Second Annual Report of the National Institution for Human Rights (NIHR) 2014 - Kingdom of Bahrain 17. The recommendations call for the headquarter state to provide all facilities for the Arab Court of Human Right, to facilitate its operation procedures, facilitate the entry of parties and witnesses who resort to the court, and protect potential victims. The recommendations require that the condition for the exhaustion of the internal appeal process should not affect the right of the eligible parties to resort to the Arab Court in accordance with the terms of fair trial stipulated in Article No. 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and in accordance with the General Comment No. 32 by the Commission on Human Rights. Individuals, non-governmental organizations, and national human rights institutions should be allowed to resort to the Arab Court directly. 18. It was also recommended that the State Parties should undertake that the litigants will not suffer from any form of threat, pressure or retaliation because of their resort to the court, and that a mechanism should be developed for monitoring, following up and supervising the implementation of the judgments and decisions of the Arab Court. It was confirmed that the sources of the financial support for the budget of the Arab Court should be diversified and should not be charged to the States parties alone and that the League of Arab States should bear part of the budget. The most important recommendation is probably the need to amend the Arab Charter on Human Rights of 2004, especially with regard to granting the Arab Human Rights Committee (of the Charter) the power to refer individual complaints submitted to the Committee to the court in the case no amicable settlement is reached, without prejudice to the competence of the court to consider the cases on the form and on the merits. 19. The participants in the conference recommended supporting and fostering the operations of the expert committee of the Arab Charter on Human Rights and urged the Arab non-state parties to the Arab Charter on Human Rights to accede to the Charter. They further recommended developing the action mechanisms of the Permanent Arab Committee for Human Rights and transferring them to the Human Rights Council of the League of the Arab States. The participants also recommended urging national human rights institutions and civil society organizations to provide legal assistance to the litigants in order to resort to the Arab court, and to invite the Arab Network of National Institutions to further support the implementation of the recommendations and initiatives of civil society organizations on the development of the Arab human rights system. 20. The participants called upon the Arab Group to follow up on the recommendations of Doha Conference to pursue its duties and submit periodical reports on its activities to the organizations participating in this conference. The participants requested the League of Arab States to facilitate the work of the Arab Group to follow up on the recommendations of Doha Conference by providing information and enhance coordination mechanisms to build a participatory dialogue that helps develop the regional human rights system. The recommendations concluded that there is a need to organize events to introduce the Arab human rights system at national levels65. 21. In this regard, and in order to give effect to NIHR plan and strategy for the years (2013-2016), NIHR took part in the program of technical cooperation with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, which commenced in March last year. A series of events were held which aim to identify priorities relevant to the advancement of human rights condition in the Kingdom. Representatives of ministries, government agencies, NIHR, relevant civil society organizations and national human rights activists took part in the program. 65 For further information, visit NIHR website: www.nihr.org.bh 49