Bahrain has been chosen as the permanent headquarters of the Arab Court for Human Rights.
Arab foreign ministers approved the selection late Sunday at a meeting of the Arab League in Cairo, Bahrain's state news agency quoted the gathering's final communique as saying.
The jurisdiction of the planned regional court - who would be allowed to bring cases and what alleged crimes it could prosecute - was not specified in the statement. Nor was a date for the court's opening.
The foreign minister of Bahrain, Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, called the Arab League decision a "positive step in the right direction" towards "promoting and protecting human rights in the Arab world".
The king of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, proposed the creation of an Arab human rights court in November 2011, after an independent investigation into political unrest in the country earlier in the year concluded that both government security forces and the opposition had committed abuses.
"I will propose to our fellow Arab states that we now move concretely toward the creation of an Arab Court of Human Rights to take its proper place on the international stage," the king said.
The time had come, he said, for Arabs to set up a pan-Arab rights court, similar to those established by other regional blocs.
"The nations of Europe are routinely held accountable before the European Court in Strasbourg. That Court, through its hundreds of judgements, has set the standards for modern international human rights," he said.
Bahrain's foreign ministry has said that the court would operate under the framework of the Arab Charter on Human Rights, which has been ratified by then Arab states, including Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The charter was adopted by the Arab League in 2004 and affirms the principles contained in the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenants on Human Rights and the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam. It has been in force since March 2008.
In their communique late Sunday, the foreign ministers urged that the perpetrators of the chemical weapons attack in Syria on August 21 be tried on charges of war crimes at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
