Hala Al-Dosari | |
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![]() Hala Al-Dosari, 2018 | |
Nationality | Saudi Arabia |
Occupation | Saudi women's activist |
Hala Al-Dosari is a Saudi women's activist. She was awarded the Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism by Human Rights Watch in 2018. [1] [2] [3]
Human rights in Saudi Arabia are a topic of concern and controversy. The Saudi government, which mandates both Muslim and non-Muslim observance of Islamic law under the absolute rule of the House of Saud, has been accused of and denounced by various international organizations and governments for violating human rights within the country. The authoritarian regime ruling the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is consistently ranked among the "worst of the worst" in Freedom House's annual survey of political and civil rights.
The Saudi Mabahith, also spelled Mabaheth, is the secret police agency of the Presidency of State Security in Saudi Arabia, and deals with domestic security and counter-intelligence.
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Samar bint Muhammad Badawi is a Saudi Arabian human rights activist. She and her father filed court cases against each other. Badawi's father accused her of disobedience under the Saudi Arabian male guardianship system and she charged her father with adhl—"making it hard or impossible for a person, especially a woman, to have what she wants, or what's rightfully hers; e.g, her right to marry" according to Islamic jurisprudence—for refusing to allow her to marry. After Badawi missed several trial dates relating to the charge, an arrest warrant was issued for her, and Badawi was imprisoned on 4 April 2010. In July 2010, Jeddah General Court ruled in Samar Badawi's favor, and she was released on 25 October 2010, and her guardianship was transferred to an uncle. There had been a local and international support campaign for her release. The Saudi NGO Human Rights First Society described Badawi's imprisonment as "outrageous illegal detention".
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Saudi Arabia has implemented its anti-domestic violence law in 2014. It is thought that in Saudi Arabia it is socially acceptable to hit women or children to discipline them, and while the older generations do hit children and some of them may hit women, the younger generations are generally growing out of the habit of hitting children and women as it is considered taboo, unethical, and inhuman.
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Loujain al-Hathloul is a Saudi women's rights activist, a social media figure, and political prisoner. She is a graduate of the University of British Columbia. Al-Hathloul has been arrested and released on several occasions for defying the ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia and was arrested in May 2018, with several prominent women's rights activists, on the charge of "attempting to destabilise the kingdom" after being effectively kidnapped in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). As of October 2018, her husband, Saudi stand-up comedian Fahad al-Butairi, had also been forcefully returned from Jordan to the Kingdom and was under arrest.
Hon. Dr. Monique Mujawamariya is a Rwandan human rights activist who moved to Canada and then South Africa. She was a survivor of the Rwandan genocide and she won an international award in 1995. In 2014 she was living in South Africa where she is concerned with women's rights.
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Sussan Tahmasebi is a leading women's rights advocate and expert from Iran. Her work has focused on promoting women's rights and peace in the Middle East and North Africa and Asia. Tahmasebi is the co-founder and Executive Director of FEMENA, an organization which supports women human rights defenders, their organizations and feminist movements in the Middle East and North Africa and Asia regions Tahmasebi is a leading expert on the situation of women in Iran and the Middle East. She is a founding member of the One Million Signatures Campaign, a grassroots effort working to end gender-biased laws in Iran. While in Iran Tahmasebi also worked to support the development of Iran's emerging civil society. To this end she co-founded the Iran CSO Training and Research Center and served as its board member. In the US she continued her work to promote women's rights and strengthen civil society with an expanded focus on the MENA/Asia region. She served as the Director of MENA/Asia region at the International Civil Society Action Network (2011-2017), an organization focused on promoting peace and women's rights, which she co-founded.
Nujeen Mustafa is a Kurdish Syrian refugee and activist with cerebral palsy. She was raised in Aleppo, Syria, and gained attention after traveling 3,500 miles (5,600 km) by wheelchair, fleeing conflict in the Syrian Civil War, before arriving and resettling in Germany. She was listed as one of the BBC's 100 Women in 2018, and her story was featured on the television show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. In 2019 she became the first disabled person to brief the United Nations Security Council, and was the recipient of the Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism from Human Rights Watch. She has co-authored two books about her experiences. She resides in Wesseling where she attends a school for those with disabilities.
Father Bernard Kinvi is a Roman Catholic priest, a monk of the Order of Saint Camillus. He is the head of a Catholic mission in Bossemptele in Central African Republic. He was awarded the Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism by Human Rights Watch for protecting Muslim refugees in his church.