Majeed Al Alawi

Majeed Mohsen Al Alawi is Bahrain's former Minister of Labour Affairs. For a short time, he was also Minister of Housing. Under his leadership, the country carried out wide-ranging labour reforms with potentially profound implications for its economy and society. The reforms were not without controversy, and Al Alawi often faced stiff opposition. Media reports dated 17 March 2011 indicated that, along with the Minister of Health, Al Alawi resigned from the Bahraini Cabinet in the wake of the government crackdown on protests in Bahrain. These reports were confirmed on 24 March 2011 when a new Minister of Housing was appointed.

Al Alawi only returned to Bahrain in 2002; previously he was one of the exiled leaders of the London-based opposition movement, the Bahrain Freedom Movement, which in the 1990s assumed the responsibility for articulating the demands of the 1990s uprising. Along with other BFM leaders Sheikh Ali Salman and Dr Mansoor Al-Jamri, Al Alawi returned to Bahrain to participate in the political process after King Hamad embarked on a process of reconciliation and democratisation. An academic by background, he is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

In December 2007, he had a terse exchange of views with US Defence Secretary Robert Gates at the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Manama Dialogue security summit over US attitudes to Israel’s nuclear arsenal, challenging Gates as to whether he thought "the Zionist (Israeli) nuclear weapon is a threat to the region" Gates replied that he did not and proposed instead that Iran was the threat not Israel, a response that was met with "laughter and derision" according to the Washington Post.