Manama: A Jewish Bahraini will chair the elections monitoring committee of a human rights organisation, the head of the NGO has said.
"We have formed our committee to monitor the legislative and municipal elections scheduled for this autumn," Faisal Fuladh, the head of the Bahrain Human Rights Watch Society (BHRWS) has said. "It will be chaired by Menashe Cohen and will include Gada Ehsan."
Menashe, BHRWS deputy secretary-general, is a member of the 47-strong Jewish community in Bahrain.
The former leader of BHRWS was Huda Nonoo who made history by becoming the Arab world's first Jewish woman to head a human rights organisation.
She made history again by becoming the first, and so far the only, Arab Jewish ambassador to Washington, a post that she still holds.
Gada Ehsan is one of the 1,000 Bahraini Bahais who constitute less than 0.01 per cent of the total population.
"We will have around 120 men and women who will help us monitor the elections and they will be trained by the legal department of a local private university. We will also work closely with a human rights NGO in Amman that will train the trainers," Fuladh said.
BRHWS will need around 10,000 Dinars ($26,400) for the training and monitoring. "They will come from donations as we will not solicit any amount of money from either Bahrain or abroad," he said. "All our observers will be with us on a voluntary basis and will not receive money."
Fuladh said that Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) citizens would be invited to get insights into the Bahraini election experience, but insisted that they would not interfere at any level or stage of the polls.
Reports will be published just before the elections, elections day and after the polls.
"We will have one final report that will include all observations. We will send it to the justice ministry and to all other human rights organisations in Bahrain," he said.
No date for the elections has been announced, but the polls are largely expected to be held in October. Voters will elect 40 lawmakers to the lower chamber of the bicameral parliament.
BHRWS was established in November, 2004 and claims to protect minorities, women and domestic helpers.
Several other NGOs have said that they would monitor the elections.
