OPINION:
While the United Arab Emirates keeps up its farcical image-laundering — an attempt to look like a place that doesn’t crack down on dissent and individual freedoms — it has found another façade to hide behind: International Women’s Day.
Starting March 5, Know Your Value and Forbes’ 30/50 Summit will gather lead governmental figures, journalists, celebrities, businesswomen, and even activists for a multi-day women’s mentoring event in Abu Dhabi.
The only problem? It would be massively contradictory and, at best, very awkward to celebrate women’s achievements in a country ruled by a regime that denies women the basic rights that would allow them to attain those very achievements.
While the UAE’s constitution formally enshrines human rights in name, and the country has made some progress in this area, in practice, it enforces blatantly discriminatory legislation, including a male guardianship system, men’s rights to discipline female relatives, and unequal rights in marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance.
The regime that rules the UAE marginalizes Emirati women into becoming repeated victims of sexual and gender-based violence. Marital rape isn’t criminalized, and a woman who refuses sexual relations with her husband without a “lawful excuse” can lose her right to financial maintenance.
Other vulnerable groups are also routinely abused.
The death penalty may be imposed for individuals in the UAE who engage in same-sex sexual activity, and the government routinely arrests and deports LGBTQ+ individuals. Content that references LGBTQ+ persons is severely restricted; in 2022, the UAE’s Media Regulatory Office banned the screening of the Disney-Pixar animated film “Lightyear’’ because it depicts a same-sex relationship and, the same month, threatened Amazon with penalties if it didn’t block LGBTQ+-related products on its UAE website. Amazon caved to the pressure, directly breaching its self-proclaimed commitments.
Moreover, the Emirati government has repeatedly violated citizens’ and foreigners’ right to privacy through sophisticated surveillance technology, employing Pegasus spyware to target dissidents and journalists.
For example, an international investigation confirmed that at least 12 journalists were targeted by the United Arab Emirates’ government with Pegasus spyware, as was Hanan Elatr, the wife of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, just months before Mr. Khashoggi’s murder.
Lastly, the UAE has ignored recommendations to protect freedom of expression, instead adopting a vague and overly broad federal law largely targeting political opposition leaders, journalists, human rights defenders, and their lawyers by criminalizing statements that “decrease public confidence in…state authorities.”
These examples make clear that the significance of “Know Your Value” extends beyond women and that a regime that so flippantly strips away anyone’s human rights is clearly uninterested in negotiating on terms meant to adopt a pro-human rights stance.
But what authoritarian regimes are interested in is whitewashing their abuses and building up their social capital by simply purchasing it. At the close of 2022, we saw Qatar host, with great pomp and circumstance (and criticism), the premier football sporting event, the FIFA World Cup. Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s biggest offenders of human rights and a country where women were not even allowed to set foot in a football stadium until recently, has engaged in one of the most extensive exercises in sportswashing: The Kingdom was named host of the 2023 Club World Cup and is set to host the 2034 World Cup, among numerous other global sports investments.
Given this reality, authoritarian regimes are obviously profitable allies for democracies and the organizations within them, which, in effect, all but endorse their actions. So, if events like the 30/50 Summit continue to be held in dictatorships like the UAE, what is the incentive for such a regime to change its typically unchallenged conduct?
Allowing the UAE to play host to a major International Women’s Day event contradicts a critical principle: Authoritarian regimes must earn their seats at the table by making trackable efforts toward implementing change that does not severely restrict their citizens’ agency.
Those who argue that engaging with dictatorships is the right way forward for progress miss the point: Dictators’ very existence is fed by the suppression of basic human rights, and there is no such thing as a ‘benevolent dictator.’ If authoritarian regimes prove they are serious about not merely amending but reversing policy and protecting and promoting human rights, they can earn a seat at the table — without actually hosting the event.
Many women leading the 30/50 Summit are undoubtedly pioneers in their respective fields and would make superb mentors. But mentorship demands truth, and if they want to mentor, “lift each other up and pay it forward,” they should lay bare the truth of the abuses taking place outside the Summit’s doors.
• Michelle Gulino is the director of legal & programs at the Human Rights Foundation.
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