• Broken Chalk is a non-profit organisation with one main goal – To protect human rights in education. The organisation started with a website and articles and is currently working on multiple projects, each aiming to fight human rights violations in the educational sphere. As the UPR is related to human rights violations, inequalities, human trafficking, and other violations, Broken Chalk prepares this article for the fourth Cycle and the specific country – the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
• In the last cycle, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia received 258 recommendations and supported 182 recommendations in adopting its UPR outcome at Human Rights Council 40 in March 2019 (United Nations Human Rights Council, 2018). The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has addressed many issues highlighted in the previous Universal Periodic Review (UPR) cycles. Saudi Arabia has introduced an economic vision called Vision 2030, which involves educational reform, mandated by the Tatweer Project, focusing on projects such as enhancing schools’ teaching methods and strategies (Allmnakrah and Evers, 2019). Tatweer Project has trained more than 400,000 teachers in school management, educational supervision, computer science, and self-development (Arab News, 2017). It has also revised Saudi’s curriculum to keep pace with advanced international science curricula (Arab News, 2017). This report will provide an update on the previous issues related to education, plus recommendations on how to deal with new ones.

By Mayeda Tayyab

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45th_Session_UN-UPR_Country_Review_Saudi_Arabia

Cover image by Abdulla Bin Talib.