The Human Rights Commission (HRC) President Dr. Awwad Alawwad has stressed that women's rights in the Kingdom have witnessed an unprecedented qualitative transformation due to the historic decisions made by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman, Saudi Press Agency (SPA) quoted him as saying. Alawwad made this statement in his opening speech at a symposium on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women organized by HRC. Alawwad asserted that the brain behind the human rights dossier in general and women's rights in particular is Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman, deputy premier and minister of defense. He added that the subject of women's rights is of paramount importance to the Crown Prince. In this regard, out of 60 decisions on human rights, women's rights formed more than a third, with 22 decisions. This gave women a new era of rights and they have become a major partner in the building and sustainable development of the nation. He further said that this world day aims to shed light on this phenomenon and raising the level of awareness on the magnitude of the many forms of violence that women are being subjected to in different parts of the world. This event provides an opportunity to defend and boost women's rights and translate them to constructive dialogues so that women live in a better world. Alawwad added: "The Kingdom under the leadership of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman has given a lot of importance and attention to enhancing and protecting women's rights and has made big strides towards achieving this goal." In this regard, women have received the lion's share in the package of reforms in the field of human rights. The changes included the issuance of a number of orders, decisions and regulations that will boost women's rights. These included not demanding of women to obtain their guardian's consent when providing or terminating any service, issuance of a regulation protecting women from harassment and its executive bylaw, issuance of the regulation for combating harassment, aside from allocating a center for receiving reports on domestic violence, establishing the Family Affairs Council and allocating one of the committees to look into women's affairs. It also included the setting up of courts in the Personal Status Department to look into family cases, issuance of driving licenses to men and women on an equal footing, setting up units for the employment of women in labor offices and Human Resources Development Fund (Hadaf), launching of the program to support Children's Care Center named "Qurrah" to take care of working women's kids, "Wussool" Program to support women's transportation, program for supporting free enterprise (self-employment), and part time and freelance work program, opening new fields of work for women in which they were never employed before, like employment in the Public Prosecution circuits. Alawwad emphasized that violence against women is one of the most common examples of human rights violations in terms of being the most widespread, continuous and destructive in the world today, according to UN estimates. However, most of these cases are not reported due to the absence of punishment and silence of the violence victim. Therefore, all of us – peoples, countries and organizations — should be prompted to take serious steps to responsibly combat this phenomenon, Alawwad continued. Women are the fundamental basis of every successful society, said Alawwad, because they instill in our future generations the values necessary to build strong societies. — SPA
