Saudi Women to Hillary Clinton: Enough with “Quiet Diplomacy”

Saudi Women for Driving, a coalition of leading Saudi women’s rights activists, bloggers and academics campaigning for the right to drive, sent the following response to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday.

Dear Secretary Clinton,

We trust that you have received our letters, dated June 3 and June 20, asking you to make a public statement supporting our right to drive.

At yesterday’s State Department briefing, spokesperson Victoria Nuland said [transcript below] you have been advocating for our right to drive through “quiet diplomacy,” specifically by speaking about it with HE Prince Saud Al-Faisal on Friday. “There are times when it makes sense to do so publicly and there are times for quiet diplomacy," she said.

We greatly appreciate your efforts to raise the status of women with his excellency, and your many years of advocacy on behalf of women all over the world. However, given the events of the past month, we are disappointed by this approach.

Secretary Clinton: quiet diplomacy is not what we need right now. What we need is for you, personally, to make a strong, simple and public statement supporting our right to drive.

We understand that the US-Saudi relationship is complex, and that there is a time for quiet diplomacy and there is a time for public diplomacy. But in our opinion what has happened in Saudi Arabia over the last month - the launch of the largest women’s rights campaign in Saudi history - constitutes a moment that calls for public diplomacy, a moment in which it is incumbent upon champions of women’s rights like yourself to deviate from the norm.

On June 17, exactly twenty years after South Africa abolished the last of its Apartheid laws, more Saudi women drove a car than ever before, directly challenging the “gender apartheid” under which we all live. Thousands of news outlets all over the world and throughout the United States have covered the ongoing initiative.

Yet despite all this incredible momentum and media attention we have heard nothing from you, a woman we consider a friend and one of the foremost champions of women’s rights around the world. For the United States’ top diplomat to make no public statement about such developments sends exactly the wrong message to the Saudi government and, more importantly, to the women of Saudi Arabia.

As you know, more than 100,000 Americans have joined our campaigns, and more than 20,000 Americans in all 50 states have supported our call for you to make a public statement.

Please, Secretary Clinton, take another look at the status of women in Saudi Arabia and what we have achieved over the last month, and reconsider your approach.

God bless you.

Saudi Women for Driving (سعوديات يطالبن بالقيادة)

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Saudi Women for Driving is an informal consortium of Saudi women’s rights activists pulled together after the arrest of Manal al-Sharif, a Saudi mother jailed for driving her car. The group seeks to use online campaigning to build international support for Saudi women’s right to drive. More than 100,000 people in 156 countries have joined Saudi Women for Driving campaigns on Change.org, the world’s fastest-growing platform for social change.