By Graciela Moreno Niño, RWI Access to Justice intern and Josh Ounsted, Head of RWI Thematic Area ‘Access to Justice’
This week sees the second 2024 session of the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions Sub-Committee on Accreditation (GANHRI SCA), in Geneva. The SCA is responsible for accrediting National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs), determining the extent to which they comply with the Paris Principles. Its assessment can result in NHRIs receiving the status “A” for full compliance, “B” status for partialcompliance or, in some cases, no status at all.
RWI is closely following the outcomes of the session, where candidates up for first ever assessment include Sweden and Turkmenistan, and up for reassessment Armenia, DRC, Denmark, Georgia, Greece, Haiti, Namibia, Rwanda, Timor-Leste, and Zambia. In Sweden’s case, if successful, the new Institute for Human Rights, which was established in 2022, will take over from the Discrimination Ombudsman, which served as a B-status NHRI from 2011 but has now withdrawn its membership.
RWI has worked with NHRIs for over 30 years, supporting over 50 partner institutions and regional networks across the world with the aim of strengthening and empowering national human rights institutions and human rights compliance. Among the countries under review this week, RWI currently enjoys a particularly close and fruitful cooperationwith the A-status Human Rights Defender’s Office of Armenia (HRDO). Our ongoing contribution includes, among others, supporting the HRDO to develop a comprehensive handbook for its staff, together with an e-learning course, as well as checklists, procedures and training for its National Preventive Mechanism (detention monitoring unit) under the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture. Support such as this can contribute to continued accreditation, bringing international recognition and, most importantly, increased effectiveness domestically.
In addition to Armenia’s HRDO, we are currently working closely with NHRIs in Ethiopiaand Zimbabwe, as well as with the Network of African National Human Rights Institutions (NANHRI) under our regional cooperation in Africa. RWI’s unique model for capacity building of NHRIs focuses on comprehensively strengthening all aspects of national human rights institutions, starting from the foundational level of ensuring basic operational and human rights knowledge capacities, all the way up to its functional capacities leading towards greater global compliance with the Paris Principles and international accreditation by the SCA.
The impact of the reviews and recommendations made by the GAHNRI SCA this week will reverberate beyond the countries under review. We at RWI are keenly aware that the GANHRI accreditation process reinforces the importance of NHRIs having both strong legal frameworks and the ability to turn these into effective human rights practices. For this reason, RWI has seen itself as a champion of stronger, more effective National Human Rights Institutions. In continuing to support NHRIs across the globe, we aim to provide the essential knowledge and tools help them strengthen both their legal and practical capacities, and in turn, help realize the implementation of human rights so that they are tangibly reflected in people’s lives across the world.