Human Rights Watch

Dear Human rights team,

A Saudi court has sentenced a 13-year-old Saudi schoolgirl to 90 lashes and two months in prison after she was caught with a mobile phone equipped with a camera.

The girl, who has not been named, is sentenced to 90 lashed in her school in front of her classmates followed by two months in detention.

The sentences come after she was caught with a cell phone equipped with camera. The gadget is banned in girls' schools.

The austere desert Kingdom's use of such punishment has been widely condemned by human rights organizations.

The world has witnessed several cases of human rights violations. In 2006, a Saudi teenager was sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in prison after she was the victim of a gang rape.

London, England (CNN) -- A recent spate of suicides by foreign maids in Lebanon is prompting outrage among human rights groups, who say the government is doing too little to protect migrant domestic workers from severe abuse.
Over the past seven weeks at least 10 women have died, either by hanging themselves or by falling from tall buildings. Six of these cases have been reported in local media as suicides and four more have been described as possible work accidents.
An Ethiopian woman working as a cleaner in Lebanon told CNN by phone that she was sad about the recent suicides, and that she had a friend who killed herself several years ago, when she too was working as a live-in maid.

But after four years of working as a maid in Saudi Arabia, she lacks both her passport and the exit permit that would allow her to return to the Philippines.

So for three months Delacruz has lived on the pavement under a massive elevated eight-lane highway in central Jeddah, hoping to be rounded up by immigration police, then given documents and a ticket home.

Saudi domestic workers treated like slaves, says Human Rights Watch

Around her maybe 1,000 other Asian men and women sit in darkness under the flyover in the bustling Red sea port. All have been trying for months to get deported.

In another area huddle hundreds of Africans, also seeking to leave.

LONDON: Afghanistan has enacted a new legislation empowering men of Shia sect of Islam to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to
obey their husbands' sexual demands, a media report said on Saturday.

The new final draft of the legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work, The Guardian reported.

"It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying 'blood money' to a girl who was injured when he raped her," the report said quoting US charity Human Rights Watch.

New York-based Human Rights Watch has slammed the governments of Saudi Arabia and Oman for putting the lives of their construction workers at “stake,” and refusing to introduce a ban on midday construction work during the summer months.

Currently, out of the six GCC states, only Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE have introduced the midday work ban for outdoor workers across all sectors, the majority of whom come from the construction industry.

“It is shocking that Saudi Arabia and Oman continue to refuse to institute a ban on midday construction work during the summer months,” HRW Middle East deputy director Joe Stork told Construction Week.

http://www.thepenins...

Saudi may do away with male guardianship rule
Web posted at: 6/14/2009 2:50:59
Source ::: AFP
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia has pledged to take steps toward removing rules requiring a woman to have a male guardian at all times, saying there is no such legal requirement, a rights organisation said.

Saudi rights officials committed in a review with the UN Human Rights Council to take steps to end the male guardianship rule, to give women full legal identity and to ban discrimination by gender, Human Rights Watch said in a statement from Geneva received yesterday.

While we're all probably in agreement that migrant worker rights in the Gulf aren't very well protected, do you think that western organizations should be held more accountable simply because this kind of maltreatment isn't as acceptable in their countries/cultures as it seems to be here?

One could argue that they (western organizations located here) need to lead the way since it clearly isn't occurring organically very rapidly here.

What do you think? Should they get binding, legal assurances that workers will be treated fairly (or else they won't come over and set up shop over here)?

UAE sheikh in abuse tape scandal

A human rights group is calling on Abu Dhabi to take urgent action against the head of state's brother after video emerged of him torturing another man.

Human Rights Watch called for a full investigation into Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan over the footage.

The United Arab Emirates Interior Ministry confirmed that the 45-minute video featured Sheikh Issa, but said the issue had been resolved privately.

The victim is seen being beaten, given electric shocks and crushed by a car.

A man in police uniform and several other men are seen assisting the sheikh in the abuse, as the terrified victim is held down in the sand.

The UAE says a police investigation found no breach of its rules in the incident.