Ensaf Haidar, wife of jailed Saudi dissident Raif Badawi, addressing a United Nations press conference
organized by UN Watch, Human Rights Foundation, and the Raoul Wallenberg Human Rights Centre.
October 6, 2023
In order to honor Raif’s values, I launched in Canada, in 2015, the Raif Badawi Foundation for Freedom, a very young foundation with many projects underway. We are still fighting for my husband’s cause: weekly sit-ins are organized in front of King Abdullah’s Center for Interfaith and Interreligious Dialogue in Vienna, at City Hall in Sherbrooke, Quebec, as well as other cities around the world.
Ladies and gentlemen,
- When Saudi Arabia was appointed last year to the United Nations Human Rights Council, I felt hopeful and I thought that things would look up for my husband and that he would be released.
- Recently, I had an inkling of hope with the news that the government will be limiting the powers of the notorious religious police know as the “mutawa’. The law states that officers of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice are no longer allowed to chase suspects or arrest them. Raif was arrested by those same officers.
- Another inkling of hope happened last week when more than 14,500 women in Saudi Arabia have signed a petition calling for an end to the country’s male guardianship system.
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