WCHR has learnt of a new three-month contract for Washington public relations firm Qorvis Communications to provide consultation and public relations services linked to Saudi Arabia’s official Human Rights Commission (HRC) and human trafficking concerns to a Saudi institution. This is another example of the Saudi government’s primary human rights priority: to obfuscate, rather than improve, its abysmal human rights record. Qorvis had previously been hired directly by the HRC, with a one-year deal signed in 2020.
WCHR obtained a copy of the most recent contract*, for $750,000 plus extra fees for further services, which was submitted with the US Department of Justice on June 8, 2022, under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Dr Mashael bint Awied al-Mutairi, Dean of the Development and Consulting Services Institute at Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University in Riyadh, and Michael Petruzzello, President of Qorvis LLC, signed the deal on May 23, 2022.
The Saudi HRC was created in 2005, with the explicit mission of “promoting and protecting human rights in line with international standards, increasing knowledge of such rights, and contributing to ensuring that such rights are implemented in compliance with Sharia.” According to its constitution, it is “the government body responsible for offering views and recommendations on human rights problems” and “enjoys full independence in the fulfillment of its statutory tasks,” yet it also “reports directly to the monarch.”
In practice, the Commission serves as an arm of the Saudi authorities’ public relations machine, promoting a rosy picture of the country’s human rights situation on its website, actively pushing the authorities’ message in high-level meetings at home and abroad, particularly in the West, and validating or misrepresenting egregious human rights abuses.
Working to end the heinous practice of human trafficking is one area of human rights in which the Saudi authorities are said to have made genuine efforts to improve, albeit from a low baseline, moving up from Tier 3 (the worst) to Tier 2 in the US State Department’s 2020 classification of countries on this basis. The Saudi authorities, on the other hand, have been anxious to highlight this area of development in order to improve their overall image on human rights, while maintaining their harsh rule and horrible rights breaches – without response from the HRC. The authorities continue to suppress all criticism or dissent, to carry out arbitrary arrests for exercising fundamental rights and freedoms, and to use the death penalty more frequently than almost any other country in the world – all while the UN Human Rights Council praises the country’s rulers at every turn.
WCHR consequently encourages Qorvis Communications to cancel its newest contract to improve the HRC’s image and to cease working on behalf of the Saudi authorities. WCHR also reiterates its call for the HRC to prioritize defending human rights over cheerleading for Saudi authorities, and to establish its independence in accordance with the Paris Principles by seeking accreditation from the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions’ Sub-Committee on Accreditation.