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Eloy Alfaro de Alba (with gavel), Permanent Representative of Panama to the United Nations and President of the Security Council for the Month of August, chairs the Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By IPS Correspondent
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 21 2025 (IPS)

Human rights groups have expressed alarm over the surge in unprecedented executions in Saudi Arabia in 2025. Humanitarian experts have underscored the Saudi Arabian monarchy’s use of the death penalty to silence peaceful dissent among civilians and impose justice for minor offenses, with little to no due process.

On August 11, Human Rights Watch (HRW) raised the alarm on the rise in executions of civilians and foreign nationals in Saudi Arabia. Their new report highlighted the June 14 execution of journalist Turki al-Jasser, who worked to expose corruption and human rights violations linked to the Saudi monarchy.

Following al-Jasser’s execution, Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry issued a statement in which it accused al-Jasser of committing “terrorist crimes” and “destabilizing the security of society and the stability of the state”. This follows the 2024 execution of Abdullah al-Shamri, a Saudi political analyst, after appearing as a political commentator on broadcast news for prominent media organizations.

“The June 2025 execution of Saudi journalist Turki al-Jasser, after seven years of arbitrary imprisonment on fabricated charges over his online publications, is a chilling testament to the kingdom’s zero tolerance to peaceful dissent and criticism, and a grim reminder of the peril journalists face in Saudi Arabia,” said Sylvia Mbataru, a researcher of civic space at CIVICUS Global Alliance.

HRW reports that Saudi authorities are pursuing the death penalty against Islamic scholar Salman al-Odah and religious reformist activist Hassan Farhan al-Maliki on vague charges related to the peaceful and public expression of their beliefs.

“Behind closed doors, Saudi Arabia is executing peaceful activists and journalists following politicized trials,” said Abdullah Alaoudh, senior director of countering authoritarianism at the Middle East Democracy Center. “These state-sanctioned killings are an assault on basic human rights and dignity that the world cannot afford to ignore.”

Figures from HRW show that as of August 5, Saudi authorities had carried out over 241 executions in 2025. including 22 alone on the week of August 4. Amnesty International reports that 2024 set a new record for annual executions in Saudi Arabia, documenting at least 345. The human rights organization Reprieve projects that if executions are carried out at the same rate, 2025 could exceed all prior records.

“Saudi authorities have weaponized the country’s justice system to carry out a terrifying number of executions in 2025,” said Joey Shea, researcher for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates at Human Rights Watch. “The surge in executions is just the latest evidence of the brutally autocratic rule of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.”

Estimates from Reprieve show that roughly 162 of this year’s recorded executions were for minor drug-related offenses, with over half involving foreign nationals. HRW reports that none of these executions followed due process, making it highly unlikely that any of those executed received a fair trial.

“Saudi Arabia’s relentless and ruthless use of the death penalty after grossly unfair trials not only demonstrates a chilling disregard for human life; its application for drug-related offenses is also an egregious violation of international law and standards,” said Kristine Beckerle, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“We are witnessing a truly horrifying trend, with foreign nationals being put to death at a startling rate for crimes that should never carry the death penalty. This report exposes the dark and deadly reality behind the progressive image that the authorities attempt to project globally.”

Earlier this year, Amnesty International, the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights, and Justice Project Pakistan documented the cases of 25 foreign nations who were on death row or have been executed in Saudi Arabia for drug-related offenses. The investigation found that the majority of individuals on death row were not afforded their fundamental human rights, such as access to a legal representative, interpretation services, and consular support. Additionally, Amnesty International reported that in many of these cases, individuals from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds faced heightened risks of discrimination in legal proceedings.

Furthermore, it was reported that at least four of these cases involved the use of torture and ill treatment in detention facilities to extract confessions from individuals charged with drug-related crimes. For many of these individuals, their families were not informed of the status of their convictions and were only notified of an execution the day prior. In all cases of execution, Amnesty International reported that the bodies of executed individuals were withheld by Saudi authorities.

The recent surge in executions has drawn immense criticism from human rights groups for violating international humanitarian law. Although Saudi Arabia has not acceded to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a multilateral treaty adopted by the UN that promoted an inherent right to life and due process, it has ratified the Arab Charter on Human Rights, which obligates that Saudi Arabian security forces are only to use the death penalty for the “most serious crimes”.

Mandeep Tiwana, the Secretary-General of CIVICUS Global Alliance, informed IPS that the current civic space conditions in Saudi Arabia are listed as “closed”, indicating that civilians hold little to no power and are bereft of the ability to represent themselves in governmental affairs and peacefully dissent. “This means that those who criticize the authorities or engage in protests of any kind or seek to form associations that demand transformational change can face severe forms of persecution including imprisonment for long periods, physical abuse and even death.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Credit: Nacho Doce/Reuters via Gallo Images

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Aug 21 2025 (IPS)

It’s peak holiday season across Europe and North America, and people are hitting the beaches and crowding into city centres in ever-increasing numbers. They’re part of a huge industry: last year, travel and tourism’s share of the global economy stood at US$10.9 trillion, around 10 per cent of the world’s GDP.

But residents in tourist destinations are keenly aware of the downsides: overwhelming visitor numbers, permanent changes in their neighbourhoods, antisocial behaviour, strained local services, environmental impacts including litter and pollution, and soaring housing costs.

Overtourism occurs when the industry systematically impacts on residents’ quality of life. It’s a growing problem, reflected in recent protests in several countries, with grassroots civil society groups demanding more sustainable approaches.

Residents’ protests

June brought coordinated protests across Europe. In Barcelona, a city of 1.6 million people that receives 32 million visitors a year, the Neighbourhood Assembly for Tourism Degrowth organised a protest that saw people tape off hotel entrances, set off smoke bombs and fire water pistols. In Genoa, protesters dragged a replica cruise ship through the medieval centre’s maze of alleys to highlight the impacts of cruise tourism. Actions had been coordinated at a meeting in April between representatives from France, Italy, Portugal and Spain, who formed the Southern European Network Against Touristification.

These weren’t the first protests. Thousands took to the streets in Spain’s Canary Islands in May, while last year people protested in several European cities. Most recently, residents of Montmartre in Paris hung banners outside their houses pointing out how overtourism is changing their neighbourhood.

Civil society groups are taking action beyond protests. In the Netherlands, residents’ group Amsterdam Has a Choice is threatening legal action against the city council. In 2021, following a civil society-led petition, the council set a limit of 20 million overnight tourist stays a year. But research shows this limit has consistently been exceeded. Now the group could take the city to court to enforce it.

People are protesting across multiple countries because they face the same problem: overtourism is changing their communities and, increasingly, driving them away.

Overtourism impacts

Tourism may create jobs, but these are often low-paid or seasonal jobs with few labour rights or opportunities for career progression. In places with intensive tourism, everyday businesses that residents rely on are often replaced by those oriented towards tourists, with established firms squeezed out by high rents.

Environmental impacts may hit residents while tourists are protected from them: campaigners in Ibiza complain that water shortages mean they’re subject to restrictions, but hotels face no such limitations. Common areas residents once relied on, such as beaches and parks, can become overcrowded and degraded. Ultimately, communities can be turned into stage sets and sites of extraction, impacting on crucial matters of identity and belonging. That’s why one movement in Spain calls itself ‘Less Tourism, More Life’.

Housing costs are a major concern in overtourism protests. In many countries, the costs of buying or renting somewhere to live are soaring, far outstripping wages. Young people are particularly hard hit, forced to hand over ever-higher proportions of their income in rent. Tourism is driving the increasing use of properties for short-term holiday rentals instead of permanent residences. People who live in tourist hotspots have seen once-viable homes bought as investments for short-term lets, causing a loss of available housing and driving up the price of what’s left.

People who live in apartment blocks that have largely become used for short-term rentals complain of their communities being hollowed out: they lack neighbours but frequently have to put up with antisocial behaviour. The sector is often underregulated, and landlords may find regulations easy to ignore and taxes easy to avoid. Spain alone has an estimated 66,000 illegal tourist apartments.

Action needed

Overtourism protests hit the headlines last year when a group sprayed water at tourists in Barcelona. But in the main, protesters are making clear they don’t want to target tourists and aren’t motivated by xenophobia. They want a fair balance between tourists enjoying their holidays and locals being able to live their lives. They want those who reap tourism’s profits to pay their fair share to fix the problems.

Protests are having an impact, with authorities taking steps to rein in holiday rentals. Last year a Spanish court ordered the removal of almost 5,000 Airbnb listings following a complaint that they breached tourism regulations. The mayor of Barcelona has announced plans to eliminate short-term tourist rentals within five years by refusing to renew licences as they expire. Authorities in Lisbon have paused the issuing of short-term rental licences, and those in Athens have introduced a one-year ban on new registrations. That still leaves plenty of regulatory gaps across many countries, and national and local governments should engage with campaigners to further develop regulations.

Many local authorities have also implemented tourist taxes, while Venice has started to charge a peak-season access fee for non-residents and Athens now assigns time slots as a way of managing numbers at the Parthenon. It’s important that taxes and charges aren’t used simply to extract more cash from tourists or dampen demand; money generated must directly help affected communities and mitigate the harm caused by overtourism.

Authorities also need to be more careful about the marketing choices they make and consider whether they’re promoting tourism too widely. Marketing campaigns should try to sensitise visitors about the impacts they can have, and to make choices that minimise them.

Movements campaigning against overtourism are sure to grow, connecting groups concerned about environmental, housing and labour issues as the problem worsens, and as climate change places even greater strain on scarce resources. Overtourism concerns are ultimately an expression of frustration with a bigger problem – that economies don’t work for the benefit of most people. States and the international community must urgently grapple with the question of how to make economies fairer, more sustainable and less extractive – and they must listen to the movements against overtourism that are helping sound the alarm.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org

 

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