According to The Guardian, as of 2013 there were more than half a million foreign-born domestic workers in Saudi Arabia. Most have backgrounds in poverty and come from Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. To go to work in Saudi Arabia, they must often pay large sums to recruitment agencies in their home countries. The agencies then handle the necessary legal paperwork.As the Saudi population grows and oil export revenues stagnate, pressure for "Saudization" has grown, and the Saudi government hopes to decrease the number of foreign nationals in the country. Saudi Arabia expelled 800,000 Yemenis in 1990 and 1991 and has built a Saudi–Yemen barrier against an influx of illegal immigrants and against the smuggling of drugs and weapons.
In November 2013, Saudi Arabia expelled thousands of illegal Ethiopian residents from the Kingdom. Various Human Rights entities have criticized Saudi Arabia's handling of the issue. Over 500,000 undocumented migrant workers — mostly from Somalia, Ethiopia, and Yemen — have been detained and deported since 2013.
An investigation led by The Sunday Telegraph, exposed the condition of African migrants who were detained in Saudi Arabia allegedly for containing COVID-19 in the kingdom. Many of the migrants died due to heatstroke or by attempting suicide, after being severely beaten and tortured. The migrants lack proper living conditions, provision of food and water. Authorities in Saudi Arabia announced the full lifting of the nationwide curfew and the resumption of all economic and commercial activities from Sunday 21 June.
Commercial flights are now operating to and from Saudi Arabia on a limited number of routes. All modes of public transport are permitted to operate at full capacity. The Saudi authorities have announced that wearing a face mask in public places is mandatory. The Saudi authorities will keep this plan under review depending on the progress of the virus. You should monitor announcements issued by the Saudi Ministry of Health Twitter page and Ministry of Interior see here for any updates.
The Saudi authorities may implement localised lockdowns in response to the detection of infection clusters. If you are subject to a localised lockdown, follow the instructions of the authorities. In response to the new strain of COVID-19, on December 27, the government of Saudi Arabia announced a one-week extension of its travel-related restrictions. The restrictions, originally announced on December 21, extended the suspension, except in exceptional cases, of all international flights for travelers, including entry to the Kingdom through land and sea ports. In response to the spread of a new strain of COVID-19, entry into Saudi Arabia from 13 countries is restricted to residents of Saudi Arabia who have received two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine within Saudi Arabia prior to their travel.
Health workers, diplomats and Saudi nationals, and their families are exempt from the restriction but may still be required to complete a period of home quarantine and PCR tests on arrival. For all other travellers, including those who have visited or transited through one of the countries listed above in the 14 days prior to entering Saudi Arabia, travel to Saudi Arabia from these countries remains suspended. The government held its first-ever elections in 2005 and 2011, when Saudis went to the polls to elect municipal councilors. In December 2015, women were allowed to vote and stand as candidates for the first time in municipal council elections, with 19 women winning seats.
After King SALMAN ascended to the throne in 2015, he placed the first next-generation prince, MUHAMMAD BIN NAYIF bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud, in the line of succession as Crown Prince. He designated his son, MUHAMMAD BIN SALMAN bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud, as the Deputy Crown Prince. In March 2015, Saudi Arabia led a coalition of 10 countries in a military campaign to restore the legitimate government of Yemen, which had been ousted by Huthi forces allied with former president ALI ABDULLAH al-Salih. The war in Yemen has drawn international criticism for civilian casualties and its effect on the country's dire humanitarian situation. In December 2015, then Deputy Crown Prince MUHAMMAD BIN SALMAN announced Saudi Arabia would lead a 34-nation Islamic Coalition to fight terrorism . In May 2017, Saudi Arabia inaugurated the Global Center for Combatting Extremist Ideology (also known as "Etidal") as part of its ongoing efforts to counter violent extremism.
In June 2017, King SALMAN elevated MUHAMMAD BIN SALMAN to Crown Prince. Since then, he has jockeyed for influence with neighboring countries in a bid to be the region's main power broker. The suspension of all international flights to/from Saudi Arabia is extended until further notice. The Saudi authorities have introduced an online registration system to facilitate the repatriation of expatriates holding exit/re-entry or final exit visas to their home countries. Approved residents will receive an SMS with available dates and will be able to purchase flight tickets.
Departures will take place through Riyadh-based King Khalid International Airport, Jeddah-based King Abdulaziz International Airport and Dammam-based King Fahd International Airport. From 15 September 2020, certain categories of travellers holding valid visas (exit/entry, business, residence/Iqama and visit) are allowed to enter and exit the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam and home to Islam's two holiest shrines in Mecca and Medina.
The modern Saudi state was founded in 1932 by ABD AL-AZIZ bin Abd al-Rahman Al SAUD after a 30-year campaign to unify most of the Arabian Peninsula. One of his male descendants rules the country today, as required by the country's 1992 Basic Law. Following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Saudi Arabia accepted the Kuwaiti royal family and 400,000 refugees while allowing Western and Arab troops to deploy on its soil for the liberation of Kuwait the following year.
The continuing presence of foreign troops on Saudi soil after the liberation of Kuwait became a source of tension between the royal family and the public until all operational US troops left the country in 2003. Major terrorist attacks in May and November 2003 spurred a strong ongoing campaign against domestic terrorism and extremism. US troops returned to the Kingdom in October 2019 after attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure. Obesity is a problem among middle and upper-class Saudis who have domestic servants to do traditional work but, until 2018, were forbidden to drive and so are limited in their ability to leave their home. The religious police, known as the mutawa, imposed many restrictions on women in public in Saudi Arabia. The restrictions include forcing women to sit in separate specially designated family sections in restaurants, to wear an abaya and to cover their hair.
However, in 2016, the Saudi cabinet has drastically reduced the power of the religious police and barred it "from pursuing, questioning, asking for identification, arresting and detaining anyone suspected of a crime". The king combines legislative, executive, and judicial functions and royal decrees form the basis of the country's legislation. The king is also the prime minister, and presides over the Council of Ministers of Saudi Arabia and Consultative Assembly of Saudi Arabia. The family's vast numbers allow it to control most of the kingdom's important posts and to have an involvement and presence at all levels of government. The number of princes is estimated to be at least 7,000, with most power and influence being wielded by the 200 or so male descendants of Ibn Saud. The key ministries are generally reserved for the royal family, as are the 13 regional governorships.
The vast wealth generated by oil revenues was beginning to have an even greater impact on Saudi society. It led to rapid technological modernization, urbanization, mass public education, and the creation of new media. This and the presence of increasingly large numbers of foreign workers greatly affected traditional Saudi norms and values. Although there was a dramatic change in the social and economic life of the country, political power continued to be monopolized by the royal family leading to discontent among many Saudis who began to look for wider participation in government. According to the BICC, Saudi Arabia is the 28th most militarized country in the world and possesses the second-best military equipment qualitatively in the region, after Israel.
By the late 2010s, there have been continual calls for halting of arms sales to Saudi Arabia, mainly due to alleged war crimes in Yemen and especially following the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. Many public places have hygiene measures in place, including taking a temperature check and sanitising hands upon entry. You are required to show your health status on the Tawakkalna app here before being allowed to enter.
You are required to show your health status on the Tawakkalna app before being allowed to enter. From 2005 to 2015, King ABDALLAH bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud incrementally modernized the Kingdom. Saudi Arabia saw some protests during the 2011 Arab Spring but not the level of bloodshed seen in protests elsewhere in the region. Shia Muslims in the Eastern Province protested primarily against the detention of political prisoners, endemic discrimination, and Bahraini and Saudi Government actions in Bahrain.
Riyadh took a cautious but firm approach by arresting some protesters but releasing most of them quickly and by using its state-sponsored clerics to counter political and Islamist activism. A new strategy has been developed by the Ministry, known as Diet and Physical Activity Strategy or DPAS for short. Many lifestyle issues in the country were causing bad lifestyle choices. This led to the Ministry advising that there should be a tax increase on unhealthy food, drink and also cigarettes in the region. This additional tax could be utilized to improve healthcare offerings.
As part of the same strategy, calorie labels were added in 2019 to a number of food and drink products. Ingredients were also listed, not as an aim to reduce obesity, but also for citizens with health issues, to manage their diet. As part of the ongoing focus on tackling obesity, women-only gyms were allowed to open in 2017. A number of sports were offered in each of these gyms, including bodybuilding, running and swimming to maintain higher standards of health.Smoking in Saudi-Arabia in all age groups was widespread. In 2009 the lowest median percentage of smokers was university students (~13.5%) while the highest was elderly people (~25%). The study also found the median percentage of male smokers to be much higher than that of females (~26.5% for males, ~9% for females).
Before 2010, Saudi Arabia had no policies banning or restricting smoking. The unexpected impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the economy, along with Saudi Arabia's poor human rights records, laid unforeseen challenges before the development plans of the Kingdom, where some of the programs under 'Vision 2030' were also expected to be affected. On 2 May, the Finance Minister of Saudi Arabia admitted that the country's economy was facing a severe economical crisis for the first time in decades, due to the pandemic as well as declining global oil markets.
Mohammed Al-Jadaan said that the country will take "painful" measures and keep all options open to deal with the impact. From 2003 to 2013, "several key services" were privatized—municipal water supply, electricity, telecommunications—and parts of education and health care, traffic control and car accident reporting were also privatized. In November 2005, Saudi Arabia was approved as a member of the World Trade Organization. Negotiations to join had focused on the degree to which Saudi Arabia is willing to increase market access to foreign goods and in 2000, the government established the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority to encourage foreign direct investment in the kingdom. Saudi Arabia maintains a list of sectors in which foreign investment is prohibited, but the government plans to open some closed sectors such as telecommunications, insurance, and power transmission/distribution over time. The government has also made an attempt at "Saudizing" the economy, replacing foreign workers with Saudi nationals with limited success.
They harassed, arbitrarily detained and prosecuted government critics, human rights defenders, family members of activists and many others. Repression of the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly intensified. Virtually all known Saudi Arabian human rights defenders inside the country were detained or imprisoned at the end of the year. Grossly unfair trials continued before the Specialized Criminal Court and other courts. Courts resorted extensively to the death penalty and people were executed for a wide range of crimes.
Migrant workers were even more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation because of the pandemic, and thousands were arbitrarily detained in dire conditions, leading to an unknown number of deaths. Travelbans.org provides access to measures and global travel restrictions taken by governments. Our information includes country travel restrictions, flight restrictions, the requirement of COVID- 19 certificates, quarantine measures and vaccination. As much as possible, we provide a link to the resource on the respective website. Although we do our best to keep the information updated as it is reported. The information shown is for guidance only since the situation is rapidly evolving.
This does not apply to domestic workers of nationals of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and United Arab Emirates. They must be accompanied by the sponsor or one of the first degree family members of the sponsor. The country remains a leading producer of oil and natural gas and holds about 17% of the world's proven oil reserves as of 2020. The government continues to pursue economic reform and diversification, particularly since Saudi Arabia's accession to the WTO in 2005, and promotes foreign investment in the Kingdom. In April 2016, the Saudi Government announced a broad set of socio-economic reforms, known as Vision 2030.
Low global oil prices throughout 2015 and 2016 significantly lowered Saudi Arabia's governmental revenue. In response, the government cut subsidies on water, electricity, and gasoline; reduced government employee compensation packages; and announced limited new land taxes. In coordination with OPEC and some key non-OPEC countries, Saudi Arabia agreed cut oil output in early 2017 to regulate supply and help elevate global prices. In early 2020, this agreement by the so-called OPEC+ coalition collapsed. Saudi Arabia launched a price war by flooding the market with low-priced oil before returning to the negotiating table to agree to OPEC+'s largest and longest-lasting output cut.
This cut helped to buoy prices that had collapsed as a result of the price war and the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. Under Saudi law, every adult female must have a male relative as her "guardian" , As of 2008, a woman was required to have permission from her male guardian in order to travel, study, or work. A royal decree passed in May 2017 allowed them to avail government services such as education and healthcare without the need of a consent of a male guardian. The order however also stated that it should only be allowed if it does not contradict the Sharia system. Until 2016, the kingdom only used the lunar Islamic calendar, not the international Gregorian calendar, but in 2016 the kingdom announced its switch to the Gregorian calendar for civil purposes. Some businesses decide to close three or four times a day for 30 to 45 minutes during business hours while employees and customers are sent off to pray.
The weekend is Friday-Saturday, not Saturday-Sunday because Friday is the holiest day for Muslims. For many years only two religious holidays were publicly recognized – ʿĪd al-Fiṭr and ʿĪd al-Aḍḥā. (ʿĪd al-Fiṭr is "the biggest" holiday, a three-day period of "feasting, gift-giving and general letting go").
Health care in Saudi Arabia is a national health care system in which the government provides free health care services through a number of government agencies. Saudi Arabia has been ranked among the 26 best countries in providing high quality healthcare. The Saudi Ministry of Health is the major government agency entrusted with the provision of preventive, curative, and rehabilitative health care for the Kingdom's population. The Ministry's origins can be traced to 1925, when a number of regional health departments were established, with the first in Makkah, Saudi Arabia. The various healthcare institutions were merged to become a ministerial body in 1950. Abdullah bin Faisal Al Saud was the first health minister and served in the position for three years, with his main role to set up the newly formed Ministry.
As of October 2018, Saudi Arabia is the largest economy in the Middle East and the 18th largest in the world.Saudi Arabia has the world's second-largest proven petroleum reserves and the country is the largest exporter of petroleum. It has the second highest total estimated value of natural resources, valued at US$34.4 trillion in 2016.Saudi Arabia's command economy is petroleum-based; roughly 63% of budget revenues and 67% of export earnings come from the oil industry. The totalitarian regime ruling the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is consistently ranked among the "worstest" in Freedom House's annual survey of political and civil rights. According to Amnesty International, security forces continued to torture and ill- treat detainees to extract confessions to be used as evidence against them at trial.
Saudi Arabia abstained from the United Nations vote adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, saying it contradicted sharia law. Mass execution such as those carried out in 2016 and in 2019 have been condemned by international rights groups. In its Corruption Perceptions Index for 2010, Transparency International gave Saudi Arabia a score of 4.7 (on a scale from 0 to 10 where 0 is "highly corrupt" and 10 is "highly clean"). A number of prominent Saudi Arabian princes, government ministers, and businesspeople, including Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, were arrested in Saudi Arabia in November 2017. By 1976, Saudi Arabia had become the largest oil producer in the world.
Khalid's reign saw economic and social development progress at an extremely rapid rate, transforming the infrastructure and educational system of the country; in foreign policy, close ties with the US were developed. In 1979, two events occurred which greatly concerned the government, and had a long-term influence on Saudi foreign and domestic policy. It was feared that the country's Shi'ite minority in the Eastern Province might rebel under the influence of their Iranian co-religionists. There were several anti-government uprisings in the region such as the 1979 Qatif Uprising. The travel ban also applied to travellers who transited through any of the 20 countries in the 14 days before a planned visit to the country. Saudi Arabia will lift the travel ban on people coming from six countries including India.
How many countries are in Saudi Arabia Apart from that, passengers from Pakistan, Brazil, Vietnam, Egypt and Indonesia will be allowed to enter the Kingdom directly from December 1, local reports suggested. The Arab states of the Persian Gulf – also known as Gulf countries or the "Arabian Gulf" – is a set of Arab states that border the Persian Gulf. Almost all of the countries, except Iraq, are members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a regional intergovernmental union. Iran is also located along the Persian Gulf, but this non-Arab state is not included in the Arabian Gulf. From pastime activities such as theater, radio, and soap operas to music styles and a maritime-focused lifestyle, there are many similarities among residents throughout the region. They also have similar economies, bringing in significant revenue from petroleum.
