New Personal Data Protection Law in Bahrain focus of discussion at the BBBF Legal SIG Meeting

Bahrain British Business Forum’s (BBBF) special interest group (SIG) for legal professionals discussed the new personal data protection law that will be implemented in Bahrain on August 1 at a breakfast networking meeting.

The meeting was opened by Nicholas Williams, the head of BBBF’s legal SIG and partner at Newton Legal Group. The specialist panel of leading legal practitioners were Nadia AlJaber (associate, Newton Legal Group), Ahmed AlFardan (associate, Newton Legal Group) and Basma Naseeb (legal specialist, Bahrain Economic Development Board).

The discussion shed light on how the new law will give individuals and entities in Bahrain rights in relation to how their personal data can be collected, processed and stored. Consequently, businesses need to understand whether the law applies to them and how they can attain consent from data owners. The new law will act as the regulatory law for data protection, and imposes several obligations on data processing.

Several other countries have adopted similar laws, such as the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by the European Union.