Bahrain Human Rights Monitor calls upon the Government to ratify the Enforced Disappearance Convention

On 23 December 2010, the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance will enter into force. The Convention is considered as one of the most important among the principal international treaties. The Convention obliges member states to put an end to the practice of enforced disappearance, hold any person involved in an enforced disappearance criminally responsible and ensure that families of the disappeared are granted appropriate remedy and reparations.

Bahrain Human Rights Monitor would take the opportunity to mark this occasion by urging the Government of Bahrain to take the initiative to ratify the Convention. The Monitor believes that Bahrain is well suited for such a step considering that the country has a clean record as far as the practice of enforced disappearance is concerned. Furthermore, Bahrain’s accession to the Convention would enhance its standing within the international arena.

The Monitor is hoping that Bahrain could become the second Arab State to ratify the Convention after Iraq, which has ratified it on 23 November 2010. Joining the club of countries that ratified the Convention, and adhering to its content, constitute a vital ingredient of the country’s responsibility towards human rights internationally. The recognition and protection of human rights has become part of the shared cultural and human bond that ties the nations together.

Bahrain Human Rights Monitor, on the other hand, urges civil society institutions in Bahrain to condemn the criminal acts of enforced disappearance worldwide, and to initiate a momentum aiming at pushing both the Legislative and Executive Authorities towards the ratification of the Convention.

The importance attached by Bahrain’s civil society to this Convention, which is manifested by its participation in the International Day for the Disappeared on 30 August every year, represents one of the means that Bahrain interacts with international human rights bodies. It is through such an interaction that it becomes possible to confront and oppose those governments that employ the practice of enforced disappearance, which is regarded as the most abhorrent of human rights violations, since it embodie? a wide range of infringes that affect the individuals and their family, and strip them of all their rights, including the right to life, personal security and dignity, and the right not to be subjected to torture or inhumane treatment, and to be detained in humane conditions, and to receive a fair trial.