Do you remember the Huwaitat, some of whom are pictured above, and who fought and died so nobly alongside Lawrence of Arabia to help free the Arabs from the Turks? Three Huwaitat tribe members were sentenced to death by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Specialized Criminal Court, whose family and a number of others were forcefully relocated in order to make room for the NEOM megaproject being pursued by the Saudi government.

What is NEOM?

The planned city state of NEOM, created by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, will be located far north of Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea shoreline and will be almost the size of Belgium. Its name combines the Greek word for “new” with the Arabic word for “future”- paving the way for “new futuristic living”.

Saudi Crown Prince HRH Mohamed Bin Salman’s strategy to transition his nation’s economy away from oil is centred on the NEOM initiative. NEOM will serve as the main platform for Saudi entrepreneurs to enter the tourist and IT sectors, relying on green energy and newly created technologies. The metropolis will cover an area the size of a small nation and also contain land that Jordan and the neighbouring Egypt have leased.

However, the firms that work with the Saudis on the NEOM project may face criticism.

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, along with the mayors of New York, Paris, and Los Angeles, withdrew from a summit of 25 of the biggest cities in the world that was scheduled to take place in Riyadh in late September. They cited the killing of Annan Khashoggi as well as Saudi Arabia’s track record on women’s rights and other concerns as justifications for the withdrawal.

The NEOM project attracted a lot of IT behemoths and western consulting firms at first because of the financial windfalls, but the project’s reputation has suffered because of Saudi Arabia’s alleged human rights violations.

Turning back a page and looking at history, when numerous members of the Huwaitat tribe met with Fahadbin Sultan, the prince of the Tabok area, in 2017, the current problem had its genesis. The tribesman requested in writing to the prince that he guarantee them the right to live in their homes and refrain from displacing them or demolishing them. Later, the prince informed the tribal people that he could not assist them in defending their territories, and their request was turned down.

Recent Developments

In the week of September 21, this year, Suleiman Mohammed al-Taqique al-Hwaiti, a well-known activist from this indigenous tribe, was detained and imprisoned, and his social media accounts were shut down.

Thirteen other al-Huwaitat tribal members were arrested at the same time and are currently being detained in prison. The men have refused to be relocated from their ancestral lands in order to create room for the $500 billion NEOM megacity.

Two further tribe members were detained on October 1 after criticizing the Saudi government and the NEOM project on social media, one of whom was carried away by Saudi security personnel outside Fahad Bin Sultan University. Members of the tribe claim that no one knows where they are.

They say they are not opposed to the construction of NEOM. They just don’t want to be evicted against their will from the land that their ancestors have called home for many years. They are not against the building of NEOM.

It is not the first time there has been confrontation between the House of Saud and the tribes it has ruled since the establishment of the Saudi monarchy in 1932. But settlements on the NEOM site were destroyed. This is no new issue. The forcible demolition of the walled city of Awamia in the eastern Qatif area by the Saudi government was described as a violation of human rights by the UN in 2017.

The controversial British-based human rights organisation ALQST claims that Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s accession to power in 2017 is to blame for a spike in human rights violations. In addition to arrests and prison terms, those prosecuted also get travel restrictions after serving their sentences, and their relatives are frequently arrested, ALQST claims. The organisation alledges “Prisoners have occasionally committed suicide, either on purpose or as a result of being singled out for medical and administrative negligence.”

International Law Violations

The treatment of the Huwaitat population arguably constitutes a breach of international law. According to international law, they could be said to be subject to forced displacement, which is defined as a tactic used by governments, paramilitary forces, or organisations opposed to an ethnic, religious, or political group with the intention of evacuating certain territories and replacing them with another population. Forced displacement can occur directly, such as when individuals are removed from their homes, or it can occur indirectly when people are persecuted, threatened, or put under pressure to relocate.

Forced eviction is referred to under the International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute‘s Articles 2, 7, and 8. According to this, it is a crime against humanity to expel or forcibly relocate a people as part of a widespread or deliberate attack on any civilian population.

The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949‘s Article 49 additionally forbids the expulsion of people in large numbers from their own countries and into other countries.