Law No.5 of 2021 Regulating and Controlling International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Animal and Plant Groups

This Law consisting of 32 articles aims at organizing the trade of endangered species and implementing the CITES Treaty which Bahrain joined in 2012. The tasks of the Supreme Council for the Environment are provided in art. 3 as follows (i) cooperating with the scientific authority and the concerned authorities inside the Kingdom to implement the provisions of this Law; (ii) laying down the rules, procedures, and requirements, and issuing the regulations and decisions necessary to implement the provisions of this Law; (iii) acting as a national point of contact between the Kingdom and the Secretariat of the Convention; (iv) cooperating with the Convention's contact points to facilitate the exchange of information; (v) approving the seals or the official tools used to authenticate the permissions and certificates and sending a sample of them to the Secretariat or the executive body of any of the member states of the agreement if any of them so request; (vi) deciding on applications for obtaining permits and certificates; (vii) establishing and maintaining international trade records in the Kingdom for model samples; (viii) preparing periodic reports to be submitted to the Secretariat; (ix) representing the Kingdom in national, regional, and international meetings related to the Convention; (x) preparing proposals and expressing an opinion on issues related to the Convention; (xi) ensuring that during any transit or transfer of any live samples they are under proper health care, to reduce the risk of injury or health damage; (xii) deleting and adding any of the types listed in Appendix 3. The scientific authority shall be competent to (i) give opinion and advice to the Council in all matters of a scientific nature concerning the implementation of the provisions of this Law and (ii) review the permissions to export model samples of the types listed in Annexes 1 and 2 and monitoring the actual export of these samples.
All commercial operations such as import, export, re-export, entry by sea, require a permit from the Council and it shall have the discretion to grant permissions or certificates. Anyone wishing to use one of the model samples of the types listed in Appendices 1 and 2 is obliged to register his data. Personal and household properties and the scientific exchange are excluded from the provisions of this Law. The Council shall establish or specify a relief center to maintain the integrity of the sample samples seized or sentenced to be confiscated.