NIHR launches “Let’s help them reach” Campaign
.jpg)
In line with the National Institution for Human Rights (NIHR)’s belief in the importance of concerted efforts to ensure that persons with disabilities enjoy all their rights on an equal basis and without discrimination from others, a campaign entitled “Let’s help them reach” has been launched by inviting the public and persons with disabilities to report and monitor public or private facilities intended for use by the public whose design or surrounding physical environment prevents this group from enjoying their right to access and use those facilities on an equal basis with others.
Ms. Maria Khoury, Chairperson of the NIHR, explained that this campaign is to inform and monitor any case that prevents the facilitation of access of persons with disabilities to the facilities intended to be used by the public, such as workplaces, government or private sector installations, markets, malls or service areas, which require to be prepared with its surrounding streets for use by this group, in terms of the lack of corridors in the streets leading to those facilities and complexes designed for the group of people with disabilities, the lack of places allocated for parking their cars, or being far from the service provision places or closed with a barrier that prevents them from using those places, which causes their disruption or the disruption of others, the existence of thresholds in entries that prevent wheelchair users from entering, the lack of tilted corridors or their existence but with a high slope, lacking handles on both sides, having damaged handles or with narrow corridors and doors, which prevents the smooth passage of the wheelchairs, the lack of elevators to upper floors or their existence but lacking enough space for entry of wheelchairs or having a defect that prevents them from working properly, the lack of toilets designed to be used by this group or their existence but being closed, or the existence of any other barriers that prevent persons with disabilities from making optimal use of the facility or complex, where the NIHR will communicate with the relevant authorities in Bahrain to report the observed cases and will work with them to find out appropriate solutions, whether by amending existing legislations or by proposing new ones.
The Chairperson of the NIHR has called on citizens, residents and the honored public, to actively participate, monitor such cases and other similar ones, determine their places and time and send them to the NIHR via WhatsApp 17111666, toll-free hotline 80001144 or email complaint@nihr.org.bh, for the purpose of achieving full integration, creating opportunities, ensuring that persons with disabilities enjoy their rights on an equal basis and without discrimination and enhancing their effective and real participation in society in a way that makes them able to contribute to its construction and upgrading, in line with the international obligations arising from the ratification of the Kingdom of Bahrain to the International Convention on the Rights of Persons People with disabilities, according to Law No. (22) of 2011, and the general observations of the International Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which is concerned with monitoring the implementation of the International Convention by States.
