Kingdom of Bahrain

The staff of UNDP, UNIC and IOM in Bahrain were joined in UN House at 10 a.m. today by diplomats, notably the Algerian and Russian ambassadors and others, to observe a minute of meditation and prayer in the memory of UN colleagues and other Algerian innocent citizens who were victims of the recent terrorist attack against UN premises in Algiers.
UN Resident Coordinator/ UNDP Resident Representative, Mr. Sayed Aqa, led the brief ceremony in which he expressed sadness at the senseless loss of lives of people dedicated to humanitarian goals. In his statement, he also summarized UNDP Administrator, Mr. Kemal Dervis' message to staff.
The moment was observed by UNEP within their offices in Juffair.
Condolences can be offered on line by visiting: www.un.org/events/memorial/11december/

A training workshop was held for the UNCT at UN House on December 9 and 10 as an initial step in implementing the Action 2 HRBA strategy. The training sessions were facilitated by Clarence Dias, human rights consultant, and Dina Hamdy from OHCHR.
The UNCT in Bahrain intends to strongly support human rights related activities by providing guidance/advise/expertise, methodological support on human rights and good governance. The UNCT will focus its direct involvement in human rights capacity building and technical cooperation activities with the aim of facilitating the integration of human rights into UN development action at the country level, facilitate the establishment of a thematic working group on human rights within the UNCT and ensure the integration of human rights into the CPAP process, which is being undertaken this year.
Working as a UNCT on human rights activities will bring more coherence of vision and message, strength in advocacy and negotiations, synergies of ideas, joint programming and opportunities for enhanced sharing of good practices and lessons learned. It will also provide many and divergent points for protecting, promoting and realizing human rights in the country, maximize UN impact and create a coherent, strategic results based framework while accelerating harmonization with the UN.
The immediate objective of the Action 2 HRBA project will be for the UNCT to develop a common understanding of human rights based approach and a conceptual clarity about human rights which will induce the UNCT to play a strategic role in raising awareness about human rights based approach among government and national counterparts. It also aims to integrate human rights principles in all phases of the programming process, including assessment and analysis, programming planning and design, implementation, and monitoring.
The HRBA training comes at an opportune time when the Kingdom of Bahrain was recently selected among the first members of the newly created United Nations Human Rights Council. The UNCT aims to emphasize the importance of protecting human rights in Bahrain, in line with the international conventions on human rights.

UNDP Bahrain marked the launch the Human Development Report 2007/2008 at a press conference held at UN House. The latest HDR Report stresses climate change as the defining human development challenge of the 21st century. Failure to respond to that challenge will stall and then reverse international efforts to reduce poverty. The Report stresses that progress made in recent years in human development is being threatened by climate change. The signs are already observable, mainly among the poorest and most vulnerable populations and countries.
Speaking on behalf of the Government of the Kingdom of Bahrain, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Dr. Nezar bin Sadeq Al Baharna, said the issue was critical and the actions of the industrialized nations were having an effect on countries like Bahrain. Inaction now could lead to a profound bearing on the future course of human development. Dr. Al Baharna hoped that attitudes would change in the developing world.
In a presentation made at the launch, Sayed Aqa, UNDP Bahrain Resident Representative, explained that the report, in relation to the Kingdom of Bahrain, shows that Bahrain is progressing on the human development index (HDI) scoring 0.866 out of a scale of 1.000 positioning the country at 41 out of 177 countries and territories and fourth in the GCC. Bahrain has been consistently achieving higher scores over the years regardless of the rank in relation to other countries. While it may appear that Bahrain has dropped 2 places in rank since last year, the reality is that Bahrain has made good progress as its HDI value had improved from 0.859 to 0.866 this year which is well above the regional average of 0.699 for Arab States. It is also above the average HDI for all developing countries of 0.691. The HDI for Bahrain has risen steadily every year from 83.0% in 2003 to 86.6% in 2007.
Bahrain has made consistent progress in basic human development indicators over the past fifteen years. The minister said the authorities were making considerable investments in key economic sectors and the education reforms being implemented indicated the seriousness but Bahrain did not have valuable resources that were found in abundance in Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE. “We do the best with our available funds.”
Bahrain has made improvements in life expectancy, school enrolments and GDP growth though there was a slight drop in literacy levels.
The report is a call to action to the international community, arguing that it is not too late to forestall dangerous climate change. It contains a number of specific recommendations for international cooperation and multilateralism to effectively address climate change, thereby averting the significant negative consequences for human development today and for future generations.
Click here to view Statement by Kemal Derviş, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme On the Occasion of the Launch of the Human Development Report 2007/08, “Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a Divided World”.