#52 

Sadia from FiLiA meets Hala Aldosari to discuss Women in Saudi Arabia

Hello everybody. Thank you so much for joining us once again. Welcome to another episode of FiLiA Podcasts. My name is Sadia Hameed, and I'm joined today by Hala Aldosari. Hi, thank you for joining us.

Hala, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? What do you do? 

Hala - Well, I'm actually a scholar in gender and health. I am doing a fellowship now at the Centre for International Studies my research focuses on intimate partner violence against women, on the role of gender norms and shaping and influencing the Law and Rights in the Arab Gulf States, Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf States. I also serve on the Advisory Board of several human rights organization, activists. I support several causes for rights and freedoms inside Saudi Arabia.

And of course, I'm living outside Saudi for a while now.

Sadia - Wow, that's amazing. So how long have you lived outside of Saudi, if you don't mind me asking?

Hala - So, I did my Master's and my PhD, my Master's in the UK, my PhD in the US but my field work was done in inside Saudi Arabia. It's on the prevalence of violence, intimate partner violence against women, and the impact it has on health status.

 I did 200 interviews with women from selected primary healthcare centres. It was for my first dissertation. Then I published some of the findings. 

Part of this is working with groups around gender equality because violence is very much like a symptom of suppression of women and a means of controlling women, especially in places where the social norms and the legal framework, are not well developed to protect women from the repercussions of violence.

I was more active because of this, basically you can't really treat violence as an isolated phenomenon. I have to look into the whole ecological framework around it. 

Sadia -  So what is the legal framework in Saudi for women experiencing violence, particularly intimate partner violence? What recourse to legal help do they have? 

Hala - Well, very limited, I would say very limited. But because of the media exposure and the online discussion, Saudi Arabia, luckily, used to be one of the countries with the highest penetration of the internet. The users, for instance of the Twitter platform from Saudi Arabia are very much like more than any other countries, so we believe that this has helped a lot to shed light on the prevalence of the problem, on the details of the problem, and lack of any means of support. 

But a few years back, Saudi Arabia has enacted a law called the Protection from Abuse Law. And it's not specific to violence against women, while addressing all forms of violence with its targeting women, children, migrant workers, anyone who was affected by violence. And it is a very limited in definition. So it doesn't define arbitrary deprivation of liberty, forced marriage or marital rape, as part of violence. And it doesn't have specific regulations on what kind of act can lead to some kinds of protection. There is no, for instance, deterrence order for abusers for an instance.

So a woman has the burden to prove that she is experiencing violence if there is no physical symptoms that is severe enough to warrant her protection.

So for instance, someone who has psychological violence, systematic psychological, and she would report to the authorities, they would just inform, they will have some kind of family mediation by social workers. And they will ask the abuser, which is usually mostly of course a person from the family who is a guardian to sign, pledge to refrain from any kinds of abuse.

And this pledge is used as a legal document while returning the women back to the. Even if she was admitted to a shelter, she can't stay in a shelter for more than a definite period. And then she's released either to the abuser or to another member of the family who is usually ending up returning her to the abuser.

 And this is where the idea of the guardianship became such a monumental idea in fighting violence at any level because if the guardian still control the women's choices, her chance first to report the abuse and not to lose access to any kinds of choices that she has as means of retaliation against her and as means of continuing the guardianship not only on the women, but on her children, that could really jeopardize or compromise her chances of seeking any kinds of justice if it exists.

There’s only 21 cases of violence reported to courts in a country where 40% of women are reportedly subject to domestic violence, which tells you of course the limitations of the law as means to correct or redress the situation of survivors of violence. 

Sadia – Right, okay. So, I mean, it sounds like an ineffective law though if ultimately they're returning victims back to perpetrators anyway.

Why would a victim put herself in a situation where knowing where if she reports violence or abuse, she's going to be sent back to the perpetrator eventually anyway? And surely anybody with any common sense would know that returning a victim back to a perpetrator is going to mean that the abuse is going to escalate anyway.

Hala - Yeah, well the idea is that they think of the abuse as very much like justified under certain conditions. So a man would say, well, I just spotted my daughter speaking to unrelated man, or I just found that she's in love with some man, or things like that. Or she ran away from home and I had to restrain her for an instance, things like that or even for a wife when they think about there's always this kind of justifications where the social norms still think that a woman is best protected from exploitation from illicit relationships outside of marriage, from basically having to live on her own without her children is the worst fate than living with abuse or violence so mediation has been always the way, prior to the law, basically in societies where families and extended families are usually involved in reducing the impact of violence and deterring the abuser rather than breaking the whole family and dissolving the family and having to face with the consequences. Who's going to look after the women or the children and who's going to apply those kinds of moral checks on them, if you would think of it, it just signifies the multifaceted problem of violence.

It is not only seeking help, but really approaching the whole idea of women as, part of a family honour, an extension of the family honour, and basically addressing her as a person of a choice in the family who has the same right as men, to be on her own, to live on her own, to have authority over the children. A full authority over the children if she's abused. And there is no basically justification of a zero tolerance. This should be zero tolerance for violence as mean a means to resolves conflict. 

But all of these ideas are very much difficult to promote and to socially program, basically the society for if you don't have an active, dynamic civil society of feminists who can amplify the voices of those groups, challenge the government for more basically forms of protection or deterrents, without textbooks, without educational, basically preparedness at several levels, which is something that internationally decided government has repeatedly promise to do. But when it comes to implication and reality, the action taken, because the society is very much like muted. If you would think that the civil society in Saudi Arabia is muted. There is no one to hold the government accountable on those kinds of levels. 

Sadia – Right, I have a question. Do you think you would be able to do what you do now outside of Saudi, in Saudi?

Hala -  I hope so. Not under Mohammed bin Salman for sure. He has created a very polarised environment where people are either with him or against him.

It's one of the most severe form of ultra-nationalism where he has to be the centre of reform. And anyone who is either resisting his agenda for reforms or taking credit for it are going to be targeted. So I think that would be the feminists, the civil society agents, the people who have actually mobilized their communities for years around issues of women's rights or freedom of expression or basically changing the legal structure or framework.

I think, there has been some waves since he became a Crown Prince in 2017. There has been some waves of arrests that actually targeted the most influential leaders and civil society figures from different groups, whether they were religious reformers who were very much like against the establishment or the religious establishment of the state. Whether they were active Twitter personality, who were commenting on reforms from the perspective of the Saudi society, whether they were feminists who have mobilized and campaigned for years around the issue of the guardianship around the issue of women's rights or restricted mobility. 

Basically women did not drive cars in Saudi Arabia until 2018, they weren't allowed to travel until just this month without the permission of their guardians. 

So you get to see all the fruits of their labour are being now credited to Mohammed bin Salman because most of those women have been silenced, have been in prisons, have been tortured, and somehow made an example that no one should take the credit for these things but the leadership and no one should basically lead an independent group for mobilising the society or demanding some reforms.

Sadia - So all these women that had been leading the campaigns to be able to drive to abolish male guardianship laws. I mean, they've been doing that for many years, even decades some of them.

Hala - Some of them since 1990 but the newer generations who were targeted are people who have been active since 2010 online, because we don't have any kinds of association of life. We don't have any kinds of independent civil society organisations. So the main platform for people to organise and share their thoughts and mobilise their community was the social media. So most of these women were writers, were academics, were activists who joined the movement just to use their own liberation position to rally their communities for more support. So around lifting the driving ban. When the ban in 2011 was halted by the Saudi government, other people actually have found an opportunity to go back and do another campaign in 2013. And calling women to drive individually and to keep on applying pressure until others were arrested and transferred for charges related to national security, undermining the state's, security by these kinds of actions which is very much like very peaceful and very basic.

But this kind of aggressive response to civil society agents somehow makes the slightest mobilisation extremely risky for people. It just gives the negative messages for people inside Saudi Arabia that this is not something safe to support even if you need it.

You get to see now more and more people running out from Saudi Arabia and making a scene on-line. And catching basically the attention of the international media while doing so. 

So women who are trapped in different airports, young Saudi women, who feel that there is no way that they would be able to demand the rights or fine legal address within Saudi Arabian. So they're caught on camera while in different airports trying to resist the deportation back to Saudi. Some of them succeed and some have not. One case has been widely shared online and in the international media.

 When people feel that they don't have a way basically to find resolutions for the grievances, then they tend to be more in their disparate basic request for resolutions. They tend to be taking more risks actually, like those women.

 We've seen immigration from Saudi Arabia, for instance, for asylum seeking increases up to 900% from 2013. So 900% increase in the number of people who are applying for asylum has increased because of this kind of repressive environment within Saudi.

Sadia -  Yeah. So why do you think Rahaf's case received so much attention? Because I'm working with Saudi women at the moment who have left Saudi and aren't getting asylum straight away. They aren't taken seriously. One case that I was working on the Home Office told her that they didn't believe anything about her story but also that things are getting better now for Saudi women so why do you really need asylum? 

Why do you think that Rahaf’s case got so much attention and what do you think of this behaviour from like the Home Office saying that things are getting better now in Saudi, what would you say?

Hala - So let's just start with Rahaf’s case, which has been very much like landmark. I think it's, in terms of timing and in terms of what precedes Rahaf’s case. So what precedes Rahaf’s case is the arrest of the women activists in a brutal way. You know, we did have arrests of women activists before. Saudi Arabia has never been tolerant of any kinds of activism, but it hasn't been prolonged. It hasn't been accompanied by defamation campaigns nationally in print media where women’s faces were printed with the word traitors on the first page without any trial, like two days after the arrests.

The Crown Prince himself would come in and say, well, these women were traitors who were engaging in foreign intelligence communication and taking money for it without any proof to support his claims. 

So this kind of high level defamation of people have somehow sensitized the world to the gruesome relationship between Saudi Arabia leadership and the women.

The whole basically facade of supporting women's rights is not necessarily genuine because you wouldn't do that and you wouldn't subject women to brutal torture, electrocution, sexual assault, water boarding, flogging, the bruises remained with women several months, up to six months after the end of their torture.

Two of the women at least we knew of have attempted suicide and we knew that some of the women have everlasting long term outcomes of the torture, uncontrollable shaking, and of course the trauma that associates with all these things.

 So what, what happened with Rahaf is that her story came right after all those events happened. And the other thing that happened with Rahaf is that of course the killings and everything that plays within this kind of increased sense of responsibility towards a regime that is stopping at nothing and getting the people who are critical or making the scene basically. 

So somehow those kinds of proceeding events had supported her request for asylum. And we had immediately before Rahaf a similar case of a woman who was trapped as well at an airport. And she asked the fellow traveller to record the message of help. Now, this woman wasn't as lucky, her name was Dina, her case wasn't as successful as that of Rahaf. 

What happened with Dina, her uncle who's an influential member of the government was able to lobby the embassy in Philippines to force her deportation. And the way they took her back to the plane was like she was, you mouth bound, her hands and feet were tied and people were actually witnesses of these kinds of treatment. The bullying the women from the airport and putting her by force tied up and returning here by force to Saudi Arabia. 

This was something that really caught the attention of the world. So I think the gruesome details of what happens to women, especially that they all are young women or very much like without any kinds of protection once they go back. Of course they're going to be handed to their conservative families. Someone like Rahaf, who has openly talked about her atheism and she wouldn't go back to Saudi and she had videos of the case online. I mean, she would definitely be bound to be severely punished or killed either by the state or the family. We're not very much like religiously tolerant. Not within the family or within the legal system.  so I think this idea of what happened before Rahaf has set the stage for more of a responsible action when it comes to another victim.

So I think that that is exactly like what happened when another was killed. The FBI went to the dissidents in the US to check on their safety. Now, all of these things were not part of the protocol or the procedure, but they were prompted and somehow triggered by the revelation that happened from the details, basically the coordinated effort of the government within the consulate.

So I think all of these things have somehow set the stage to a more careful and considerate action when it comes to how they deal with the Saudi dissidents or Saudi asylum seekers. 

Whether the Home Office would be right in assuming that things are changing within Saudi Arabia, we have to think of the main reasons why people are seeking asylum from Saudi.

The first one, of course is people who have opinions which are critical of the government for political reasons, basically, whether they were journalists or individual citizens, average citizens or women, basically. So political, asylum really, they have very legitimate case because now in Saudi Arabia and as if we, what we've witnessed from the treatment and basically the arrest that have talked about the treatment of feminists in Saudi Arabia, the control of the media and the onslaught that is happening against anyone who's critical of Saudi Arabia, including Heads of States or Turkey.

Turkey actually exposed the whole thing so you get to see how the media has been very much like a tool to enforce the narrative of the state and to target anyone who's critical or who's even not critical by trying to put some reason into the collective thinking.

So this is one thing, the political asylum seekers are definitely people who are at risk and their requests should be taken really seriously. 

When we're talking about the different types of people seeking asylum who are not political figures, who are not journalists necessarily or well-known activists who have actually good influence within Saudi Arabia when we're talking about people who are leaving Saudi Arabia because of fear of exposing their religious beliefs if they're not Muslims anymore, if they've been critical of Islam, if, they have been within their social settings basically, or online on any kinds of online  platform or people with sexual affiliations that is different basically from the mainstream, bisexuals or homosexuals or people who for an instance, having violence at home or survivors of violence they had to endure that. 

So all these types of people, survivors of violence or people with different religious or sexual affiliations, they definitely don't have the protective mechanisms within Saudi Arabia and their position remain very vulnerable, their liberty could be affected their safety at home or in their social settings, once their beliefs become publicised or become known to their social networks, their safety is very much like questionable. The government would not protect them and their family and social setting are very much likely either to punish them especially if they're women, deprive them of liberty and get away with it.

This means accountability within the Saudi system for these things are very much like limited. Saudi Arabia remains very much committed to its own brand of Islam as a source of legislation and a source of learning.

So if you are someone who's gay and who's trying to talk openly, even within your own circles, there is no way that you can protect your safety within Saudi Arabia, even if you are not someone who is dealing with the government directly or someone has filed the case against you, you will be subjected to abuse and you can't really claim that people abused you because of your sexuality and get some redress actually, you will be punished if you go to a court and or a police station and says, well, I've been abused because of  my affiliation. 

So I think what's happening internationally is this kind of increase of immigration from different countries, and not necessarily from Saudi Arabia, but the size of authoritarianism that is sweeping the region, not in the Middle East, I mean, sweeping the region from the US, from liberal democracies in the West to the far east.

It's very much like there's a strong far right authoritarian rise that is happening now. And of course, it's very much legitimized by the public approach. So the idea of immigration or the economy and how it would suffer from those kinds of this complete overpowering number of immigrants who are seeking those kinds of social and economic benefits on the expenses of the local people, raises this kind of unrest and anxiety among the host countries, and they're trying to push back against it. 

And of course, it's a very late response because it would've been much easier if the international relations had taken as a priority and how to correct the behaviours of authoritarian countries or repressive countries. But the international relations haven't been invested enough by the liberal democracy. 

One factor, one outcome of that is that when repression really is out of hand, people can't find safety in their own countries and then it's the liberal democracies that became the only countries where people can safely seek asylum because you can't really travel to Dubai or to Malaysia or to Philippine because they will be deported unfortunately.

So I think it is a dilemma that really is beyond the control of a Home Office or one country in the liberal democracy. It really warrants strategizing with different countries, with countries that are the hotspot for asylum seekers on how to basically look into a long term, not only strategy, but long term principle to uphold in dealing with regressive countries because they will be, at the end, they will be at the receiving end, at one point or the other.

It's not going to be only a problem that is localised within those countries, it's going to really turn back against them at one point or the other. 

 What's happening to the immigrants in the US is completely shameful, completely shameful what's happening to the families, what's happening in the border, the language used to brand them to blame them for the situation, as to be attacked as to be legitimately criminalised as deserving of this kind of demeaning behaviour. It's disheartening that they had to flee horrible situations to end up separated and some of them are dying, like children dying in cages. You can't really fathom that these things are happening now in the US out of all places, which is a nation of immigrants.

Sadia -  I wanted to go back because I realised we haven't got a huge amount of time I wanted to ask you about the 200 interviews that you did with victims of intimate partner violence. What were the themes that emerged from all of the women that you spoke to, were there any themes that emerged that you felt we must talk about? 

Hala - Yeah, so several things. Well, basically the study used an ecological model, it looks at the social determinant of women's health, basically their socio ecological position, the position with the family, how long they've been married, whether they're socially isolated or not whether the husband's profession in the military or in civil jobs may be different or not.

And also looking at how women perceive the relationship within the family, whether they believe that the husband has more rights than the wife and decisions related to a woman, for instance, the choice of friends, whether problems within the house can be relayed to people outside the house or not, which plays a major role in women seeking help.

We give them a set of scenarios in which it's okay for a man to beat his wife to see if women accepted the scenario. Now the study is not representative of the Saudi society at large, but is representative to a new segment of the Saudi society where women are not educated or employed and are very much financially dependent on the husband coming from middle to low, middle socioeconomic status. Because it was conducted in public primary healthcare settings. 

I tried to basically pick districts that are as diverse as possible. So districts of the affluent residents and districts with more of a lower social class.

But then even in districts with affluent residents, affluent women would not go to primary healthcare care clinics. They would have access to private healthcare. So this is one of the things, it doesn't really represent maybe the elites or the more affluent and educated and employed women.

What emerged is what we know all about Saudi Arabia. Women are not as employed as men. Very much like most of the women were very educated, like 12 years of education or more. But at the same time, they're education did not lead to jobs. So then most of them were financially dependent.

Those who were financially dependent on their husbands were more likely to be beaten by their husbands because they don't have this means of income or property. Women were very much like poor, they didn't own any properties or anything.

 The other thing that emerged is that most women believed in a husband's right to be the head of the family. So they would definitely not disclose any kinds of problems or private information to people outside, even if it would help the women. And they wouldn't involve mitigating a problem or intervene on behalf of other women who are being beaten by their husbands because it's a family issue. 

The other thing that emerged as well is that around half of the women accepted one or more reasons for a husband to beat his wife.

So among those reasons, like, if she's disobedient, if she burned the food, if she, didn't sleep with him, if she basically didn't sleep with him. if she was unfaithful, for instance, but 90% of the women said that the husband has the right to beat his wife if she was unfaithful, not if he suspects, but if he, actually, spots her while she was unfaithful. 

So you get to see how this kind of violence justification plays out. There is a justification of violence so we deserved it basically. 

So in my study, 45% of o of women experienced physical violence by their intimate partner, most of the violence that were experienced were mild. That means it's happening along their lives. It's not single incidents, it's more than one three incidents.so it's a pattern of dealing with certain problems. 

25% of women in my studies had experienced sexual abuse before they were 15 years of age, basically members of the family were involved in those kinds of sexual abuse. 

The main thing that comes with it is how to change the norms around women’s role in the family to become more equal and how to make sure that there is no justification for violence, for use of violence, especially physical violence.

And in my study, 18% of women sustained injuries because of those kinds of violence, but only 6.5% disclosed the very reason of their injuries to healthcare providers. Again, it goes back to the idea, are healthcare providers trained enough to screen women for violence or to identify women who are survivors of violence because the rule could be monumental, not only in documentation of those issues, which can be helpful for women, but also in referring women to services if they exist.

It was very interesting for me to see that social workers, if they exist in different primary healthcare clinics, were females. So it's easy to access. But those females had locked themselves up in their offices and they only see women by referral from a doctor and by appointment. And if you can imagine those women are being taken to the primary healthcare clinics by their husbands most of the time, it's kind of impossible for them to be as open or disclosing.

So if it didn't happen at the point of first encounter with the nurse or with the physician, might not ever happen again. I have women who, halfway through my interview because it's one-on-one, so I couldn't let anyone come. And I always presented the interview to people as an interview about women's health.

Sadia - So you couldn't even say that it was about sexual violence or domestic abuse?

Hala -  I couldn't say that, but of course, we told the women when we met them, I told the women when I met them the true nature of the study. But to protect you and to protect you from many kinds of retaliation, I haven't told anyone.

Because the minute her husband or relatives are aware of it, they might actually, pressure her to disclose what she said or if not retaliate against it.

I had men actually feeling so fed up from having to wait after the end of the appointment and barging into the room to take the women out.

You get to see that because part of the violence is the controlling behaviour where the husband feels he has to observe and control whatever the woman is doing in every setting. 

And it is good to have voices of women as ways to change those kinds of norms, which is not yet happening inside Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that they've established a protection from violence institutions. But they represent the political norms of the state rather than the needs of the women.

They never actually reformed the protocols or procedures to reflect what women need rather than to have a basically, for the world to know, yes, we do have means to deal with violence. Whether these means were effective, reflective of the needs of the women is really not part of the discussion.

 I'm part of a Harvard-led initiative called Every Woman. So over the last few years, since 2015 until now, we've been developing and we've already finished drafting a global treaty to combat violence against women and girls. This global treaty has been the work of 147 volunteers, scholar and activists and survivors of violence from I think 35 countries. So they represent different groups, different religions, different expertise, judges, lawyers, scholars, health workers as well as activists and survivors of violence. 

I've led the part about the education and training of the first responders and the drafting of that part as well as the textbooks within elementary schools and the programs basically that sensitised the society to the adverse effects of violence. 

It becomes more like a cycle of violence. Both within the society and inter-generationally so we are hoping that we're now in the process of trying to get the support of the World Health Organization as a leading organization that really did a lot of civil studies on intimate partner violence against women.

This kind of treaty, if it was housed within the UN. There is this kind of political responsibility on state members to report what they did according to the treaty criteria and indicators. So there will be measures for instance of whether there will be educational texts in the different levels of schooling.

Where there will be preparedness to the first try first line responders where there will be public programming, where there will be a hotline and what are the outcomes of the hotline. Because you can have a hot hotline, but what happens from the calls, the women wouldn't find the solution that she's looking for.

We're in the stage now and it's really gaining a lot of traction among different, political groups, we're in the stage of negotiations so that hopefully the UN would adapt it as a single treaty and have those kinds of recommendations and bench marks for different countries.

We're not yet done with it. It's a longer process and I hope more activists and more people from different countries and regions will lend their support for the implementation of the treaty. 

Sadia - The other thing that really does need to happen though, if the UN is to adopt Every Woman treaty, is that there is some kind of penalty for non-compliance for instance, giving Saudi a seat at the table at the UN.

Hala -  This is another issue as well. There has been a lot of studies where the UN has succeeded in promoting human rights culture across the globe over the year since they were implemented in 1945 or something.

The book There is a Reason for Hope, the author is a Professor at Harvard. And she elaborates that despite the limitations of the UN as an institution and very much the gravity of commitment, international commitment holds certain, governments accountable.

 The situation or status of human rights have progressed actually across the globe because of those frameworks, because of those treaties and because of raising generations who are very much committed to uphold define what human rights are in their own countries and communities. 

It's very much like a battle between what is sovereign and what is international commitment.

This has always been the battle within the UN. When can the UN intervene to say, this is something that you have to implement as a state member? Or the state could say ‘we're a sovereign state that has its own references’, which has always been cultural in Islam, or cultural and religion, tradition and religion and we can't really force those concepts on people. 

It's been like countries have been barricading themselves behind those kinds of justifications as to why civil and political rights could not be fulfilled, why representation of people weren't stipulated in the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

It's a battle that is ongoing. First because the United Nations need to remain as a house that represents all nations but in reality, that means that they will represent bad leaderships or bad authoritarian governments, corrupt governments.

They will have to deal with those governments, but the means available to who's the leader in holding those governments accountable, applying pressure on those governments, what kinds of tools that work and that doesn't work. This is like a big hole in international relations studies.

As you would require people who are committed politically, but like what we've seen in Canada for an instance when the Foreign Minister of Canada tried to publicly call out Saudi Arabia for the imprisonment of a women human rights defender, Samar Badawi, who has been awarded as the most prestigious women by the US, of course falsely under the claims of treason. Saudi Arabia decided to sever its relationships with Canada and to call back all the scholarship students, Saudi students in Canada. Can you imagine? So it just went all the way in trying to cut Canada out and push Canada in a position where they're not commenting on any kinds of domestic affairs.

So what happened is that the world has watched that without lending its support to Canada. So that has been a missed opportunity, basically for the world to give solidarity support to those kinds of actions which really is necessary to repress, autocratic governments or to deter oppression. 

It's one thing to say the rule of law, universal values of human rights, but it's another issue to actually give solidarity to those kinds of positions and to support those kinds of positions.  At the heart of everything is the different views of different countries when it comes to how to deal with authoritarian governments or aggressive governments. 

Some of them would somehow prioritise their economic interests over their principles, especially with elected members. 

We've seen that in Sweden because politicians, not necessarily holding their principles, but they do, come from very principled positions. They do come from the Green Party for instance, or feminist parties like Margot Wallstrom who is the Swedish Foreign Minister who raised the repression of Saudi Arabia's bloggers who are advocating for religious freedom or liberalism, for instance, and she was completely attacked by the Saudi government.

They banned her from attending the Cairo conference that she was supposed to attend. They spoke against her aggressively. But what happened is that powerful elites in the business community, in corporate business within Sweden have actually rallied against her. 

And this also happened in Spain. The Spanish manufacturer of military ships. They went against their government to demand that they would (not) throw any kinds of negative remarks against Saudi Arabia. 

So for elected people, elected, and this is another dilemma, how do elected people represent principles rather than the public opinion? 

Sadia - Before we go could you tell us if there's anything that you want the women that are listening to know, if there's anything that you want to say to them as like final words, if there's any way they can get involved, help, support, any final messages.

Hala - So, through my work on advocacy, I've noticed that things work. A good testament of the mobilisation that happened in Saudi Arabia to the importance and role of women’s rights activists is that we are seeing now more and more ease of restrictions on women that has been severely resisted before and because of that, women activists have been targeted and it worked. 

And, you know, pressure, international pressure works. We've seen some of those activists released back to their job. We've seen the media campaign against them has somewhat subsided now.

So we do believe that keeping the pressure when it comes to, and even in the case of Jamal Kashoggi, we've seen how the Saudi government have finally admitted the responsibility for the killing. And have actually set up court trials for those involved. Although it might be not very much like visible, but at the same time we believe that lending solidarity, keeping these things as part of the discussion, speaking out not only from the level of diplomatic circles or human rights organization, but from different levels, associations related to lawyers, for instance, associations related to women in the media.

It really helps elevate the profiles of those targets because of their activism or, because of their opinions, and it would eventually lead to their release.

So really we have to keep pushing for those women and raising their cases, publicly, as much as we can.