Saudi authorities should end the country’s driving ban for women as the “Women2Drive” campaign gathers momentum, Human Rights Watch said today.

“It is hard to believe that in the 21st century, Saudi Arabia is still barring women from driving,” said Rothna Begum, Middle East and North Africa women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “It’s past time to address the country’s systemic discrimination; driving could open roads to reform.”

In recent months, women have defied the ban and published online videos of themselves driving the kingdom’s roads, including footage showing Saudi men driving by and giving the thumbs-up sign to show their support. The Ministry of Interior has issued a statement saying that officials will enforce the law on October 26.

The informal prohibition on female driving in Saudi Arabia became official state policy in 1990. During the Gulf War, Saudi women saw female American soldiers driving on military bases in their country, and organized a protest. Dozens of Saudi women drove the streets of Riyadh in a convoy to protest the restriction. In response, officials arrested them, suspended them from their jobs, and the Grand Mufti, the country’s most senior religious authority, immediately declared a fatwa, or religious edict, against women driving, stating that driving would expose women to “temptation” and lead to “social chaos.” Then-Minister of Interior Prince Nayef banned women’s driving by decree on the basis of the fatwa.

The “Women2Drive” campaign has used social media to raise awareness and encourage female drivers to take to the roads. On October 10, police stopped and detained two women in a car, including prominent blogger Eman al-Nafjan, who was filming the other woman driving. Officials released them the same day, after they signed a pledge not to repeat their actions. Their male “guardians” – the Saudi system requires a father, husband, or even a son to take legal responsibility for every woman – also signed a pledge that the women would not drive.

The campaign has also reignited public debate on female driving. The head of the religious police stated in September that Sharia, or Islamic law, has no text forbidding women from driving. A cleric’s claim that “driving affects women’s ovaries” was met with widespread mockery by Saudis on Twitter. In October, three women members of the Shura Council, the highest advisory body to the king, called for the traffic committee to look into lifting the ban, but other members of the council rejected the recommendation, saying the traffic committee had no authority to launch such an investigation.

Many within Saudi Arabia’s conservative religious establishment continue to oppose allowing women the right to drive, arguing that it would undermine social values. On October 22, more than 100 clerics visited the Royal Court, the office of the king, to protest “the conspiracy of women driving.”

On October 24, Saudi activists confirmed that a man who claimed to be from the Ministry of Interior individually phoned women activists behind the “Women2Drive” campaign, warning them not to drive on October 26. He told them that measures will be taken against all women why defy the driving ban, and that women caught driving could be taken into custody.

Saudi Arabia has recently made several advances on women’s rights in other areas. In September 2011, King Abdullah decreed that women would be able to stand as candidates and vote in municipal elections, next due in 2015, and women could become members of the Shura Council. In January 2013, he appointed 30 women among 150 Shura Council members. In September 2013, authorities passed a law that for the first time criminalized domestic violence.

Despite these advances, Saudi women continue to face pervasive, systematic state discrimination in their daily lives. The male guardianship system treats them as legal minors, who cannot conduct official government business, travel abroad, marry, pursue higher education, or undergo certain medical procedures without permission from men. Women cannot protest or establish independent organizations to address women’s rights, as the kingdom bans protest and does not permit nongovernmental human rights organizations to operate freely.

Driving has become a symbol of change for Saudi women. On the 2008 International Women’s Day, March 8, Wajeha al-Huwaider uploaded a video of herself driving in Saudi Arabia. That same year, al-Huwaider and Fawzia al-Oyouni founded an unregistered NGO called the Association for the Protection and Defense of Women’s Rights in Saudi Arabia and submitted a petition to King Abdullah calling for the reversal of the ban. These two leading activists currently face imprisonment for trying to help a woman who said that her husband had locked her and her children in their home without food or water.

When women activists launched the “Women2Drive” campaign in 2011, scores of women drove, but traffic police stopped many of them and forced their male guardians to sign a pledge that they would not allow the women to drive again. The Jeddah Criminal Court sentenced one woman to 10 lashes; but the sentence was later overturned. A Jeddah administrative court dismissed one legal challenge to the refusal of the Ministry of Interior to grant women drivers’ licenses, though no traffic or other regulation limits granting licenses to men. The court said that the decision fell outside of the jurisdiction of the court system and transferred it to an administrative inquiry by a committee at the Ministry of Interior. The results of the investigation have not yet been announced.

Because of the ban, women often rely on male relatives or foreign drivers to convey them to work, school, and other activities. Saudi women have complained that the cost of hiring foreign drivers to take them to work eats up much of their salaries. Women who cannot afford to hire a driver must sometimes forego work and other activities outside the home. The fatwa on the driving ban cited the goal of preventing women from committing acts of khilwa – spending time in a secluded space with an unrelated man – but ironically, because of the ban, women often resort to taking taxis chauffeured by strangers or hiring male drivers, often foreign nationals.

Saudi Arabia is to make a bid for a three-year seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council in November 2013.

“In 2005 King Abdullah came to power and said that he believed the day would come when women would drive,” said Begum. “Eight years later, the time for excuses is over.”

In recent weeks, security forces have conducted home raids in the vicinity of the race circuit and arbitrarily arrested and detained opposition figures. Protesters have indicated they will demonstrate against the Grand Prix, with the risk that the Bahraini authorities will use repressive measures to close down the protests.

“Bahrain is already tightening the lid on protest as the Formula 1 race grows near,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The Formula 1 organizers apparently prefer to bury their heads in the sand, risking holding their race against repression it has provoked.”

Human Rights Watch said it was unaware of any public comment by Formula 1 organizers about the recent spate of security force abuses near the race site.

Race authorities also have failed to consider the impact of the event on Bahrain’s ongoing human rights violations, Human Rights Watch said. The Bahraini authorities regularly imprison peaceful demonstrators and human rights defenders, and security forces use excessive and at times deadly force against protesters. The authorities have failed to investigate and prosecute high-level officials responsible for serious human rights violations.

Since large-scale protests began in 2011, abuses by security forces have resulted in the death of scores of protesters and bystanders, serious injuries to hundreds of people, arrests of thousands more, and more than 300 formal allegations of torture and ill-treatment. In February, Human Rights Watch concluded, based on discussions with officials, that authorities have made no progress in investigating and prosecuting higher-level officials responsible for the worst abuses during the 2011 protests.

On May 26, 2011, Human Rights Watch wrote to the chairs of the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile and the Formula One Teams Association, Jean Todt and Martin Whitmarsh respectively, to urge that they and their member organizations take into account the severe human rights crisis in Bahrain and consult the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. Human Rights Watch has not been able to determine that either body has taken any steps to assess the ramifications of their current involvement in Bahrain.

Responding to the news media about abuses by the government during the 2012 race, Todt said: “We know protests can have a negative result. We are a governing body running sport, you can have lots of protests and there can be consequences, and I am not sure the protests would not have happened if the Grand Prix would not have happened.”

During protests that took place on April 21 during the 2012 Grand Prix, Bahraini security forces killed Salah Abbas Habib, a protester, in the town of Shakhoura. A November 2012 follow-up report by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry concluded that Habib “was arrested and assaulted, and then shot with [a] shotgun” by security forces.

The chief prosecutor of Bahrain’s Special Investigations Unit announced on April 8 that his office had charged a police officer with wilful homicide in Habib’s case, but the case exposes the dangers that protesters face in confrontations with security forces and criminal charges in cases such as these are the exception.

In stark contrast to impunity for security forces, Bahrain’s justice system has prosecuted peaceful protesters, Human Rights Watch said. On January 7, the Court of Cassation upheld the convictions and lengthy prison terms of 13 prominent dissidents, of whom seven were sentenced to life in prison, solely for exercising their rights to free expression and peaceful assembly in the 2011 protests.

Between April 1 and April 10, security forces conducted a series of home raids and arbitrarily detained opposition protestors in Dar Khulaib, Shahrakan, Madinat Hamad, and Karzakkan, towns close the Bahrain International Circuit. During the raids, plain-clothes, masked, and armed police officers arrested at least 20 people, some of them prominent and well-known anti-government protesters.

Human Rights Watch has received new reports of security forces shooting protesters in the head with tear gas canisters. In the most recent incident, on April 13 in Samaheej, local sources told Human Rights Watch, Sara Ismail, 18, required medical attention after security forces shot her in the head with a teargas canister.

“The inconvenient reality for Formula 1 organizers is that their event in Bahrain has become a focal point for popular discontent, with abuses against protesters ratcheting up in a country that has become notorious for them, and is unwilling or unable to implement meaningful reforms,” Whitson said. “And those who care about Formula 1 officials should care that human suffering and repression is tainting their sport.”