lot of work still needs to be done.