Perspective (Spotlight Weekly)

Action on Human Rights Complaints: A Stitch in Time Saves Nine

By Bipin Adhikari

Every national human rights institution organized around Paris principles needs to set up a procedure for the examination of complaints received by the organization concerning alleged violations of human rights in its fields of competence.

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) of Nepal also has certain established procedures in this regard. Article 9 of the Human Rights Commission Act enables the Commission to conduct inquiries and investigations, on its own or upon a petition or complaint files to it on violation of human rights and abetment thereto, and carelessness and negligence in the prevention of violations of the human rights by any person, organization or authority concerned. It can also inquire into a matter with the permission of the court in respect of any claim on violations of human rights, which is sub judice in the court.

After an initial experience for a couple of years, the Commission has started working towards the development of an automated complaint handling system aimed at matching its operating procedures and to meet the actual needs of the NHRC. To develop such a system would mean that the Commission staff and managers would have to be involved in developing specifications for the system intensively receiving due lessons from its past experience. In the long term this is the only viable option for a truly effective system that the Commission is looking around for. In addition, the complaints procedure, which it has developed in draft form remains untested and it may not be an appropriate time to develop a custom-made system that risks becoming obsolete if the process is subsequently changed.

The challenges faced by the Commission in its current method of handling of complaints are — identification of multiple complaints; limited and unstructured recording of details; inadequate information on the history of the directions passed by the Commission on a complaint; unscientific classification of incidents with no clear cut categorization of complaints; limited provision to record the compliance (compensation, prosecution, and disciplinary action) cases thereby resulting in poor quality of records and their follow up; increased complaint processing time; ad hoc entries and validation of data. At present it is difficult at the Commission to record and track all complaint movement activities easily. It is also difficult to monitor action taken by any specific authority on a complaint quickly. There is no comprehensive query-based system for effective complaint management. As the system is based on manual file handling, it cannot effectively cull information about victim and complainant. Besides, it lacks ordered and controlled entry of basic, follow up directions.

An automated complaint handling system must respond to all these problems. The system employed at the Indian Human Rights Commission is said to be a very efficient one, which Nepal can make use of with necessary modifications. This system, which is said to be based on simple and easy-to-use data entry forms, is meant to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the existing complaint management system by adopting a systematic and uniform approach to complaint handling. While this system can improve these existing shortcomings, it can also store the identity of the officer culling the information of a complainant. It has the provision for recording of Commission's direction at the time of its initiation. It can produce series of authorization checks and validations to improve the quality of data. Under this system, accountability by provision of storing the user ID for every transaction is also possible to be entered. It can generate multiple copies of notice and action reports. It also ensures automatic generation of reminders, summons, statements of non-reported cases, etc. They are in fact additional characteristics of the Indian system.

The bilateral Project - Development of Effective and Efficient Complaint and Monitoring Processes for the Nepalese National Human Rights Commission, jointly initiated with the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) - with funding from the Canadian International Development Agency, has been working since the last year to build its capacity to handle and resolve human rights complaints and to monitor the human rights situation in the country. To implement this aspect of the project, the service of the Indian National Human Rights Commission which offered their complaints managements system at no cost to the Nepalese Commission, is about to be received by the Commission. Under the terms of this project, plans are being made to engage the Indian Commission's informatics experts, first, to adapt their software in line with the Commission's complaint handling process to meet its basic needs and, second, to adapt their software to meet the needs of the Nepal's Commission as defined more fully by an internal user group. Both phases will involve installation and testing of the system, as well as user training.

[Adhikari is a lawyer. Comments on the article may be sent on "mailto:human_rights_Nepal@yahoo.co.uk" human_rights_nepal@yahoo.co.uk]