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III. Methods

This report is one of a series by Human Rights Watch on the state of human rights in Saudi Arabia. These reports incorporate research conducted during the organization’s visit for three weeks in November and December 2006; this was the first fact-finding visit to Saudi Arabia by an international human rights organization.¹ During that visit a team of four Human Rights Watch researchers conducted more than 300 interviews on criminal justice, children’s rights, women’s rights, and migrant workers’ rights. This particular report also draws on meetings with government officials and others during a one-week visit to Riyadh in March 2008, and on our ongoing research on the juvenile death penalty in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabian authorities provided access to a range of high-level officials and allowed researchers to visit the Riyadh Social Observation Home (dar al-mulahatha al-ijtima`iya), the Riyadh Girls’ and Young Women’s Welfare Institution (mu’assasat ri`ayat al-fatayat), and the Jeddah Residential Center for Child Beggars (markaz iwa’ al-atfal al-mutasawwilin). We also met with Saudi Arabian social workers, medical personnel, members of nongovernmental organizations, journalists, lawyers, members of the Human Rights Commission, the National Society for Human Rights, staff of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and others knowledgeable about child’s rights in Saudi Arabia. In some cases the individuals we spoke with asked us not to identify them to protect their privacy and avoid possible retaliation for speaking to us; in those cases we have withheld their names and, in some instances, other identifying information.

The Human Rights Watch researchers who conducted the interviews cited in this report include three researchers fluent in Arabic with extensive experience in the areas of children’s rights, women’s rights, and criminal justice. A fourth Human Rights Watch researcher who is an expert in women's rights and migration conducted interviews with Saudi government officials, foreign diplomats, and migrant workers in English, Arabic, Tagalog, Sinhala, Tamil, and Bahasa Indonesia, in many cases with the assistance of interpreters. Human Rights Watch’s executive director, Middle East and North Africa Division executive director, and three members of its advisory committees also participated in some meetings with officials cited in this report.

Human Rights Watch typically seeks to base our findings on testimonies of individuals directly affected by human rights violations, supplemented by our review of relevant laws and regulations and meetings with officials, service providers, and other with direct knowledge of human rights conditions in the country. Saudi Arabian authorities prevented Human Rights Watch researchers from speaking privately to detainees in Ministry of Social Affairs juvenile detention facilities and Ministry of Interior immigration detention facilities and prisons for women, and declined our request to meet with juvenile court judges and attend trials. In addition, the Minister of Social Affairs declined to respond in writing to Human Rights Watch’s March and June 2007 requests for clarification of regulations and practices affecting children in conflict with the law or in need of protection in Ministry of Social Affairs custody. In March 2008 the Ministry of Justice provided a partial response to our November 2007 request for clarification of laws and procedures governing death penalty cases involving juvenile offenders; we have yet to receive a response to a similar letter to the president of the Supreme Council of the Judiciary. As a result, it was difficult for Human Rights Watch to confirm the full extent of some of the violations documented in this report. We note these points in the text.

International Standards

In this report we assess Saudi Arabia’s treatment of children in conflict with the law and in need of protection according to international law, as set forth in five treaties to which Saudi Arabia is a party: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC),² the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (the Convention Against Torture),³ the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW),⁴ the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (Trafficking Protocol),⁵ and International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention No. 182 concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour (Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention).⁶ According to Saudi Arabian officials, the treaties are automatically incorporated into domestic law. Therefore for example the Convention on the Rights of the Child has the same legal status as domestic legislation and can be directly invoked in domestic court proceedings.⁷ In addition, the United Nations (UN) Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty⁸ and the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (“The Beijing Rules”)⁹ provide authoritative guidance on the treatment of children in conflict with the law.

Terminology

In this report the term “child” refers to any person under the age of 18. The Convention on the Rights of the Child defines a child as “every human being below the age of 18 years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier.”¹⁰ Saudi Arabian juvenile justice regulations use the term fatayat to refer to girls and young women under age 30. To reflect this usage, in this report the term “young woman” refers to women ages 18 to 30.

Saudi Arabia follows the Hijri calendar, a lunar calendar. Where such dates appear in this report we have also included the equivalent Gregorian calendar dates for the reader’s convenience.