Meeting

The National Institution for Human Rights (NIHR) Council of Commissioners has convened its 8^th regular meeting, under the chairpersonship of Eng. Ali Ahmed Al-Derazi, Chairman of the NIHR, in the presence of all members of NIHR permanent committees and the NIHR Secretary-General, where the heads of the NIHR permanent committees presented an overview of the work of their committees and their achievements during the past three months.

Mrs. Rawdha Al-Aradi, Head of the NIHR Committee on Complaints, Monitoring and Follow-up, presented a summary of the complaints received and the legal aids provided by the NIHR, as well as the monitoring cases registered by the NIHR during the past three months, which amounted to 132 cases.  She also stated that the NIHR received 76 calls via the NIHR toll-free hotline as well as 18 complaints via the NIHR email and mobile smartphone application NIHR Bahrain, where the concerned authorities were contacted and followed-up to find appropriate solutions.

D. Malallah El-Hammadi, Head of the NIHR Committee on Visiting Detention Places and Facilities, gave an overview of the work of his committee, stating that the Committee during the past three months conducted a field visit to a number of places, including the Correction and Rehabilitation Centre (Jas Region), the Female Inmates Correction and Rehabilitation Centre (Isa Town) and the Detention and Arrest Centre (Dry Dock), in order to follow-up on the complaints received from a number of inmates or their families, in addition to periodic visit to a number of health and educational centres, where the NIHR has visited King Hamad University Hospital, Brights Private School and Nasser Vocational Training Centre, which are considered regular periodic visits, which are conducted by the NIHR based upon the provisions of its Establishment Law to review the human rights situation in those educational and vocational centres.

For her part, D. Fawzeya Al-Saleh, Head of the NIHR Committee on Public Rights and Freedoms, stated that the Committee has submitted a number of proposals to hold events during the coming period, where the Committee proposed holding an event on the extent that the application of Alternative Sanctions Law to female inmates is targeting civil society organisations working in the field of women, and holding a round table on protecting the right to the environment through human rights defendants, which will be held in the middle of this month, and holding an event on the Child Correctional Justice Law, which is proposed to be held during the holy month of Ramadan.

Mrs. Rawdha Al-Aradi, Head of the NIHR Committee on Complaints, Monitoring and Follow-up, also presented a summary of her participation as a representative of the NIHR in the workshop on the Mechanisms of Accreditation of National Institutions, which was organised by the Asia-Pacific Forum (APF) in cooperation with the National Human Rights Institution in Thailand, with the support of the European Union, which included several virtual courses that continued for two weeks, and a class-based one.

D. Hooreya Hassan, Member of the NIHR Council of Commissioners, also presented a summary of her participation, representing the NIHR, with Mr. Daniel Cohen, Member of the NIHR Council of Commissioners, in the visit organised by Northern Ireland Cooperation Overseas (NICO), in cooperation with the British Embassy in the Kingdom of Bahrain, to the United Kingdom, on the mechanism of dealing with complaints related to children’s rights, where more than seven bodies were visited in North Ireland and England, which are related to dealing with the complaints received from children and juveniles, with the aim of identifying the procedures and controls used and exchanging expertise and knowledge.

During the meeting, the Council passed a resolution reappointing Counsellor-at-Law Yasser Ghanim Shaheen as Secretary-General of the NIHR for another period of four years, where the Chairman and members of the Council of Commissioners congratulated the Secretary-General for his efforts to improve the work of the Secretariat-General in the past period and wished him success.

At the end of the meeting, the Council approved the Secretariat-General’s report for the last quarter of 2022, and the Board thanked the Secretariat-General for its efforts to support the Board and NIHR work.