SAUDI ARABIA

Adults Before Their Time: Children in Saudi Arabia’s Criminal Justice System is one of a series of reports published by Human Rights Watch following an examination of the criminal justice system during the first fact-finding visit to Saudi Arabia by an international human rights organization. The investigation included interviews with Saudi officials, detainees, lawyers and families. The research found that judges regularly try children without the presence of lawyers or sometimes even guardians, even for crimes punishable by death, flogging, or amputation. Flogging is a very common sentence for crimes and there is no minimum age for corporal punishment. Corporal punishment is also used in detention centres for both girls and boys. The report calls on Saudi Arabia to adopt a written penal code and to prohibit all corporal punishment of persons under the age of 18 at the time of the offence.

(Human Rights Watch, 2008, Adults Before Their Time: Children in Saudi Arabia’s Criminal Justice System
www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/03/24/adults-their-time-0)

A news item in 2003 reported a recently published survey on corporal punishment in schools which found 59.5% of respondents in favour of reintroducing corporal punishment into schools, with 38.5% against.

(Reported in "Yes to corporal punishment", Arab News, 30 June 2003)