Saudi Arabia approved a measure to criminalise sexual harassment.<\/p>\n
The anti-harassment measure, which was approved on Monday by the Shura Council advisory body, introduces a jail sentence of up to five years and a 300,000 riyals ($80,000) fine.<\/p>\n
The legislation, which awaits an expected royal decree to become law, is the latest in a series of reforms that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has launched as part of Vision 2030 and comes just weeks before a decades-old ban on women driving in set to expire on June 24.<\/p>\n
Shura Council member Dr Latifa Al Shaalan said that the anti-harassment draft-bill was \u201ca very important addition\u201d to the regulations of the kingdom.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt fills a large legislative vacuum, and it is a deterrent system when compared with a number of similar laws in other countries,\u201d she said in a statement carried by the ministry.<\/p>\n
The ministry added that King Salman ordered the Ministry of Interior to prepare the anti-harassment bill.<\/p>\n
\u201cHarassment also violates Islamic values. In order to combat the social phenomenon of harassment, it was deemed necessary to enact a law that criminalises such behaviour and spells out its legal consequences,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
\u201cA clear definition of what constitutes harassment will help the Public Prosecutor investigate complaints and present suitable punishment for those convicted.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to mandating a prison term and a fine, the bill stipulates the potential penalties for a number other factors, including multiple occurrences of the harassment, harassment in the workplace, educational institutions, and home, if the accused has a position of authority, if the victim was unconscious, if the crime was committed during a time of crisis, accident or disaster, if the victim was a child or a person with special needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saudi Arabia approved a measure to criminalise sexual harassment. The anti-harassment measure, which was approved on Monday by the Shura Council advisory body, introduces a jail sentence of up to five years and a 300,000 riyals ($80,000) fine. The legislation, which awaits an expected royal decree to become law, is the latest in a series …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1750"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1752,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1750\/revisions\/1752"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}