Human Rights Watch, World Report 2025.

Country Report: Bahrain (Part 2)

​The Rights of Women and Girls 
Women are required to obey their husbands and not leave home without a “legitimate excuse,” under Bahrain's Unified 2017 Family Law. Women and girls can lose their rights to spousal maintenance (nafaqa) from their husbands if deemed disobedient or recalcitrant by a court. Bahraini family law (article 20) allows marriage of girls at age of 16 and even before if they got the permission of a Sharia court. 
 
A woman also cannot act as her child’s guardian, even if her child’s father has passed away or following a divorce in which a court orders that her child reside primarily with her. The 1963 Citizenship Act prohibits women and girls from passing on their nationality to their children if they have a non-Bahraini father. Women face difficulty obtaining passports for their children, particularly when the child’s father is abroad. 
 
In February, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) published findings that included concern about the “shrinking space for women human rights defenders and reports of reprisals against them, including intimidation, harassment, threats, physical abuse, sexual violence, travel bans, and arbitrary detention.” 
 
Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity 
Although no law explicitly criminalizes same-sex relations, authorities have used vague penal code provisions against “indecency” and “immorality” to target sexual and gender minorities. 
 
Migrant Workers’ Rights 
Bahrain continues to enforce the kafala (sponsorship) system that ties migrant workers’ visas to their employers, meaning if they leave their employer without their employer’s consent, they lose their residency status and can face arrest, fines, and deportation for “absconding.” 
 
Bahrain’s Labor Law includes domestic workers, most of whom are women, but excludes them from key protections, such as weekly rest days, overtime, paid sick leave, and limits on working hours. Bahrain only requires a minimum wage for Bahraini nationals in the public sector. While Bahraini authorities launched their final phase of the Wage Protection System (WPS) in 2022, which requires all private sector workers to receive their wages through bank transfers, enrolment rates have been low, and unpaid wages remain a problem. Domestic workers are still not included in the WPS. 
 
Since March 2024, Bahrain's General Authority for the Social Insurance Organization started collecting end-of-service contributions from employers to disburse to migrant workers instead of employers directly paying a lump-sum amount to workers upon the end of contracts. While a positive step that could address the non-payment of end-of-service benefits, the real test is in its effective implementation. 
 
The 2024 Bahraini Cabinet decision to extend summer midday bans from two months to three months starting 2025 brings Bahrain’s midday ban policy on par with its peers in the Gulf Cooperation Council, but remains insufficient in effectively protecting workers. 
 
Online Surveillance and Censorship 
Bahraini authorities continued to block websites and forced the removal of online content, particularly social media posts criticizing the government. While social media remains a key space for activism and dissent, self-censorship is high due to the fear of online surveillance and intimidation from authorities. 
 
On December 17, 2023, Bahraini authorities arrested opposition leader Ebrahim Sharif for a post on X (formerly Twitter) stating “his opposition to the normalization of his country with Israel and strongly rejected its participation in the American coalition against Houthis in Yemen,” according to Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB). 
 
Bahrain has purchased and used commercial spyware, including NSO Group’s Pegasus, to target government critics and human rights defenders. In July 2024, Bahrain appealed a ruling in a spyware case brought by two UK-Bahraini activists, Saeed Shehabi and Moosa Mohammed, before a UK High Court. The activists allege that Bahrain targeted their computers with surveillance software called FinSpy in September 2011. 
 
Human Rights Watch, World Report 2025. New York