United Nations: Bahrain Prime Minister Poor Choice for Habitat Award – Bahrain Freedom Movement

Shaikh Khalifa and his late brother, Shaikh Isa, the country’s emir, suspended the country’s first constitution and partially elected parliament in 1975 and set up a system of State Security Courts that, until the new ruler abolished them in 2001, sentenced thousands of suspected dissidents to long years in prison, many on the basis of confessions obtained under torture.

“A person with a human rights record as poor as that of Shaikh Khalifa should not be getting a UN award of any kind,” said Steve Crawshaw, UN advocacy director of Human Rights Watch. “Political repression cannot simply be put to one side.”

The Habitat press release announcing the award to Shaikh Khalifa cited “his impressive efforts in lifting the living standards of all Bahrainis” and applauded his “efforts to place the urban poor at the center of [Bahrain’s] modernization strategy.”

Bahrain’s human rights activists take a different view of the prime minister’s achievements in the field of housing. According to the independent Bahrain Center for Human Rights, the government’s housing budget has long failed to address the country’s serious housing crisis. Inside Bahrain, the prime minister is known more for his considerable personal financial stake in corporate skyscraper projects such as his Financial Harbor complex in the capital, Manama, than for providing adequate housing for Bahrain’s many low-income families.

“Even from the narrow perspective of right to adequate housing, Shaikh Khalifa appears a dubious choice,” Crawshaw said.

For more information, please contact:In New York, Steve Crawshaw (English, French, German): +1-646-596-3348 (mobile)In Jerusalem, Joe Stork (English): +972-054-241-2279; or +1-202-299-4925 (mobile)

In Erbil, Gasser Abdel-Razek (Arabic, English): +964-750-741-2934 (mobile)