Speaking at the European Development Days conference in Brussels last week, RWI’s director Morten Kjaerum said National Human Rights Institutions have a considerable impact in ensuring that human rights are built into legislation, polices and strategies.
But he said there was also a downside to this work. “It is also in this space that these institutions can be criticized and a target for a government who disapproves of the findings and advice given by the institution,” he said.
Kjaerum went on to lay out a series of ways that NHRIs could make advancements when it comes to policy development.
“Taking inspiration from other policy areas, the human rights policymaking needs to be evidence based and not exclusively normative,” he said.
He said NHRIs should assist in finding the answers to a number of questions, including:
• Does all human rights compliant legislation have the desired impact?
• Are there lacunas in the legislation?
• Are there adverse impacts?
• Do those that are there to implement it ignore the legislation?
• One could ask to what extent are the institutions created to protect human rights effective and efficient?
• Do they perform efficiently? Are the victims even aware of their existence?
Below you can read the entire speech
NHRIs, Policy Making and Public Institutions
RWI’s director Morten Kjaerum’s speech on 3 June 2015 at the European Development Days, Seminar on National Human Rights Institutions
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Thank you very much for the invitation to speak here today at this very important workshop. Since the very early days of NI activity, an overarching issue has been how NIs can best interact with public institutions and engage in the policy development.
It is in this space that NIs can have a considerable impact ensuring that human rights are built into legislation, policies and strategies. However, it is also in this space that NIs can be criticized and a target for a government who disapproves of the findings and advice given by the institution.
Let me shortly outline what I see as the next steps for NI’s in policy development. Followed by a few remarks on preconditions for this to work.
Most NIs have as anticipated in the Paris Principles a mandate to comment on draft legislation, governmental policy papers and strategies. To meet this challenge many NIs have built a strong legal capacity to analyze the human rights dimension of what has been suggested. Generally speaking, this has been very successful, since ministries have increasingly mirrored this expertise in their legal departments. Undoubtedly, this has led to more human rights compliant legislation. Nonetheless, it is still important to have the independent assessment offered by an NI.
However, NIs can offer more that this normative input. Taking inspiration from other policy areas the human rights policymaking needs to be evidence based and not exclusively normative. In short NIs should assist in finding the answers to the questions: Do all human rights compliant legislation have the desired impact? Are there lacunas in the legislation? Are there adverse impacts? Do those that are there to implement it ignore the legislation?
Finally, one could ask to what extent are the institutions created to protect human rights effective and efficient? Do they perform efficiently? Are the victims even aware of their existence?
The answers to all these questions I believe we know, namely that we have moved ahead but that there is still a lot to be done. We know that from individual complaints, and other sources. But it needs to be better documented, and we need to know more about the specificities of the issues.
I would like to highlight two tools for the NI toolbox that can complement the normative work and bring the impact of NIs to a next level of policy impact.
One way of creating the evidence is by conducting national inquiries. As demonstrated by a number of NIs that the Raoul Wallenberg Institute has worked with, a national inquiry is an efficient tool for NIs to influence policy in a participatory and transparent manner. It gives ownership to, and involves the affected community, and addresses systemic patterns of human rights violations. A well-conducted national inquiry into a specific human rights issue can lay the ground for substantial and lasting change to policy and public institutions’ decision making. This has been done in Mongolia, Malaysia and other countries on topics such as torture, land rights of indigenous and persons with disability.
Through this methodology, a large number of individual complaints can be dealt with in a proactive and effective way. Through the National Inquiries procedure, the NI makes itself accessible to individuals who for various reasons, such as disability, isolation or lack of awareness of the NI itself, would otherwise not receive the assistance needed.
Another approach, which has been used successfully by the EU Fundamental Rights Agency, is gathering evidence using large-scale surveys. The Agency carried out surveys interviewing ethnic minorities on their experience with discrimination, women about violence and LGBT people about exclusion. One of many effects of these surveys was the un-masking of a very high level of hate crime in Europe. These findings moved the Ministers of Justice and Interior from a large state of denial to action. Simply it could be no longer ignored when more than 25.000 ethnic minorities in interviews independently had told about their experience with hate crime and the in-action of the police.
In short, these surveys can make some of the shortcomings in the protection regime visible in a different and convincing way.
These are just two ways to deepen the impact of NIs activities apart from the complaints handling and normative input. Inquiries and surveys for many governments, and institutions such as police, prison and health services offer a convincing level of detail. This can be attractive since they do not only un-mask problems but may also indicate solutions. In this way the experience is that they can open up for a constructive forward-looking dialogue and interaction with the relevant institutions and governmental bodies.
An additional element is that the findings provide human rights data that is not available elsewhere, which can be used to fill the indicators developed to measure progress on the SDGs.
Preconditions for all this is that in order to be trusted by the participants in an inquiry or survey, NIs need to be independent. Further, they need to have sufficient resources and a remit to un-mask serious human rights issues. And we know that these pre-conditions are often missing. Many NIs are struggling with small budgets, weak mandates and operating under challenging circumstances with non-responsive governments.
The RWI has worked with NIs on strengthening evidence-based policymaking. In order to explore this further we would like to call a side event this afternoon during the Networking and Meeting Session.
Thank you.