Saudi Arabia loosens travel restrictions on women, allowing them to go abroad without permission from male ‘guardian’

Campaigners say kingdom’s reforms are radically less extensive than they initially appeared

Saudi women enter the railway station in Dammam ( REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed)

Saudi Arabia has begun to implement its new law allowing women to travel without the permission of a male “guardian”, its state news agency has announced.

The royal decree approved earlier this month stipulated that a Saudi passport should be issued to any citizen who applies for it and any person over the age of 21 will be able to travel without permission.

The ultra-conservative Islamic state also allowed women to exercise greater control over family matters.

Women were granted the right to register child birth, marriage or divorce, and to be issued official family documents and be eligible as a guardian to children who are minors.

“The passports and civil status departments and their branches in all regions of the kingdom have started to implement the amendments stipulated in the royal decree,” the SPA report said, citing an interior ministry source.

A Saudi newspaper reported that more than 1,000 women in the country’s Eastern Province had left Saudi Arabia on Monday without their guardian’s permission, in what appeared to be an early implementation of the new rules.

Riyadh has faced international criticism over the status of women in Saudi Arabia.

Rights groups say they are often treated as second-class citizens under rules requiring them to seek the consent of a male guardian for important decisions throughout their entire lives.

The authorities have steadily loosened those restrictions in recent years, including ending a ban on women driving cars last year.

However, campaigners have warned that the kingdom’s reforms are radically less extensive than they initially appeared.

In its latest human rights report, Amnesty International said women continued to face “systematic discrimination in law and practice and were inadequately protected against sexual and other violence”.

Women are still deemed legal minors under the guardianship system and cannot marry, divorce or get a job without permission from a male guardian.

Critics have also pointed to the many Saudi women’s rights activists who continue to be imprisoned after they campaigned for the right to drive or gain equal rights to men.