Jalila Al‑Salman is a Bahraini teacher, co‑founder and former vice‑president of the Bahrain Teachers Association and a senior figure at the Bahrain Human Rights Observatory, who has spent over 25 years advocating for educators and students’ rights and supporting politically imprisoned teachers. During the 2011 uprising she helped organise nationwide strikes, leading to her arrest on 29 March 2011. She was detained for 149 days, reportedly tortured, and initially sentenced to 3 years in September 2011 by a military court before the term was commuted to six months on appeal in September 2012.

She was subsequently arrested again multiple times, and subjected to judicial harassment. On 18 October 2012, Al-Salman was arrested in a pre-dawn raid by more than thirty security agents without an arrest warrant. On 01 November, she was released on bail.

She was dismissed from her teaching position in 2013 and repeatedly barred from international travel, while receiving prestigious awards such as the 2015 Arthur Svensson International Prize for Trade Union Rights and the 2019 Mary Hatwood Futrell Award in recognition of her continued commitment to human and labour rights in Bahrain.