Saudi Arabia has been buying its way into international meetings; and as it currently stands, should have no place in shaping the world order, writes Azad Essa.
It’s triggered outrage among feminists, human rights activists and pretty much everyone on social media that Saudi Arabia, a country that doesn’t allow women to drive or travel abroad without the consent of either their husband, father or male relative, has been been elected to the UN women’s rights commission.
According to the UN, the kingdom will now be responsible for “promoting women’s rights, documenting the reality of women’s lives throughout the world, and shaping global standards on gender equality and the empowerment of women”.
This is the same kingdom that in a 2015 Global Gender Gap report was placed at 134 out of 145 countries for gender equality.
Human Rights Watch called the decision “shocking” while the co-founder of global women’s rights Code Pink slammed the move as “disheartening and so revolting”.
Saudi, along with 12 other countries were elected by the council to serve for a four-year term.
While the ballot was secret, UN Watch, an NGO that monitors the UN, estimates at least five of 12 EU states on the council voted in favour of Saudi Arabia.
In other words, the liberal West, that is always proud to boast of its human rights record and women’s rights, had a hand in getting Saudi in.
Belgium for instance, has since apologised for voting for Saudi Arabia.
But therein lies a set of tougher question: What does it mean to be part of the Commission for Women’s Rights? And if we all agree that Saudi Arabia should be nowhere near this Commission, can we agree who ought to be?
Look at the rest of the make-up of the commission: Algeria, Ghana, Haiti, Kenya, Iraq, Comoros, the Democratic Republic of the Congo Japan, South Korea, Turkmenistan, Ecuador, Haiti and Nicaragua. Do we honestly believe that this list, as a collective, can effect any meaningful change when it comes to advancing the rights of women?
Is the election of Saudi Arabia an aberration or part of a group of peripherals on a meaningless platform?
Let’s say, hypothetically, we were able to change the commission, to include more “powerful” nations. Even then, who would be in it?
Should Australia, a nation that dumps refugees and asylum seekers, including women, on Christmas Island, be added? What about France, a nation though founded on the values of Liberté, égalité, fraternité bans Muslim women from wearing the face veil in public?
Or what about the EU at large, where it is now legal to fire a person for wearing religious symbols – a decision that is most certainly part of the latest Islamophobic rubric in the liberal West.
How about South Africa, where no one has been held accountable for creating dozens of widows in the wake of Marikana?
Let me be clear: Saudi Arabia has been buying its way into international meetings; and as it currently stands, should have no place in shaping the world order.
But to pick on Saudi Arabia as the talisman of gender oppression is to ignore the structural violence that impedes the empowerment of women everyday, everywhere. To villainise Saudi Arabia is to further a very one-dimensional, neo-liberal notion of gender parity.
In this universe, gender rights only mean securing space in a patriarchal system that disregards the poor, expands the military-industrial complex and finds reasons to oppress women, especially women of colour.
This is a world that appropriates the bravery of Malala Yousafzai and turns her image into a caricature of empire.
As it turns out, Saudi Arabia is already very much part of the world. To pick on Saudi’s gender record at home is, frankly, too easy. Lest we forget that last year Saudi Arabia was voted into the UN Human Rights Council, the principal UN body dealing with human rights, while simultaneously bombing Yemen to smithereens.
The UN Commission deserves Saudi Arabia the same way the US deserves Donald Trump. Maybe this is the shake-up we all need.
*Azad Essa is a journalist at Al Jazeera. He is also co-founder of The Daily Vox
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.