Yesterday's visit from Bahraini friends

Just a few of the snapshots from yesterday's most welcome visit by colleagues and old friends from Bahrain, who work tirelessly for equality and human rights. The al-Khalifa hereditary dictatorship gets away with a policy of demographic engineering, by encouraging immigration from neighbouring Sunni states and granting the newly arrived immigrants citizenship, with a view to further marginalising the indigenous Shi'a population, already deprived of equality and opportunity. See the recent submission of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and

the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies to the UN Human Rights Council's 14th Session under the title Bahrain's Universal Periodic Review: Broken Promises and Voluntary Commitments

(www.bahrainrights.org/en/node/3188)

The Universal Periodic Review is a grandiose name for a process that has no enforcement mechanism, though it could be a bit more effective if there was a thorough review of the undertakings entered into by states at the UPR 12 months later.

For an account by Karen Dobrowska of the very successful seminar on Bahrain, chaired by Kishwer Falkner, see www.mathaba.net/news/?x=62421