Saudi Gazette report

RIYADH — President of the Human Rights Commission (HRC) Awwad Al-Awwad has launched a specialized group to support victims of harassment.

The group will provide psychological counseling and educational, social, and legal guidance to victims and families seeking the group’s services while maintaining total privacy and confidentiality.

The move seeks to enhance the means to protect victims of harassment, increase awareness on the issue and its impact on the individual and society, as it is a despicable act and entails one of the grave violations of human rights.

Al-Awwad stressed that the launch of the group is in line with the measures and regulations the Kingdom has adopted to protect and support victims of harassment.

These include the regulation to combat the crime of harassment, the child protection regulation, the system for protection from abuse, and other measures aiming to counter this conduct and provide adequate protection to victims so as to mitigate the negative effects such as disorders, insecurity, and psychological trauma, among others.

The group will strive to work on alleviating the impacts of these negative effects to help the victims psychologically overcome the trauma they experienced and prevent the recurrence of such abuse and its negative impacts on the victim. In case if a victim is subjected to such abuse again, then the victim’s family and the pertinent authorities are informed.

The group seeks to change the prevalent misconception among some by blaming the victim as being responsible for what happened to him/her or the actions that might be taken by the family, hence, inflicting more harm/damage to the victim. These include the family's refusal to take measures that will prevent the recurrence of harassment.

The group is supervised by Dr. Sarah Bint Omar Al-Abdulkarim, a member of the HRC board of directors, in cooperation with Dr. Meshaal Al-Aqeel, a consultant psychiatrist; Dr. Amal Muhammad Bannouneh, professional adviser on protection and specializing in sexual education.

The group provides psychological, educational, and legal advice to the beneficiaries in cooperation with a number of specialists in the agency for the protection of human rights.