Helena Kennedy, a British human rights lawyer and member of the House of Lords, has called on world leaders to boycott a hypothetical G20 summit in the capital, Riyadh, due to the Saudi government’s continued detention of activists.
The lawyer called on the world's leading economies to avoid the G20 summit hosted by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia this year, unless imprisoned women's rights activists are released.
"We all want to call on those who will participate in the G20 meeting to say that we will not participate in this meeting hosted by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia unless you release these women," she said in a video statement released on Wednesday.
"These women are being arrested because they are defending women's rights, which are seen as an affront to the power structure in Saudi Arabia," Kennedy said.
The United States, India and the United Kingdom will be among the countries that will attend the G20 summit that begins on November 21, and is hosted by Riyadh virtually in light of the restrictions imposed by the Corona pandemic.
Baroness Helena Kennedy QC report launch on 'A Stain on World Leaders and the G20 Summit in Saudi Arabia' from IBAHRI on Vimeo
Empowering women is one of the summit’s topics, and according to Kennedy, the charges against women prisoners include “calling on and inciting people to change the political system in the Kingdom, launching a campaign on Twitter to request a new constitution, and talking to British journalists to obtain a documentary about prison in the Kingdom.”
Kennedy said that among these women are academics, thinkers, writers and journalists, on women's issues, one of them is Loujain Al-Hathloul, who was arrested, along with about a dozen activists, in May 2018, just weeks before Saudi Arabia lifted the ban on women driving cars.
The UN Women's Rights Committee had called for Al-Hathloul's "immediate" release earlier this month, saying that the activist's deteriorating health was "extremely worrying."
On Monday, Human Rights Watch called on the Group of Twenty to pressure Saudi Arabia to release all those unlawfully detained and to provide accountability for past violations before the supposed summit.