Asharq Alawsat reports that the Saudi Human Rights Commission has opened a website to permit people to submit complaints on-line. This is a good thing as the Commission does not have offices in most cities. It’s not a perfect thing because the majority of Saudis are still not using the Internet. It does, however, accord with the government’s efforts to establish ‘e-governance’.

Saudi Human Rights Commission Launches Website
Turki Al-Saheil

Riyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat- On March 2, 2008, the head of the Human Rights Commission, Turki Sudairi inaugurated the Saudi Human Rights Commission’s website that will now accept complaints submitted via email and offer various online services.

Dr. Zaid al Hussein, the vice president of the Commission’s board for journalists, explained that “Anybody can lodge a complaint via e-mail. However, before we proceed with the complaint, we will determine the credibility of the sender.”

According to Sudairi, the Human Rights Commission is facing problems with up to half of the cases that it deals with as a result of “the lack of rules to regulate the process of examining these complaints.”

The Human Rights Commission has resolved approximately 1,500 cases whilst only 20-30% of cases presented to it have been settled, explained Sudairi.

At a press conference after the inauguration of the Commission’s website Sudairi stated, “The cases in which the Commission intervened have been settled on a personal level and did not reach the level of documentation.” Cases that have been solved have been related to security, social, domestic and work issues.
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