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Joanne Faulkner,

Editor (Asia – Middle East & Central)

 

RIYADH — Legislation has been passed in Saudi Arabia banning domestic violence, physical or sexual abuse towards women, a revolutionary step in the Kingdom’s history in a move to protect the most venerable.

For the first time, violence against women is now a punishable offence, which includes up to 12 months in jail and fines of more than $13,000 under the “protection from abuse” law. The law is meant to not just prosecute offenders but to offer “social, psychological and medical aid.” However the extent to which the laws will help prevent and aid victims of attacks is questionable. Saudi Arabia has a legal system that bases its laws of (on?) sharia law. As a result new legislations are rarely practiced in the country infamous for suppressing women’s rights; women are not allowed to travel without the permission of a male guardian, apply for jobs or drive and where a man’s testimony in court is valued much more over a women’s.

The United Nations urged the kingdom to create laws to protect women as early as 2008. Adam Coogle, a Saudi Arabia researcher for Human Rights Watch, said: “We welcome the law because it makes crimes such as physical and emotional abuse easier to prosecute and it is a step in the right direction, but the law has some major drawbacks. I’d urge caution until we see how exactly this law will be implemented and whether domestic abuse cases will now actually be punished in courts.”

While the new law makes domestic crimes punishable, it does little to challenge the status quo. It could however be a step towards scaling back the extent to which women are required to seek permission from a male guardian. Under the new law women are able to make a complaint to the police station unaccompanied.

Image Courtesy: By Concha García Hernández [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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Joanne Faulkner

Joanne Faulkner

Joanne Faulkner is a third year Journalism student at Cardiff University. She has a passion for global journalism and looks to focus on humanitarian issues and diversity when writing and editing content for the Middle East section. Outside of this role, Joanne is also passionate about history, politics and sport. Joanne is an avid Leicester City fan - Blue Army! Follow her on Twitter .
Joanne Faulkner

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