The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia emphasized that enhancing and protecting human rights is a strategic option that constitutes the backbone of the State's comprehensive development policy, citing its national efforts to protect human rights and support all regional and international efforts that also achieve that goal, considering the differences of social values and traditions among nations. Dr. Bandar bin Mohammed Al-Aiban, President of Human Rights Commission of Saudi Arabia, who leads his country's delegation to the 25th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, explained during a discussion today on the final results of the presentation of the Kingdom's case as part of the second round for the comprehensive periodical review that what the Kingdom has achieved in the field of protecting, enhancing and spreading the culture of human rights in the Kingdom doesnâ€TMt mean the end of the game but, on the contrary, it would constitute a strong incentive and a boost to intensify a strenuous national action to protect what has already been achieved and put the necessary and appropriate mechanism to further consolidate and protect the culture, values and principles of human rights. He confirmed that the success of the mechanism of comprehensive periodical review is dependent on a number of basic factors, most important of which is: objectivity that would contribute to achieving the objectives of the review mechanism and assist the concerned countries to enhance and protect human rights in their respective countries and overcome the challenges facing them, drawing the attention that continuity is considered an important factor for the success of the review. As much as this mechanism continues, chances of reaching the goals and aspirations increase, he said, adding that this requires that all parties provide support and block any ill endeavor to foil it, noting the importance of paying attention to gradualism of implementing the human-rights-related commitments. He noted that among those factors are also taking into consideration to the cultural diversification of the countries as such cultural differences are well known facts and that attempts to impose certain cultures on others as regards human rights cause harm rather than good. So, taking into account the diversification of cultures, investing this diversification for the sake of protecting and enhancing human rights and inserting this concept as part of the globalization of human rights is a must. The Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is committed to protect and reinforce human rights, on the national level and to contribute, at the regional and the international arenas, as well, Al-Aiban said. Its cooperation with the comprehensive periodical review mechanism, accepting almost all of its recommendations presented to it through the review's process, its keenness to implement them and proposing objective recommendations to countries that has been undergone such a review, expresses, obviously, its commitment. In its pursue to develop a mechanism for comprehensive periodical review and in response to the exigency of work and variables, he added, the Government of my country reaffirms the significance of abiding by principles included in resolution 1/5, the most important is to run the revision process in an objective, transparent, constructive, neither belligerent, nor vindictive and nor politicized. He renewed the Government of Kingdom commitment to its voluntary obligations it made before the Council of Human Rights, in collaboration with the comprehensive and periodical review's mechanism and to back it, as it is the main tool for the council's function and an ideal instrument to attain its goals which it was established for, ahead of which is to evaluate human rights case, subjectively, in order to consolidate world respect of all human rights and basic liberties for all, indiscriminately and in a fair and responsible means. The President of the SHRC made it clear that the Kingdom has proposed more than 225 recommendations on a dozen of human-rights-related issues, which has been of great interest and well deliberated in more than one level, at the board of the SHRC and then in a top level panel that has been formed of 13 governmental bodies to review the recommendations. In parallel and with the same importance, a number of meetings has taken place in different regions of the Kingdom, which witnessed the participation of representatives of national human rights' institutions, civic society organizations, academic bodies, active socialites, men and women, in the domain of human rights to discuss the recommendations and propose means of vivid implementation, drawing the attention that these wide scale meetings have made crystal clear a comprehensive national vision, on which the Government of my country depend on in evaluating its position towards these recommendations, he added. Pointing to the wide-scale consultations, which have taken place last November and concluded in supporting and partially supporting 188 recommendations and not supporting only 37 recommendations, either for contradiction with the principles of Sharia, the provisions of the rule statute and the society's values and culture, or for straying away of the principles of the review itself, as it contained unfounded claims, he stated. On implementing the recommendations, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has directed all pertinent bodies to make apply required measures to implement the recommendations which have been approved and the SHRC will work with all pertaining government and the civic society agencies to follow up implementing the directive, asserting that 88 recommendations which have been approved or partially approved have taken force on the reality or are underway to be implemented. Dr. Al-Aiban stated that Saudi Arabia has recently endorsed the International Labor Organization agreement No. 138 regarding the minimum age of employment and that admission to a number of human rights international documents and treaties is currently underway. He said the criminal procedures system and the legal appeals before the Court of Grievances have recently been amended, an endeavor to develop the judicial system and guarantee the Kingdom's approach since its establishment to consolidate the pillars of right and justice through an independent judiciary that offers enough warrants to secure rights for those who deserve them in a clear just way and achieve accountability according to just, fair and impartial laws. Dr. Al-Aiban said the Kingdom was keen to find a comprehensive treatment that achieves the objectives of human rights through issuing a number of specialized systems that complement with those three systems, including the code to combat human trafficking and protection from harm system and others, noting that the Kingdom once more confirms that its judicial system is committed to the principle of legality of criminalizing and punishing. He cited Article 38 of the Statute of Rule that 'punishment falls on the person who commits a violation and that nobody will be criminalized or punished without a Sharia or legal law and no punishment is issued for actions committed before the issuance of that punishment law. He said the judicial system in Saudi Arabia pays great attention to the principle of litigation sessions publicity as one of the main reasons for achieving justice for which the judiciary authority was created. He cited the criminal procedures system and the Sharia-based appealing system as clearly stating the publicity of litigation sessions unless, a court decides exceptionally otherwise, taking into consideration some security or observance of public etiquette or that was imperative to show facts, a matter that conforms with international standards of fair ruling regulations, noting that to enhance this principle, the Human Rights Commission, the National Association for Human Rights and the media are continuing attending the courts. In the field of judicial personnel training and equipping, Dr. Al-Aiban said the Ministry of Justice has cooperated with a number of government and academic agencies, including the Higher Institute for Judiciary, Human Rights Commission, and other academic agencies inside and outside the Kingdom to hold and organize a number of training courses, workshops that focus on different judicial aspects, including holding symposia and workshops in the field of human rights in different regions of the Kingdom, holding symposiums and workshops in the field of enhancing the role of judiciary, noting that work has started to implement the memorandum of understanding that was signed between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's Human Rights Commission and the office of the Higher Commissioner of Human Rights what aims at enhancing the abilities of personnel working in the field of human rights. In this regard, a training course on the international mechanisms for human rights has been held as part of implementing this MOU, benefiting a big number of government representatives from all parts of the Kingdom in addition to a number of lawyers, media representatives and those interested in the human rights. The head of SHRC noted that a program on 'protection of wages' was recently launched as an electronic mechanism to detect the commitment of businesses to pay the wages for workers on time and as per work contracts without delay or procrastination. The data provided by this program will serve as a reliable reference characterized with strictness and transparency whenever complaints arise over wage-related suits or workers deserves, a step that would contribute to solving a big deal of labor issues. Dr. Al-Aiban said that to maintain the expatriates rights and for security, social and economic considerations, the Kingdom has set a number of bases and measures to rectify the job situations of residence and labor laws violators, noting that statistics available show that the campaign carried out to rectify the situations of laborers was to a great extent successful to enable big numbers of violators to benefit from the amnesty period and the facilities provided through issuing correct work licenses and resident permits during the period to rectify their situations and continue working in the Kingdom as legal workers in the country. He said the number of labor licenses issued during that rectifying period amounted to 3,890,916, those who changed their professions from the profession on their entry visas to their real ones reached 2,423,779, and those who transferred their services from former to new employers stood at 2,615, 280 while those turned to be flagrant violators without any solution to their situations were sent back home with their rights guaranteed.
