National assessment
Despite the challenges facing the world and their effects on the Kingdom of Bahrain during
the years (2020-2021) due to the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Kingdom was
able to take vigorous steps towards promoting human rights principles in general, and
guaranteeing human rights in The health and education sectors in particular. The
Kingdom also strove to ensure that the primary care groups, including children, people
with disabilities and the elderly, are not affected and that their established rights infringed
upon. Taking upon itself the optimal and full implementation of the recommendations of
the World Health Organization related to the preventive (precautionary) and curative
(pharmacological) issues, the Kingdom established specialized centers to treat patients
infected with the virus, and provided approved vaccines, in a fair and free manner, for
citizens and residents alike without discrimination.
The repercussions of the spread of the novel corona virus (Covid-19) were not limited to
the abstract of the human rights aspect only, but rather had an impact on the economic
aspect and related to the relevant sustainable development goals (2030), as the Kingdom
took serious steps to reduce the economic repercussions of the pandemic and ensure
that this is not affected by basic human rights, especially those related to the right of
individuals to enjoy an adequate standard of living.
In order to achieve this, Decree-Law No. (22) of 2021 promulgating the implementation
law in civil and commercial matters came to constitute an important development towards
achieving a fair balance between the interests of the creditor and the debtor, by creating
legal guarantees that achieve the interests of both parties, without resorting to arrest and
imprisonment of the debtor to fulfill a debt Civil, as a kind of physical coercion to compel
a person to implement and pay, which constitutes effective compliance with the provisions
of Article (11) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the
Kingdom of Bahrain acceded under Law No. (56) of 2006.
In this sense, the NIHR supports the ministerial decisions taken regarding wage
protection, in particular Resolution No. (68) of 2019 regarding the wage protection system
as a system that obliges the employer in the private sector to pay workers’ wages through
banks and financial institutions licensed by the Central Bank of Bahrain according to
specific dates, and Resolution No. (22) of 2021 regarding the stages of implementing the
wage protection system, according to which it allows the application of the system within
stages according to the number of workers in a single facility and within a period not
exceeding January 2022.
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