During its meeting on Monday afternoon, the Bureau of the Shura Council, chaired by H.E. Ali bin Saleh Al-Saleh and in the presence of First Deputy Chairman hon. Jamal Mohammed Fakhro, Heads of Standing Committees, and hon. the Secretary General, and the Legal Adviser of the Council, stressed the importance of supporting the participation of members of the Shura Council in parliamentary regional and international seminars, meetings and conferences, which contribute to strengthening the Bahraini experience in the field of legislation, in addition to its role in the development of inter-parliamentary relations and investing it to support the Kingdom's interests in all parliamentary forums.

This came during Bureau's discussion of the message of the Chairman of the Council of Representatives and Head of the Executive Committee of the Inter-Parliamentary Division H.E. Khalifa bin Ahmed Al-Dharani, concerning the heads and members of delegations doing workshops after returning from participating in parliamentary forums to brief members on the most important topics and recommendations of those seminars and forums.

The Bureau of the Council indicated that members of the legislative authority participating in parliamentary forums helped to clarify a lot of facts, stressing the need to take advantage as much as possible from foreign participations, praising in this area the good results achieved by the parliamentary delegations of the Kingdom of Bahrain.

Upon reviewing the decisions of the Inter-Parliamentary Union on Human Rights, the Bureau confirmed the record of the Kingdom of Bahrain in the field of human rights is in line with the International standards, stressing that the legislative authority in the kingdom take upon themselves to protect human rights through the enactment of legislation to protect and safeguard the freedoms and rights.

In the same vein, the Bureau of the Council reviewed the letter from the Chairman of the Council of Representatives and Head of the Executive Committee of the Inter-Parliamentary Division HE Khalifa bin Ahmed Al-Dharani concerning the need to adhere to the provisions of the guide for the Inter-Parliamentary Division regarding the participation of delegations in international events regarding travel reservations, accommodations, and that to be unified among all members of the delegation.

The Bureau also reviewed the letter of invitation received from the Inter-Parliamentary Union, containing the overall schedule to participate in the meetings of the General Assembly and (128) meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and related meetings, which will be held in the San Francisco conference centre in the city of "Kyoto - Ecuador" during the period from March 22 to 27, 2013, in addition to three reports of the inter-parliamentary division delegations.

Then the Bureau of the Council approved draft agenda of the next meeting, which includes the report of the Foreign Affairs, Defense and National Security Committee concerning the draft law amending some provisions of the Penal Code issued via decree by law no. (15) for 1976, and the supplementary report of the Foreign Affairs, Defense and National Security Committee concerning the draft law amending some provisions of law no. (4) of 2001 related to the prohibition and combating money laundering and financing terrorism, amended by law no. (54) for 2006, in addition to the report of the Services Committee concerning a draft law amending item (e) of Article (1) of law no. (13 ) for 1975 concerning the organization of pension and retirement benefits for government employees, as well as the inclusion of reports of parliamentary Division participated in a number of parliamentary meetings and events.