Dr. Ali bin Samih Al-Marri, president of Qatar National Human Rights Committee, stated that the committee works to monitor and report the humanitarian cases and find ways to resolve them, especially the situation of workers, other vulnerable groups including women, children, persons with disabilities, detainees…etc.
This came in the context of the working paper presented by Dr. Al Marri in the General Assembly meeting of the Arab Network of National Human Rights Institutions held in the Algeria on the developments and the challenges facing Qatar NHRC and its proposals for the Arab Network. Al-Marri revealed that in 2017, the committee received (2084) complaints from residents and (3600) complaints from citizens due to the blockade imposed on the State of Qatar.
Al Marri pointed out that Qatar National Human Rights Committee is keen to not interfere in the political affairs in the Gulf crisis. He said that the cooperation between Qatar National Human Rights Committee and the National Council for Human Rights in Egypt can be considered a best practice among national human rights institutions. Al-Marri said: “The inhuman blockade has caused several human rights violations, most notably the right to family reunification, which affected women, children, persons with disabilities, where children are deprived of their mothers and fathers.
He added that The arbitrary actions and decisions that have been taken also prevented hundreds of students from completing their studies in flagrant violation of the right to education.The blockade also caused the loss and death of hundreds of camels and livestock, and denial of the use and disposition of private property, in a gross violation to the right to private property. The blockade also affected the right to movement and residence, the right to health, the right to work, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, the right to worship and freedom to practice religious rites.
On other developments in Qatar, Al-Marri praised the issuance of the Law on regulating the rights of Domestic workers and the establishment of the Committee for the Settlement of Labor Disputes, which is considered a very positive step to harmonize laws with national and international human rights mechanisms, pointing out that NHRC recommended that more efforts should be made to improve the conditions of workers in Qatar, the most recent of which is the recommendation on the need to apply a system for collecting occupational health and safety data.
The collection of national data on occupational health and safety indicators should be comprehensive and provide accurate information and statistics on the number and nature of occupational accidents and fatalities, which will help employers, insurance companies, labor inspectors and occupational health and safety agencies to use such data in planning and policy-making to protect workers.
