Human Rights (Spotlight Weekly)

Expansion of Human Rights Outreach Services

By Bipin Adhikari

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) is younger than most of the established human rights NGOs in Nepal. The contribution that they make to the promotion and protection of human rights will always be of vital importance to the Commission, which has the responsibility to act as the national human rights institution.

In fact, from the beginning, the Commission has strong links with human rights NGOs, and it has always tried to be accessible to all these organizations. But there are inevitable differences between the Commission and these NGOs. Their flexibility and dynamism can rarely be matched by a statutory body constrained by tighter mandate and accountability procedures.

While NGOs can operate in many human rights fronts, they don’t have enforcement powers. Enforcement may require the exercise of legal powers - such as those needed to ensure cooperation with an inquiry - and it would not usually be appropriate to invest a non-public body with such powers. Similarly, individual NGOs are unlikely ever to have the resources or expertise necessary to provide legal assistance to individuals on the wide range of human rights cases that may arise. Nor can they conduct the range of research, nor engage in the extensive promotion work needed. The Commission, by providing an official endorsement of the very notion of human rights, can also create a space within which human rights groups in civil society can operate effectively.

In fact, public bodies or those under the control of government continue to need advice and training on human rights and the new standards, which they will be expected to meet, if they are to avoid challenge in the courts, standards which will change as the law develops.

In many countries, quite too often, the relationship between national human rights institution and local NGOs have become wary, if not downright hostile, because NGOs consider that a national institution has been set up to apologize for government abuses and discredit their own work. This relationship in Nepal is quite fruitful because the human rights NGOs and other professional organizations in the legal sector were crucial to pressurize the government to support the move of establishing the national institution. A better institution has thus come up with greater public legitimacy.

However, with the moves of the Commission to open the regional offices, some of the partner NGOs of the Commission have become already suspicious. They think that the Commission is competing with them in key areas of their operation. While the Commission does not have such an agenda, it really needs to help them do away with their confusions.

NGOs cannot develop into a national institution, but again the Commission needs to ensure necessary space for them in all areas in which the Commission should not operate itself, or have a very limited operation. In fact, collaboration between the Commission and NGOs and other civil society organizations is a two way process. Human rights NGOs are a source of knowledge, expertise and public legitimacy that can be of benefit to the Commission. They have a closer and trusting relationship with grassroots communities. For example, the Human Rights Year Book of INSEC is not only a reference work for INSEC and other NGOs but for the Commission as well. The competence that this organization has developed in continuously producing such standard works every year is something that needs to be helped with by the Commission as a national institution, rather than competing with it for the same job. It is in this spirit that the Commission has not spent much resources on police or army training in the junior level, human rights literacy of common folk, and other promotional work of general nature. This is one simple example, but there could be several projects that the Commission can leave for the organizations who can best do it. This job is already due.

The Commission can also capitalize on the strengths of community-based organizations in the matter of collection of complaints, distribution of human rights materials, training of community leaders, and human right promotional works. Therefore, there can be regular consultations either through a formal consultative council, where civil society can have broad representation, or through regular strategy meetings.

At this stage, NGOs are unlikely to be accepted by several public bodies as their principal source of good practice guidance, even if the NGOs had resources to provide that service. NGOs do not have a duty to be guided in their approach and priorities by the public interest. They may be constrained, for instance by the sources of their funding, to avoid unpopular or controversial issues which ought to be taken to court. A link with the Commission can be helpful even in this context.

[Adhikari is a lawyer. He may be accessed at human_rights_nepal@yahoo.co.uk]