Samar Al-Mogren Al-Jazirah A female teacher recently left the country via Jeddah's King Abdulaziz International Airport to travel to Turkey and then onto Syria so as to join Daesh. She is divorced and has three children. Did this Daeshi woman hold a permit from her guardian allowing her to travel? Only God knows. Do the three children have a permit to travel? Nobody knows. This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, in which women leave the country, without permits from their guardians, whether to travel to join Daesh or elsewhere. What I want to say here is that if a woman is determined to leave the country without a permit, she will do so. Nothing can stop her, whether she holds a permit or not. There are many instances that I have seen with my own eyes or heard with my own ears of women and young women traveling without permits. Despite this, and despite all these cases and incidents, the laws are still an obstacle for women, as they necessitate a mahram's permission so they can travel. As the law is on the mahram's side, some mahrams exploit this situation, blackmailing women and bargaining with them. Some mahrams impose an effective travel ban on women just to exercise their hegemony on them. How can an adult woman in her thirties, forties, or even sixties, who is economically independent and shouldered with all the financial, household and life commitments of her family, be hostage to her mahram's approval if she wants to travel abroad for some permissible recreation? If there is a woman who wants to travel abroad for some impermissible activity or illegal conduct, she will not wait for her mahram's permit. Daeshi women are the best example and the largest evidence. The continued need for a mahram's permission for a woman to travel is considered to be among the biggest issues faced by women in the Kingdom that has not improved. The issue has two parts: financial and moral. For the financial aspect, a whole book would still be insufficient in covering all the stories of blackmail and hegemony, practiced by some mahrams, aimed at suppressing women or exploiting them financially. As for the moral aspect, this is most painful because these laws maintain man's dominance over women, while women are placed in the second row and are not granted the rights of full citizenship. Furthermore, many articles of international agreements protect the individual's right to travel and free movement. This includes the International Declaration of Human Rights, some of whose instruments the Kingdom is a signatory, and has been since it was first established. The unjust travel laws pertaining to women are unjustified so long as there are no security objections to their travel. Then why should we raise suspicions about women? This falls within the moral aspect I covered above. The mere feeling that she has been placed under guardianship, even if her mahram does not object to her travel and has granted her a permit for the full validity of her passport, necessitates that we must surpass the idea. This is at a time when Saudi women have made the Kingdom proud, both domestically and abroad. Saudi women have now reached administrative posts that determine the destiny of institutions and hundreds of people. Not only this, but with their studies and proposals, Saudi women in the Shoura Council now play a central role in determining the fate of the entire country. Yet, at the same time they are forbidden from taking the very simplest of decisions that concern them: free movement.
