On 21 March of every year the world celebrates the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. This occasion is considered to be one of the most significant events in light of the challenges that governments are being confronted with for protecting the values of equality, equal citizenship, and social justice, and for ending all forms of discrimination and bigotry that are based on ethnic, sectarian, or regional grounds.

Following the corona epidemic, the global medical crisis has exposed the need for exerting more common efforts in ending discrimination around the world, after it uncovered the “spread of other epidemics that are no less dangerous than the corona epidemic itself, such as epidemics of racial and sectarian discrimination, and incitement to hatred speeches and messages”.

Bahrain Interfaith finds that “Bahrain has been successful at slightly constraining the levels of racism, sectarianism, and hatred to a great extent, in light of the level of collaboration and solidarity by the government and non-state actors in the common campaign in confronting the corona pandemic”, but that “overcoming these discrimination requires expanding and enhancing civil and governmental solidarity in confronting coronavirus, and criminalizing voices that incite to the practice of discrimination, racism, violence and sectarianism”.

The center stressed on the importance of benefitting from the positive atmosphere that Bahrain has enjoyed after the manifestations of the common civil and official efforts in confronting the corona epidemic, and called for utilizing that atmosphere in paving the way for a “meaningful national dialogue and rapprochement that Bahrainis eagerly await, just as eagerly as they await the moment of announcing victory over this global epidemic”.

Bahrain Interfaith

Kingdom of Bahrain – March 21, 2020