SAMAR BADAWI

 SAMAR BADAWI

Samar Badawi was born in 1981 in Saudi Arabia. Samar Mohammad Badawi is a Saudi Arabian human rights activist. She began her struggle for human rights at a very young age.

From 2008 – 2010, Samar challenged the male guardianship system when she tried leaving her abusive father and was charged with “disobedience.” In 2010  Samar filed a “Adhl” case against her father to remove him as her guardian so that she could marry human rights lawyer, Waleed Abu al-Khair. At the conclusion of her father’s countersuit for disobedience, she was arrested on April 4, 2010. The Saudi Arabian NGO Human Rights First Society declared her detainment “excessive and illegal.” With the help of local and international support campaigns, she was released on October 25, 2010, and her guardianship was transferred to her uncle.

Badawi became involved in legal initiatives for women’s suffrage. When the voter registration center rejected her application prior to local elections in September 2011, she declared that there was no law whatsoever denying candidacy and voting rights to women and that this refusal was illegal. She then filed a lawsuit at the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs’ Diwan al Mazalim (Grievance Board), which is not subject to Islamic law. Citing articles forbidding general discrimination in the Arab Charter on Human Rights in her lawsuit, she demanded the right to vote and run for office. On April 27, 2011, the Board agreed to hear the case at a later date, but its final decision was that there were no grounds for the lawsuit. She was the first woman to file a lawsuit against the government demanding the right for women to vote, and launched an online campaign to encourage other women to file similar suits. 

In 2011 and 2012, she took part in a campaign to secure women the right to drive. After the main campaign, which began in June 2011, she continued the driving campaign in Jeddah, and helped other women drivers in their dealings with the police and courts. Pointing out that there was no legal basis for charging women drivers, she and another woman human rights activist working on this issue sued the Saudi Arabia General Directorate of Traffic for rejecting their driver’s license applications.

In a speech she gave at a session of the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva in September 2014, she spoke about the suppression of peaceful political demonstrations by human rights activists in Saudi Arabia, and the detention of her husband, lawyer and human rights activist Walid Abdulkhair. In the United States, she told senators and various human rights organizations about the situation of her husband and other political prisoners. During this visit, she received an open threat from the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, warning her to cease her human rights activities. Upon her return from America, her passport was confiscated.

In December 2014, she went to King Abdulaziz Airport in order to travel to Brussels to take part in the 16th European Union NGOs Forum on Human Rights, but was stopped because the Ministry of Internal Affairs had issued a travel ban against her. Despite the travel ban and other obstacles, she continues her struggle for human rights.

She has been repeatedly intimidated and harassed since 2014 due to her human rights activities. She was briefly arrested in January 2016 and summoned for interrogation by the Bureau of Investigation in Jeddah in February 2017.

On 30 July, Saudi authorities arrested and detained Samar Badawi in Jeddah and transferred her to an unknown location. Following her arrest Badawi was subjected to a prolonged investigation, during which she was tortured and sexually harassed. The first hearing of her case was held on 27 June 2019. She was faced charges including sharing information related to Saudi women’s rights with foreign organisations and officials. Finaly, on 26 June 2021, woman human rights defender Samar Badawi was released after she served a three years' sentence.

Samar has been jailed for her activities and faces ongoing harassment and threats of punishment from both the government and the religious authorities. However, she has also been an inspiration to thousands of Saudi women and along with fellow defenders is challenging gender inequality in Saudi Arabia.

In March 2012, she was awarded the International Women of Courage Award by the U.S. Department of State for her opposition of the guardianship law and lawsuits for suffrage, and with these struggles, being a source of courage and inspiration to other women.

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