The Middle East kingdom is on massive building spree—creating private islands, luxury hotels, theme parks, cruise ports, even a desert ski resort. The question remains: If they build it, who will come? 



Whatever your preconceived notion of Saudi Arabia as a travel destination is, it’s about to be get a major renovation. Imagine Sindalah, for example, a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vision2030.gov.sa/en/projects/sindalah/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">7-star private-island resort</a>&nbsp;with three ultra-luxe resorts, 38 high-end restaurants and multiple superyacht marinas. Or Qiddiya, a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vision2030.gov.sa/en/projects/qiddiya/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">futuristic city</a>&nbsp;of 600,000 people rising from the desert floor, dedicated to e-sports and gaming. How about Trojena, a space-age&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vision2030.gov.sa/en/projects/trojena/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ski resort</a>&nbsp;built above the high desert? Or The Red Sea, a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vision2030.gov.sa/en/projects/the-red-sea/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">vast waterscape</a>&nbsp;of 50 luxury resorts and 8,000 hotel rooms spread across 22 islands in a Maldives-style archipelago—powered entirely by wind and solar energy? Also in the works is The Rig, a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vision2030.gov.sa/en/projects/the-rig/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$5-billion adventure theme park</a>&nbsp;built on an off-shore oil platform. In addition, Saudi Arabia is positioning itself as a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cruisesaudi.com/about#block-ourbusiness" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">cruise destination</a>, having recently bought a $300-million ship. Across the Kingdom, new roads, airports, golf courses and cruise terminals are rising from the sand. The map is literally being redrawn in real time.



Then there are all the new hotels, with their thousands of freshly built rooms. The world’s most iconic hospitality companies—Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons, St. Regis, Fairmont, Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt and InterContinental—are falling over themselves to jump into a construction pipeline that’s churning faster than anywhere else in the world. Any one of these projects might momentarily pierce the travel industry’s fleeting attention span. But together, what’s going on in Saudi Arabia simply cannot be ignored.



Indeed, it can be often difficult to visualize the vastness of Saudi Arabia’s physical transformation. Some of the most notable ongoing projects—including Sindalah, the 7-star private island, and Trojena, the improbable desert ski resort—fall within NEOM, a $500-billion built-from-scratch region in northwest Saudi Arabia where the Kingdom is creating new cities, resorts and other developments. At 10,200 square miles and bounded by the Red Sea to the south and the Gulf of Aqaba to the west, it’s roughly the size of Albania.



Bankrolled mainly by the Kingdom’s $700-billion Public Investment Fund (PIF), the idea for NEOM was born out of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vision2030.gov.sa/en/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Vision 2030</a>, Saudi Arabia’s grand plan to shake off its historic reliance on oil and diversify its economy. One the scheme’s pillars involves reinventing the country as a global tourism juggernaut. When first announced in 2016, the Kingdom’s tourism goals seemed fanciful: Attract 100 million foreign and domestic visitors to the country every year and grow tourism’s share of the economy from about 3% to 10%. Oh, and do it all in just 14 years.



That aspiration seemed all the more preposterous given that, in 2016, Saudi Arabia had not yet opened its doors to international leisure travelers. At the time, travel to the Kingdom was almost entirely restricted to three types of people: expatriate workers, those with business visas, and religious pilgrims visiting the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.



Then in 2019,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarabrittanysomerset/2019/09/27/saudi-arabia-opens-its-borders-to-tourists-but-not-cannabis/?sh=2823b4b36924">Saudi Arabia announce</a>d&nbsp;it would provide e-visas and visas on arrival to visitors from 49 countries, including the United States. Among other changes announced at the time: Female visitors would be exempted from wearing an abaya, the traditional and otherwise obligatory head-to-toe robe, in public places and would be allowed to travel without a male companion. Tourists would still be required to dress modestly and Mecca would remain off-limits to non-Muslims.



Since Saudi Arabia opened to the international travel market, the speed and spare-no-expense approach to its transformation has stunned even the most seasoned tourism analysts. “We’re seeing hugely ambitious plans, huge amounts of development,” says Caroline Bremner, head of travel and tourism research at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.euromonitor.com/travel" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Euromonitor International</a>. “Billions, ultimately trillions, worth of dollars being invested in infrastructure and in diversifying their economy.” The World Travel &amp; Tourism Council (WTTC) estimated the Kingdom has already spent $800 billion, and that doesn’t include the massive amounts of foreign investments pouring in.



The pandemic delayed some projects, of course, but rather than scaling back expectations, the Saudis ratcheted up their goal to 150 million annual visitors by 2030. Here’s where semantics come into play. In tourism parlance, a “visitor” is defined as someone who visits a site within the country, which is very different from what Euromonitor deems an “arrival,” someone who makes an overnight stay. (Other organizations sometimes call the latter “tourists.”) Saudi Arabia had over 24 million foreign arrivals in 2023 and will welcome nearly 37 million in 2030, according to Euromonitor projections. “So if each of those 37 million overnight tourists visits three sites, you pretty much have got your 100 million visits,” Bremner says. “Then add on top of that your domestic tourists, and their own set targets are quite achievable.”



A more meaningful measure of success is how much foreigners are expected to spend while in Saudi Arabia. Euromonitor predicts that international tourists will spend $38 billion in 2030. But the total economic impact for Saudi Arabia will be far greater after adding in domestic travelers’ expenditures and the ripple effect of one million new tourism jobs. The WTTC projects that, by 2032, Saudi Arabia’s tourism sector could contribute nearly $169 billion to its GDP, representing 17.1% of the total Saudi economy.



“Remember, they’re building this destination on the ledger, essentially from scratch, for the international market, and they are bringing in the best of the best in terms of the quality of people they’re working with” says Bremner. “I can see that they’ve thought through every single aspect of tourism, from the staff to the product, the brand, the service, the connectivity, the sustainability. So it really does feel like they’re building something for the next century ahead.”



Preparing for the future also means recognizing the seismic shift in what the next generations of global travelers will want. Roughly 90% of young Chinese travelers and 70% of Gen Z travelers in the UK, Australia and India say they are looking to discover new destinations, according to data from&nbsp;<a href="https://research.skift.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Skift Research</a>. In that sense, being the new kid on the tourism block is an enormous plus.



“New generations have a lot more information through social media,” Billy Canellas, head of asset management at NEOM,&nbsp;<a href="https://skift.com/2023/12/22/skift-global-forum-east-video-building-sustainable-luxury-cities/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told conference-goers</a>&nbsp;at the Skift Global Forum East in December. “[Younger travelers] are very well educated about the effects of overtourism in traditional destinations,” he added, noting “a clear tendency towards the eco-friendly and sustainable destinations” and an eagerness to learn about a destination’s “culture and the traditions of diversity.”



“The luxury market is getting more diverse and younger, and it&#8217;s shifting to the emerging markets,” says Bremner, noting that the United Arab Emirates, India and China are all highly appealing to this demographic. “We have this fresh-faced luxury traveler, and it&#8217;s not the traditional older generation of travelers with lots of money. It’s the New World luxury traveler, highly digital, very environmentally conscious, and for whom social impact is important.”



“Make no mistake,” says Geoff Freeman, president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association, “what Saudi Arabia is doing is they’re identifying who are some of the most important travelers are—the people willing to spend a lot of money on experiences—and asking, How do we go get them?”



There are, of course, many ways for the Saudi grand vision to go sideways. First, there are enormous financial risks inherit in tackling so many giga projects all at once, even for a country with bottomless pockets. “The Saudis are running at 82% public debt compared to government revenue,” Bremner says, noting that official public debt as a percentage of GDP was 23.8% in 2023. Still, it’s all relative. The Kingdom’s debt-to-GDP ratio is nearly double what it was a decade ago, but still quite low compared to other countries. For example, Switzerland’s government debt is 41% of GDP. The U.S. and Canadian governments’ debt is 133% and 106% of GDP, respectively. The U.K.’s debt is 98% of GDP.



Bremner’s biggest concern is hotel overcapacity, which would ultimately suppress prices. “That luxury positioning is going to come under a little bit of erosion, because [the Saudis] are moving so quickly. With that level of supply, it is quite hard to balance,” she says, adding that Euromonitor International’s latest forecast model predicts that the average traveler’s spend will have already dropped by 2030. “Too many hotel rooms that aren’t being filled will drive prices down, so that’s a risk.”



In addition, Saudi Arabia has a persistent PR problem among many would-be travelers, especially those from the West. The Kingdom still has strict laws about drinking and severe restrictions for women, not to mention allegations of human rights abuses and attacks against journalists. In 2021, the U.S.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/andymeek/2021/02/25/the-white-house-is-releasing-a-bombshell-report-about-slain-washington-post-journalist-jamal-khashoggi/?sh=772fad154dcb">officially blamed</a>&nbsp;Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the 2018 murder of&nbsp;Washington Post&nbsp;journalist Jamal Khashoggi.



But any concerns about human rights haven’t stopped multinational corporations from investing in the Kingdom’s grand vision. “For some players, it will be a very important issue, perhaps a complete barrier to entry,” says Bremner. “However, we can see that the majority of luxury hotel brands have already shifted from China and the U.A.E. into Saudi Arabia.”



After all, the international travel market loves nothing more than a shiny, new destination in an emerging market and right now, the Middle East is having a moment. “You have the Middle East in the sort of perfect location,” says Bremner, “just like Turkey—within a five-hour flight of Asia and of Western Europe.”



Even with the start of the Israel-Hamas War last October, the Mideast was nevertheless the fastest-growing tourism region in 2023, with international arrivals 23% above pre-pandemic levels, according to the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.unwto.org/tourism-data/unwto-tourism-recovery-tracker" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">UN World Tourism Organization’s Tourism Recovery Tracker</a>. That’s 35% above the global average, as the rest of the world’s tourism is, on average, still at a 12 point deficit compared to 2019 visitor volume.



While just over three million American tourists visited the region in 2023—making up 12.6% of total outbound U.S. tourists—that’s a massive 39% jump from 2019. And though the Middle East’s portion of American tourists was smaller than those of Europe (40%) and Asia (15.7%) last year, it was the only one of the three regions that has grown since the pandemic.



But Freeman isn’t concerned about Saudi Arabia’s ability to lure large numbers of American tourists. “I&#8217;m worried about them trying to attract Europeans, high-spending Middle Easterners, and Asians, who might have otherwise come and spent their money in the United States,” he says.



After all, Freeman says, international tourism is an increasingly competitive sport where one country’s gain is another’s loss: “What gives us pause,” he says, “is that other nations now realize that travel is a global competition to figure out who can attract the customer.”

Traffic in Riyadh at sunset in Saudi Arabia capital city

Inside Saudi Arabia’s $800 Billion Tourism Moonshot

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



As it makes headlines for its startup golf tour merging with the PGA and its huge international investment spree, Saudi Arabia’s controversial Public Investment Fund reported $11 billion in losses in 2022, according to Bloomberg—a year in which the Saudi fund launched a new sports investing venture and stock markets slipped.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Last year’s numbers are a far cry from 2021, when PIF reported a profit of $19 billion.



PIF did not report what return it made on its accounts in 2022, but global markets saw significant declines, with the S&amp;P 500 losing 19.4%—the worst year since 2008.



In 2022, PIF launched the Sports Investment Company as a spinoff of its sports properties that will invest in sports domestically and internationally.



PIF’s assets ended the year at about $778 billion, according to Bloomberg.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-news-peg">NEWS PEG</h2>



The Sports Investment Company’s properties include the LIV Golf tour, which used the promise of massive winnings to lure major golfers toward its events, setting off a legal conflict with the PGA Tour until the two entities announced plans to merge last month. During a congressional hearing Tuesday, PGA Tour officials&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/07/11/pga-tour-liv-hearing-senate/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">acknowledged</a>&nbsp;the merger involved an investment from PIF “north of $1 billion.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



PIF is the national sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. Since 2016, it has invested both domestically and internationally with money gained mostly from tapping into the country’s oil deposits. That includes launching 79 companies, including Riyadh Air, and investing in a number of international companies, including $3.3 billion worth of Activision Blizzard shares—which jumped in price Tuesday morning after a legal hurdle was cleared to merge with Microsoft—and $2.3 billion in Uber shares. In addition to its moves in golf, the fund has used its wealth to gain a foothold in the international soccer world. That includes a £305 million—$414.8 million—takeover of English soccer club Newcastle United and a deal to bring Portuguese superstar Christiano Ronaldo to Saudi club Al Nassr, which is backed by a subsidiary of PIF.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



LIV Golf’s blockbuster merger with the PGA was put under the spotlight in Washington, D.C., Tuesday as lawmakers grilled PGA officials during a congressional hearing about the deal that made it happen. Sen.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/07/11/pga-tour-liv-hearing-senate/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told</a>&nbsp;a group of PGA executives the deal gives the Saudi government “financial dominance” because they “control the purse strings.” Much of the controversy around the merger stems from accusations Saudi Arabia is using sports to distract from record human rights abuses. LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman has faced&nbsp;<a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/01/21/liv-golf-ceo-greg-norman-saudi-arabia-mistakes" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">repeated</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://thehill.com/policy/international/3821912-liv-golf-ceo-on-saudi-arabian-killing-of-khashoggi-look-i-think-everybody-learns-from-their-mistakes/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">questions</a>&nbsp;about the killing of American journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi officials. Additionally, a coalition of families that lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks have released&nbsp;<a href="https://911familiesunited.org/9-11-families-united-statement-on-pga-merging-with-saudi-backed-liv-golf-tour/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a statement</a>&nbsp;condemning the merger, calling it “sportswashing” to distract from the fact that “Saudi operatives played a role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks” (most of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, but the country’s government has long denied any ties to the attackers).



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-11/saudi-wealth-fund-reports-11-billion-investment-loss-for-2022?utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&amp;utm_content=business&amp;cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&amp;utm_source=twitter" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Saudi Wealth Fund Reports $11 Billion Investment Loss for 2022</a>&nbsp;(Bloomberg)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/anafaguy/2023/06/06/pga-tour-and-saudi-backed-liv-golf-agree-to-merge/?sh=48eede716b22">PGA Tour And Saudi-Backed LIV Golf Agree To Sudden Merger</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2023/06/21/pga-liv-leaders-called-to-testify-before-congress-over-historic-merger/?sh=575c6146ad13">PGA, LIV Leaders Called To Testify Before Congress Over Historic Merger</a> (Forbes)

Tourism in Saudi Arabia at AlUla Ancient Site

Saudi Public Investment Fund Reports $11 Billion In 2022 Losses—But Sports Investments Might Not Be To Blame

TOPLINE Praise has started to roll in for Saudi Arabia after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-arabia-pledges-net-zero-carbon-emissions-by-2060-11634979405?mod=e2tw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a> Saturday his country plans to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2060, but the announcement from the world&#8217;s leading oil exporter came with numerous caveats.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



In a prerecorded speech to a climate forum taking place in Riyadh, the crown prince said the country would aim to reach net-zero emissions within its borders.



That won&#8217;t include Saudi Arabia&#8217;s oil exports, the mainstay of the nation&#8217;s economy, since only oil that is burned for energy within the country itself will be used for the calculations.



The plan also puts Saudi Arabia 10 years behind the recommended 2050 deadline to reach net-zero emissions set by the International Energy Agency, which the U.S., U.K. and European Union have set as their goals.



U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson nonetheless commended Saudi Arabia&#8217;s announcement,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1451887566974750728?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeting</a>&nbsp;it&#8217;s a &#8220;landmark pledge&#8221; and a &#8220;major step forward.&#8221;



Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, also&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/fbirol/status/1451909987295449093?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a>&nbsp;Saturday that pledges from major fossil fuel-producing nations like Saudi Arabia &#8220;are vital to reach international climate goals.&#8221;



Alok Sharma, who will lead the upcoming 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, praised the move,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/AlokSharma_RDG/status/1451853968150343681?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">saying</a>&nbsp;he hopes it will &#8220;galvanise ambition from others&#8221; ahead of the conference.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-to-watch-for">WHAT TO WATCH FOR</h2>



The upcoming U.N. conference will be the first climate summit among international heads of state since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, though Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin have said they do not plan on attending. The conference will be held in Glasgow, Scotland, between October 31 and November 12.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-surprising-fact">SURPRISING FACT</h2>



Saudi Arabia is not the first major oil exporting Persian Gulf state to release plans to cut emissions to net-zero. The United Arab Emirates&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/uae-launches-plan-achieve-net-zero-emissions-by-2050-2021-10-07/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a>&nbsp;earlier this month that it plans to reach that point by 2050. The later, 2060 timeline set by Saudi Arabia is the same timeline Russia and China are following.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-chief-critic">CHIEF CRITIC</h2>



Saudi Arabia&#8217;s announcement is also being met with some skepticism, especially given its plans for state-owned oil company Aramco to ramp up production from 12 million gallons of oil per day to 13 million gallons over the next six years. &#8220;The world&#8217;s largest oil exporter becoming a net-zero economy is pretty strange,&#8221; Ben Cahill, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-23/world-s-biggest-oil-exporter-commits-to-net-zero-emissions?utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&amp;utm_content=business&amp;cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=social" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bloomberg</a>.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



The announcement from Saudi Arabia comes following dire reports from international agencies about the impacts of climate change caused by the rampant burning of fossil fuels. In August, the U.N.&#8217;s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a harrowing report claiming humans may have&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/08/09/devastating-world-leaders-respond-to-climate-report-with-calls-for-urgency---and-anger-toward-rich-countries/?sh=3c30a73a3e60">already caused irreversible changes</a>&nbsp;to the Earth&#8217;s climate that is causing extreme flooding, droughts and heatwaves to become more likely. As a desert nation already prone to intense heatwaves, Saudi Arabia is likely to experience some of the most immediate impacts from higher global temperatures. The panel stated that even more extreme weather in the future can be mitigated by immediate drops in greenhouse gas emissions.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-23/world-s-biggest-oil-exporter-commits-to-net-zero-emissions?utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&amp;utm_content=business&amp;cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=social" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">World’s Biggest Oil Exporter Commits to Net-Zero Emissions</a>&nbsp;(Bloomberg)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/08/09/devastating-world-leaders-respond-to-climate-report-with-calls-for-urgency---and-anger-toward-rich-countries/?sh=3c30a73a3e60">&#8216;Devastating&#8217;: World Leaders Respond To Climate Report With Calls For Urgency — And Anger Toward Rich Countries</a> (Forbes)



By Nicholas Reimann, Forbes Staff

SAUDI-RUSSIA-DIPLOMACY

Saudi Arabia Earns Praise For Vowing Net-Zero Carbon Emissions—But Pledge Comes With Caveats

While Saudi Arabia allowed women to drive this year and Ethiopia appointed its first female president, in other countries in 2018 women were punished for being raped or wanting control of their reproductive rights.



Here are some gains and losses for women around the world in the past year:



<h5 class="wp-block-heading">GAINS</h5>



1. Ireland in May voted to repeal its strict abortion laws in a landslide victory. Nearly half of an estimated 56 million abortions conducted each year are unsafe, leading to the deaths of at least 22,800 women, according to a global March report by the Guttmacher Institute.



2. Saudi Arabia allowed women to drive for the first time in June. But dozens of activists who campaigned for the right to drive and the end of male guardianship were detained soon after the ban was lifted.



3. Ethiopia elected its first female president Sahle-Work Zewde in October, and appointed Meaza Ashenafi to be its first female supreme court president a month later. Ethiopia became the third country in Africa &#8211; after Rwanda and Seychelles &#8211; to have its cabinet split equally between men and women.



4. Iceland in January become the first country to make it illegal to pay men more than women, introducing fines on any company or government agency with over 25 staff without a government certificate demonstrating pay equality.



5. The #MeToo movement, sparked by revelations of sexual misconduct in Hollywood, swept through workplaces worldwide in 2018, spawning investigations and toppling hundreds of high-profile men from positions of power. In parts of Africa, Latin America and Asia, however, the campaign has struggled to gain momentum.



<h5 class="wp-block-heading">LOSSES</h5>



1. Argentina in August rejected a move to legalize abortion. Uruguay and Cuba are the only Latin American countries that now have broadly legalized abortion.



2. U.S. President Donald Trump in May issued a proposal that would effectively stop giving government funds to subsidize birth control and abortions. The so-called global gag rule has put more than $8 billion of annual funding at risk, from clinics for HIV-affected sex workers in Ethiopia to programs aimed at curbing teen pregnancy in remote Uganda, campaigners have warned.



3. Kenyan lawmakers in November blocked a push to give one in three parliamentary seats to women.



4. In December, on the sixth anniversary of a fatal gang rape in New Delhi that prompted global outrage, a security guard was arrested after the rape a three-year-old girl, accused of luring her with sweets.



5. A 19-year-old Sudanese woman, Noura Hussein, who was a child bride, was sentenced to death in May when she killed her husband after he tried to rape her. Hussein’s sentence was overturned after global outrage, but she was still sentenced to five years in jail. -Reuters



&#8211; Lin Taylor

gettyimages-1055765760-594×594

The Fight for Rights: Five Gains and Five Losses for Women in 2018

The net worth of billionaire Saudi prince <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/prince-alwaleed-bin-talal-alsaud/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud</a>—who was detained by the Saudi government on Saturday as part of what officials have called an anti-corruption campaign—is continuing to fall dramatically.
Alwaleed’s fortune dropped $855 million on Tuesday as the share price of his holding company, Kingdom Holding—which trades on Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul exchange—continued to drop. The stock, which now comprises half of his net worth, is down 21% since the end of normal trading on Thursday, November 2. (The Tadawul is closed on Fridays and Saturdays.) Alwaleed owns 95% of Kingdom Holding; the remaining 5% trades on the Saudi stock exchange.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/current-affairs/2017/11/06/heres-much-money-kevin-spacey-lose-following-sexual-harassment-scandal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Here&#8217;s How Much Money Kevin Spacey Could Lose Following His Sexual Harassment Scandal</a>
In all, Alwaleed’s net worth is down $2.8 billion since Saturday evening. He is now worth an estimated $15.9 billion, according to Forbes’ <a href="https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/#version:realtime" target="_blank" rel="noopener">real-time</a> rankings of the world’s billionaires. He is presently the 83rd richest person on the planet; he was ranked 64th on Saturday.
Alwaleed, 62, is the nephew of Saudi king Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and is a cousin of the country’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. He <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/igorbosilkovski/2017/11/04/saudi-billionaire-prince-alwaleed-bin-talal-reportedly-arrested-for-corruption/#4a69f39d5e25" target="_blank" rel="noopener">was one of</a> more than a dozen individuals reportedly arrested last weekend in what many news outlets have described as a purge designed to consolidate the crown prince’s power.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2017/11/03/roadblock-elon-musks-net-worth-drops-800-million-day-amid-tesla-woes/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Elon Musk&#8217;s Net Worth Drops $800 Million In A Day Amid Tesla Woes</a>
Forbes profiled Alwaleed in a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2013/03/05/prince-alwaleed-and-the-curious-case-of-kingdom-holding-stock/#3ada69e677db" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2013 story</a> that documented his wild eccentricity and self-promotional tendencies. The billionaire had once lived a quieter life. He attended Menlo College in California and Syracuse University before launching Kingdom Holding in 1980. He is perhaps best known in the West for his investments in high-profile companies, including Lyft and Twitter.
Contacted by Forbes on Monday, Kingdom Holding did not respond to a request for comment. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahkirsch/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Noah Kirsch</a>, FORBES STAFF

Net Worth Of Billionaire Saudi Prince Under Arrest Falls $2.8 Billion

Ruth wanted to see ‘a bit of Africa’ in 10 days. “Drive around, see some countries,” she asked.
Aged 30, complicated, full of life, excitable, blonde, tall and beautiful, Ruth expects a lot. She’s Canadian and works in medical admin in Saudi Arabia.
So off we set, drove Johannesburg to Francistown, spent night one in Woodlands overnight camp. Rack of lamb expertly braaied by yours truly (thank you, thank you) over Mopani wood coals, a tame guinea fowl flock waking us early the next morning with screeches and clucks as squirrels danced across our chalet’s thatch, that special bushveld smell infusing our coffee and rusks.
“Excellent!” judged Ruth.
At the Chobe River we searched for our booking at ‘Ouma se Plekkie’, discovering it was called Kasane Self-Catering and was the home of a former Chairman of BirdLife Botswana. Heuglin’s Robin sang us to sleep after brilliantly braaied steak (thank you), salad and potatoes, readying us for our afternoon cruise on the river. (Yes, I do know its new name is a White-browed Robin-chat but they don’t sing as well.)
A small elephant herd on an island came to the boat, another herd walked alongside us, 50 hippos gave us the hairy eyeball, open-billed and yellow-billed storks vied with carmine bee-eaters, long-toed plovers and jacanas to entertain us.
“Splendid,” said Ruth.
And the morning and the evening were the second day. Behold, on the third day we did rise at dawn, enter a small craft and scurry up and down the Chobe River, seeing puku buck, impala, cheeky warthogs, a giraffe, 100 hippos and an impressive herd of 300 buffalo. White-fronted bee-eaters and red-billed oxpeckers waved us goodbye.
Africa’s bureaucratic irritation struck us for the first time as we crossed from Botswana’s clean border through the mess that is Zimbabwe’s border post. A 60-minute wait plus $75 for a stamp for Ruth, single entry only. If we walked across the bridge at Victoria Falls to Zambia it would be another $75 for her. Idiocy.
We stayed at the Victoria Falls Rest Camp ($40 a night for a chalet for two) on night one, then moved to the Victoria Falls Hotel after Ruth rafted the mighty Zambezi.
“Awesome,” said Ruth.
So was that lovely old colonial hotel, great room, splendid atmosphere, superb manager, cheerful and helpful staff.
“Fabulous,” said Ruth.
We watched a video of her trip at Shoestrings, the backpacker place. Loud music, cold beer, indifferent pizza but ultra-fiery chilli.
“Burnt my tongue,” bemoaned Ruth, as we breakfasted or rather feasted the next morning with the splendor of the Victoria Falls Hotel view before us.
What makes this hotel so special, owned as it is half by Zimbabwe’s railways and half by Zambia’s?
“It’s the staff, and the history, and it is iconic, indulgent even opulent,” says manager Giulio Togni.
He is being modest.
Cape Town-born, this hotelier plays a big part in making sure the hotel charms every guest. And it’s green, with a worm farm and its own large vegetable and herb garden which
feeds guests.
We have now been in Vic Falls for two-and-a-half days and three nights. Intrepid rafter Ruth has still not seen the falls.
“Tomorrow,” she says.
So we book into the luxurious Stanley and Livingstone, where Mike the Head Ranger gets us off the game vehicle to walk down to the river to confront a black rhino and her calf.
Calm until she smells us, the mother snorts, whirls around, half charges. Mike shouts at her, she backs off – and Ruth has backed away quite a significant distance.
“Awesome,” says Ruth. “My heartbeat raced!”
Excited she asks, “Were you nervous?”
“No,” I lie. (She needs to feel safe, is my justification.)
That evening we stalk buffalo on foot before sundowners of G&amp;Ts on a high rock.
“We were really close!” says Ruth, and Mike admits even he was worked up.
“Exciting,” says Ruth, “hey?”
Next is Hwange, two nights in Zimbabwe’s popular reserve. With ranger Mike we decide Ruth’s ‘tribal totem’ is a honey badger so it is uncanny that early the first morning we see two honey badgers at our braai place.
Top three sightings for us at Hwange are the badgers at our chalet at 5.30AM, a tawny eagle at the waterhole, and a dozen herds of elephant cavorting in mud, water and around our car.
“Better than sex,” says Ruth.
Welcome to Africa, my dear.

‘Better Than Sex’

Bigotry and prejudice rooted in sexism and Islamophobia were common subtexts in much of the reporting on the siege of Nairobi’s Westgate Mall in Kenya over the past few weeks. This was, of course, fueled by the alleged involvement of the so-called ‘White Widow’ in the brazen attack, which claimed several lives. Samantha Lewthwaite is a British national, who happens to be white and Muslim.
The reportage highlighted how women in general and Muslim women in particular are depicted when they are active in political causes, some of which are characterized by violence.
The fact that no conclusive evidence has been found to link Lewthwaite to the attack did not stop the media, especially the English tabloids, from framing women and Muslims in classic stereotypical terms. The Guardian’s Jamie Gilham explains:
“On Monday morning the front pages of the tabloids condemned ‘evil’ and ‘fanatical’ Samantha Lewthwaite, aka the White Widow, as the Nairobi ‘bloodbath mastermind’. The precise nature of the tragic events in Nairobi are still unfolding and, when the tabloids went to press on Sunday night, little was known about Lewthwaite’s alleged involvement in the Nairobi attack. A few days on, we still don’t know much, and the evidence against Lewthwaite is scant and contradictory. Nevertheless, the Muslim convert and widow of 7/7 attacker Germaine Lindsay has become the symbol of home-grown terrorism, a target of fear and loathing.”
Gilham goes on to say that for the tabloids, Lewthwaite’s transgressions are plentiful: she converted to Islam, took the veil and a Muslim name (Sherafiyah), married a black and notoriously radical convert, and is the mother of mixed-race children. And while it is not the first time a British citizen has converted to Islam, Lewthwaite’s case signified something else. It reveals that, by converting to Islam, women disturb conventions about ethnicity, gender and religion, Gilham argues.
Na’eem Jeenah, the director of the Afro-Middle East Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa, concurs.
“If this was an anarchist organization, for example, and the leader was a woman widow, then I think the treatment would have been different. But because it is a Muslim organization, there is already this kind of sense that women in Muslim organizations and Muslim societies don’t play prominent roles. So this (Lewthwaite’s alleged leadership of the group that staged the Westgate Mall attack) is already unusual, an oddity.”
Jeenah says her race is also a key issue; for some Britons, Lewthwaite’s actions mean she has crossed over to “the dark side”. “In the case of Samantha, there is an extra exoticization… From the Western media’s sense, this is a very strange phenomenon because she is a woman, but more so because she is white,” he argues.
Men’s political choices are hardly ever questioned. Conversely, women face all kinds of scrutiny when they become active in organizations, especially those with an Islamist bent, such as al-Shabaab. More so because the conventional view of Islam is that it relegates women to the margins, as if they have little or no agency.
Ironically, Lewthwaite’s alleged involvement as the possible mastermind of the Nairobi attack debunks the myth that Islam treats women as second-class citizens.
Throughout history, women have played a role in politics, even in the so-called Muslim world. In fact, very few countries that have had women heads of state are from the West. Margaret Thatcher of Britain, Germany’s Angela Merkel and Australia’s Julia Gillard are among the few who have reached the top of the political game. Compare that with developing countries such as Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil, India, Malawi, Liberia and Chile – all of which have had women heads of state – two of whom are Muslim.
The fact that the developing world, which includes countries with massive Muslim populations, has had women ascend to the pinnacle of political power proves that conventional views of the role and position of women in these societies are far more complex and fluid than mainstream Western media portrays them.
In the West, Muslim women are cast as people who stay at home, are given household chores to do and are oppressed in their domestic confinement. When women operate outside of that mold, it messes with the stereotype that casts all lslamist groups as
inherently misogynist and anti-women. Jeenah says Lewthwaite’s alleged leadership of the group responsible for the carnage in Nairobi blows the Western media’s view of women in Islam out of the water.
“She is going further. Not only is she involved in politics, she is taking up arms, planning the attacks and leading the group. Her alleged role simply doesn’t square with the stereotypes – firstly of Muslims and secondly of Islamist organizations.”
History also questions the media-fed formula that women under Islam are subservient. From the fight for the liberation of Palestine to the anti-colonial war in Algeria and the struggle for equality in South Africa, women have played a role.
In fact, women have led some of the most audacious attacks against their enemies. The bitter war of independence in Algeria is one example. According to Danièle Djamila Amrane-Minne and Farida Abu-Haidar of the Muse Project, Algerian women had joined the struggle for independence from the get-go. Their research shows that there were 10,949 fighting women, representing 3.1% of all those taking part in active combat during the war of liberation. This percentage, which may seem negligible, is approximately the same as the percentage of European women who took part in World War II. Algerian women who joined the struggle were not merely sympathizers or militants on a short-term basis, but proper fighters and members of the National Liberation Army or the National Liberation Front Civil Organization.
The daring 1969 highjacking of a Boeing 707 by Palestinian Leila Khaled ensured a visual image of a woman as a courageous fighter for the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. Another example is Fatima Meer’s leading role in the fight against Apartheid in South Africa. These are merely some examples of how women in Muslim settings have broken the mold that portrays women as inferior or lacking in agency.
Granted, there are some Muslim states, such as Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, where women are actively prevented from living full lives. In the oil-rich desert state, Saudi women are not even allowed to drive. In Afghanistan, girls’ and women’s lives are threatened if they try to get an education. And while myths about the living conditions of all Muslim women is often false, they are fueled by the actions of states that claim to follow Islam when they oppress and sub- jugate women.
Jeenah concedes: “the thing about stereotypes is not that they are not true, but that they are not for most of the time”. Certain Muslim societies fuel stereotypes about the role of women in Islam – Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan are cases in point.
Jeenah also points out that the position of women in Iran is often misunderstood. He says even if they are compelled to wear a headscarf, Iranian women are much more assertive than women in the rest of the Muslim world, and even in much of the Western world.
“If you look at the Muslim world, the biggest Muslim community is in Indonesia, second-biggest is India, the third in Pakistan… If you look at the manner in which women play their roles in all of these bigger communities, and even in the Arab world, where the biggest Muslim community is Egypt, in the broader Middle East, Iran and Turkey, women play a much more assertive role.”
The irony of the media’s stereo-typing of women in general and Muslim women in particular, is that the very stories meant to reinforce the negative framing of women as disempowered, often debunk that narrative. In reality, Muslim women, as in the case of Samantha Lewthwaite, are anything but subservient.

Tag: Saudi Arabia