Danni Perry’s flag display at the Royal Opera House sparked 182 performers to sign a solidarity letter that cancelled the Tel Aviv Tosca production, while Leonardo DiCaprio invests in Tel Aviv hotels, reports LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
Saudi Arabia to helm UN women’s forum: an irony lost on no-one
How has Saudi Arabia, notorious for human rights abuses, been appointed to lead the UN commission on gender equality despite continuing to imprison women activists advocating for basic rights, asks MARYAM ALDOSSARI
RESTRICTED FREEDOMS: Hessah al-Ajaji drives her car after midnight for the first time in Riyadh, June 2018
YANA PETTICREW explains what’s behind the strike and how the entire sector rests on super-exploiting an unorganised workforce
STEPHEN ARNELL casts a critical eye over the sudden rash of challenges to the two-party system on both sides of the Atlantic, noting that today’s performative populist politics sadly lacks Roosevelt’s progressive ‘Bull Moose’ vision of the early 20th century
BILL KIDD MSP says increasing Britain’s nuclear arsenal at this time is dangerous and expensive folly
ROGER McKENZIE asks whether the US’s shift to targeting everyone at once will instil greater co-operation among rising powers
THE appointment of Saudi Arabia to lead the UN commission on gender equality and women’s empowerment isn’t just a slap in the face of the long struggle against women’s rights violations in the kingdom; it’s a mockery of the global fight for gender equality.
Hardly surprising, considering Saudi Arabia’s knack for getting what it wants, even if it means getting away with murder, as the case of Jamal Khashoggi grimly demonstrates. Now, the kingdom is on a mission to sell itself to the Western world as a beacon of women’s empowerment — what better way to do this than by heading the UN’s gender equality initiative?
Since rolling out Vision 2030 in 2016, Saudi Arabia has masterfully orchestrated performances for the Western gaze, delivering well-crafted gestures that often earn applause from the West for their supposed strides in modernising the conservative kingdom — all part of the grand narrative championed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
More from this author
The regime’s handpicked female firsts — drawn from elite families — mask the reality of Dar al-Reaya ‘care homes’ where disobedient women are beaten and drugged, and the feminists who fought for driving rights remain jailed, writes MARYAM ALDOSSARI
Palestinian women have been failed by the feminist movement overall, argues MARYAM ALDOSSARI, calling for a return to principled solidarity instead of selective outrage and dehumanising narratives
Similar stories
From golf and football to Formula One, the kingdom uses unprecedented investments in global sport to divert attention from its persecution of journalists, dissidents and women, write BELLA KATZ and ROGER McKENZIE
The failure of international institutions, from the UN to the ICC, to hold the Taliban accountable for the brutal repression of women creates a climate of tolerance for daily crimes by the patriarchal regime, writes SHUKRIA RAHIMI
With its track record of leveraging cultural power for US gain and barely concealed promotion of coup attempts, the US Agency for International Development will not be mourned among the US’s southern neighbours, write JOHN PERRY and ROGER D HARRIS