Meeting

Eng. Ali Ahmed Al-Dirazi, Chairman of the National Institution for Human Rights (NIHR), has presided the 9^th meeting of the NIHR Board of Commissioners, with the participation of all members of the Board and the NIHR Secretary-General.

The heads of the NIHR permanent committees gave an overview of the work of their committees and their achievements during the past three months.  Mrs. Rawdha Al-Arabi, Head of the NIHR Committee on Complaints, Monitoring and Follow-up, gave a brief of the complaints received, legal aid provided and cases monitored by the NIHR during the past three months, which amounted to 110.  She also stated that the NIHR received 55 calls through the toll-free hotline, in addition to 30 complaints via email and NIHR Bahrain smartphone application, where the concerned authorities were contacted, which were followed-up to find appropriate solutions.

D. Malallah Al-Hammadi, Head of the NIHR Committee on Visiting Detention Places and Facilities, gave a brief of the work of the Committee.  He stated that during the past three months, the Committee conducted field visits to a number of places, including the Correction and Rehabilitation Centre (Jaw region), the Correction and Rehabilitation Centre for women inmates (Isa city) and the Arrest and Detention Centre (Dry Dock), in order to follow-up on the complaints received from a number of inmates or their families, in addition to the periodic visits to a number of health and educational centres, including the University of Bahrain and the Bahraini Society for MS Patients, which are regular periodic visits conducted by the NIHR based upon the provisions of its Establishment Law to examine the situation of human rights in those centres, educational facilities and societies.  He added that boxes have been set up to receive complaints and introductory brochures about the NIHR in the women’s Correction and Rehabilitation Centre, Traffic Detention Centre and Pretrial Detention Centre in the Dry Dock.

D. Badr Adel, Member of the NIHR Committee on Public Rights and Freedoms, also gave a brief of the most essential works carried out by the Committee, which centred on preparing and reviewing the NIHR’s views on a number of draft laws received from the House of Representatives.  The Committee is also currently working on preparing for the international conference that is proposed to be held by the NIHR on the right to the environment next September.

During the meeting, Al-Dirazi briefed the Board members on what had been done regarding the NIHR’s proposal to involve private sector companies in training and employing beneficiaries from the alternative sanctions mechanism, in which the first phase of the entrepreneurship programme for beneficiaries of alternative sanctions was recently launched, which is supervised by the Bahrain Society for the Development of Small and Medium Enterprises, where the training of the first batch of 25 beneficiaries of alternative sanctions in the 6-month entrepreneurship programme has already begun.