Human Rights Watch claimed in a study today that the Public Investment Fund (PIF), Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, has enabled and profited from violations of human rights. “The Man Who Bought the World: Rights Abuses,” a 95-page report According to a study “Linked to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and Its Chairman, Mohammad bin Salman,” Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman essentially controls the country’s enormous state wealth earned from fossil fuels. According to Human Rights Watch, the PIF is used to cover up the injustices committed by the Saudi government, and the crown prince utilizes this immense economic power primarily arbitrarily and extremely personally rather than for the good of the Saudi people.
The role of Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund
According to Joey Shea, a Saudi Arabia researcher with Human Rights Watch, “Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has unfettered control over the country’s nearly trillion-dollar Public Investment Fund.” “The crown prince has committed grave human rights violations and covered up the damage to his reputation caused by these abuses by using the economic might of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund.” Government revenue, trade surpluses, and reserves are frequently used to build up sovereign wealth funds, which are then invested both locally and outside. Wealth from oil has been the foundation of many. Interviews with Saudi activists and dissidents, journalists, experts, and lawyers with extensive experience in Saudi Arabia, as well as a review of government statements, Saudi court documents, Saudi laws, and government decrees, documents made public during court proceedings in Canada and the United States, company records and reports, and investigations and analyses by academics, journalists, and financial experts, provide the basis for this report.
Allegations of human rights violations
Serious human rights violations connected to the PIF’s chairman, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, have directly benefited the organization. This includes the 2017 “anti-corruption” crackdown by the crown prince, which included extortion of property from Saudi Arabia’s elite, arbitrary detentions, and cruel treatment of detainees. Through businesses it owns and controls, the PIF has enabled grave human rights abuses connected to MBS, including the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a leading opponent of the anti-corruption campaign. The two aircraft that Saudi operatives used in 2018 to fly to Istanbul, where they killed Khashoggi, belonged to Sky Prime Aviation, one of the firms that was transferred to the PIF during the purge. By reorganizing the PIF’s governance structure and consolidating a great deal of power and supervision over the fund in his own hands, MBS was able to unilaterally allocate substantial sums of public funds to massive projects that have no bearing on the realization of Saudi Arabia’s economic, social, or cultural rights. Abuses resulting from the fund’s initiatives have disproportionately affected Saudi Arabia’s poor and working-class citizens, migrant laborers, and rural areas. PIF funds have been utilized for projects that have destroyed neighborhoods, evicted residents by force, mistreated migrant workers, and suppressed communities.
Global reactions and criticism of the PIF
Human Rights Watch also discovered abuses connected to some of the PIF’s most well-known megaprojects, such as the Jeddah Central Project, an urban development project in Jeddah, and the NEOM region, an industrial zone and new metropolis on the Red Sea that is being built from scratch. In the intended NEOM area, Saudi officials killed one protesting resident, jailed those who opposed their evictions, and forcibly removed members of the Huwaitat tribe, who have lived in the Tabuk province for centuries. For opposing the forcible evictions, three residents were given death sentences and two were given 50-year prison terms. To turn Jeddah’s once thriving working-class neighborhoods into a posh shopping and tourism district, the Jeddah Central Development Company, which is entirely owned by the PIF and is responsible for the Jeddah Central Project, forcibly evicted a significant number of middle- and lower-class Saudis, foreigners, and migrant workers from their homes.
Efforts to address and mitigate abuses
Economic, social, and cultural rights should be gradually realized by the Saudi government under globally accepted human rights standards, making use of all available resources, including those under the PIF administration. Nearly “one in seven nationals in Saudi Arabia” live in poverty, with the country having the highest poverty headcount rate in the GCC at 13.6%, according to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia. Not all Saudi citizens are included in this number, especially migrant laborers, who account for about 42% of the population.