The Ministry of Human Rights and Social Development in a statement assured that it had entertained the requests of more than 10 international NGOs to visit Bahrain and would continue to do so in future as well.
The Ministry has issued the following reply to Freedom House’s statement of 3rd May 2012:
“The Ministry of Human Rights and Social Development wishes to clarify the following:-
1- The Ministry of Human Rights and Social Development re-iterates its respect for the work of human rights organizations and their role in promoting human rights.
2- Since the beginning of the year Bahrain has hosted 10 NGOs and will continue to do so in the future.
3- The request that was received by fax on the 5th of April was in the name of IFEX to visit the Kingdom of Bahrain from 6-10 May 2012. The Ministry initially welcomed the visit but after checking the submitted papers found that certain necessary documents are missing to process the application and bring it to the attention of the NGOs Committee, and hence the Ministry notified IFEX on 11th of April 2012 requesting the necessary documentation. On 19th April 2012, the NGOs Committee was notified that there is a request for a visit by IFEX where Freedom House is part of it. After receiving all documents on the 22nd of April, an urgent meeting was called for the NGOs Committee to discuss the requests beforehand. The request was then put forward to the NGO Committee on its meeting on 26th of April. The NGOs Committee reviewed the request welcomed it but found that the request contained more than one NGO.
4- In order to give ample time for the proposed visit to the Kingdom and to be able to liaise with government officials with ease, the Committee already adopted certain guidelines one of which is to limit the visits of NGOs to one visit. Hence a letter of clarification was sent to Freedom House asking each organization to apply separately to visit Bahrain. The Ministry informed Freedom House that this is merely an organizational effort and not a denial of entry in order to be able to deal with the request at a manageable level.
5- The response to the request is merely a capacity issue and intended to serve NGOs in a better way. The Ministry is ready to look into the requests of the 5 NGOs should they apply again separately.”