- 22 June 2026
- London / Beirut
Participants at the 9 June 2026 launch of the report called for a root and branch recalibration of UK policy towards Bahrain. In an event held in the House of Lords, co-hosted by SALAM DHR and Lord Paul Scriven, participants called for an end to UK support that legitimises repression in Bahrain. They urged the UK government to include human rights as a core component of the bilateral engagement with the Bahraini authorities, including by:
- Taking action against Bahrain’s deployment of transnational repression (TNR) to silence and intimidate Bahraini activists in the UK;
- Ending funding without human rights conditionality of Bahraini institutions that have been used to repress Bahrainis in country by way of the opaquely managed Gulf Strategy Fund (GSF)
- Adding a recognisable human rights component into the 20 May 2026 UK-Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Free Trade Agreement
Above all, participants urged the UK authorities to move beyond the UK’s preference for private dialogue in order to show, both in words and objectively verifiable actions, the UK government’s stated policy of promoting Bahrain’s adherence to international human rights standards and democratic reform. Several speakers called for the inclusion of internationally set, independently verified human rights benchmarks rooted in internationally accepted standard practices of good governance. Participants also urged the UK to publicly call for the release of Bahrain’s political prisoners.
Further details about the event
The event’s co-host and parliamentary sponsor, Lord Paul Scriven decried the UK government’s long standing “constructive engagement” with the government of Bahrain and asserted that it has reached a terminal point of failure. Reflecting on over two decades of UK engagement on Bahrain, he observed that since the 2011 pro-democracy uprising, the government of Bahrain has systematically dismantled civil society and imprisoned opposition figures like Sheikh Ali Salman and Hassan Mushaima following unfair trials. Lord Scriven strongly criticised the government of Bahrain’s consistent use of torture and condemned the March-June 2026 wave of repression in which the government detained nearly 200 individuals for expressing views on regional developments.
Lord Scriven deplored the UK’s government’s decision to deepen ties with the Bahraini authorities, including by way of the UK naval base in Bahrain, continued arms exports and the regional trade treaty in which the UK and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members sidelined human rights considerations. He also expressed dismay at UK government funding of institutions directly implicated in human rights violations by way of an opaquely structured funding mechanism, the Gulf Strategy Fund (GSF).
He asserted that the UK cannot claim to be a champion of the “rules-based international order” while underwriting repression in Bahrain. He called on the UK government to move beyond private, ineffective “dialogue”. He urged the UK government to publicly advocate for the immediate release of all political prisoners in Bahrain and for the UK to end the Bahraini government’s legitimisation of a system of absolute control. Lord Scriven also called for a fundamental recalibration of UK government policy by conditioning security and financial assistance to the Bahraini government on measurable, independently verified human rights benchmarks; integrating binding human rights clauses into the UK-GCC Free Trade Agreement
SALAM DHR’s Head of UK Advocacy and lead author of this report, Alex Buckham, chaired the event and unpacked the report’s findings and recommendations with the participants throughout the discussion.
Director of Advocacy at the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei addressed ways in which he and other activists have faced Bahraini transnational repression (TNR) and the chronically inadequate UK government action to prevent TNR in the UK. TNR is a method used by non-democratic governments to silence dissent, in the UK and around the world.
Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei contrasted the GSF’s stated objectives of promoting reform and institutional development with the reported funding of Bahraini institutions, including human rights oversight bodies, that have legitimised state violation of international human rights standards, accordingly questioning whether UK funding has contributed to meaningful accountability and reform, or bolstered flawed institutions that routinely fail to uphold international human rights standards.
Lindsay Saligman, Advocacy Fellow at Human Rights Watch, criticised the lack of human rights conditionality in the US-UK-Bahrain security pact, the Comprehensive Security Integration and Prosperity Agreement (C-SIPA).
Lindsay Saligman also contrasted the absence of a discernible public stance from the UK government in opposition to the arbitrary detention of Bahraini political prisoners, compared to the UK’s unambiguous condemnation of Russia and Belarus’ wrongful detention of high-profile peaceful political prisoners.
Activist Ali Mushaima, son of long-term political prisoner and prisoner of conscience, Hassan Mushaima, who is serving a life sentence in Bahrain in connection with his peaceful activism, expressed dismay at his father’s wrongful detention. Addressing the role and significance of the part-UK funded human rights oversight bodies in Bahrain, Ali Mushaima related how they repeatedly framed their interventions in relation to his father by asserting that the conduct of the Bahraini government was lawful. He explained that, with no scope for accountability or redress, his father no longer engages with the oversight bodies.
Ali Mushaima likewise reflected on taking part in events two decades ago, addressing the same issues in Bahrain, alongside the former Lord Avebury (deceased in 2016), who sought UK government action in relation to his father in 2007. Similarly, his month-long hunger strike outside the Bahrain embassy in London in 2021 appeared to leave the UK authorities unmoved.
Drewery Dyke, International Partnerships lead at SALAM DHR, observed that Bahrain’s own National Institution for Human Rights’ report on the conduct of Bahrain’s 2022 election recommended reform of Bahrain’s ‘political isolation laws’ that prohibit currently proscribed parties and individuals from taking part in national elections, as well as in respect to independent oversight of the election process. Despite its own stated policies, the UK government did not echo this recommendation.
Drewery Dyke questioned the view advanced by Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) desk officers that speaking out would constitute ineffective ‘megaphone’ diplomacy and insisted that the FCDO could, in fact, make objectively verifiable contributions to advancing human rights in Bahrain without engaging in ‘megaphone’ diplomacy, including by directly engaging Bahraini civil society in order to develop a deeper and more understanding relationship; or promoting, in Bahrain, awareness of shared, UK-Bahrain objectives in relation to human rights, such as implementing Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states that, “Every citizen shall have the right and the opportunity […] to take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives [ and] to vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret ballot, guaranteeing the free expression of the will of the electors […]”
In 2024, SALAM DHR urged the incoming UK government to take action in relation to human rights challenges in Bahrain; there is scant evidence that they have done so. As the government prepares for a change in leadership, SALAM DHR urges the government to reevaluate its policies and conduct in order to induce greater adherence to international human rights standards and the holding of free and fair elections in Bahrain.
