Friday, April 13, 2007

Query: Liberia / Development of National Human Rights Action Plans / Comparative Experiences

From: %%email.bounce%% [mailto:%%email.bounce%%] On Behalf Of Peter Hosking
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 1:30 AM
To: humanrights-talk@groups.undp.org; cprp-net@groups.undp.org
Subject: Re: RE:[humanrights-talk] Query: Liberia / Development of National Human Rights Action Plans / Comparative Experiences

Colleagues, I want to offer one or two observations on NHRAPs based on experience, principally, in Mongolia and New Zealand, my home country.

The latter first. In New Zealand, the plan was developed by the NHRI, the NZHRC. The Plan is a fine document, completed a couple of years ago now, but it can really be described only as the Commission's plan, not a NATIONAL plan. This is because it has never been adopted by the government. The Commission did endeavour to involve government departments and Ministers in the planning process, and representatives did stay involved for a while but eventually they fell by the wayside. Effectively, they withdrew from the process. I think the government would say that it welcomes the plan, but it has never adopted it. Thus it is not a central planning document and while I think the Commission endeavours to keep it alive, and some of its activities do reflect priorities in the NHRAP, it is not the government's plan.

Based on this experience, I suggest that it is crucial to involve government departments from the outset, and secure government (ie cabinet in the NZ political system) commitment AND RESOURCES for the exercise. The Finance Ministry is the most important of all for without funding the plan will never be implemented and will never drive annual and long-term budgetting for the state.

A similar outcome was reached in Mongolia, where UNDP put considerable resources behind the development of the Plan and much of the work was done by a human rights adviser funded (mostly, I think) by OHCHR under HURIST cooperation with UNDP and GoM. Again, a fine plan was adopted, but it took considerable effort to get it adopted - in this case by the Great Hural (the Parliament). The government did later set up a committee to implement the plan, but as of a couple of years ago, little had been done by way of implementation and, crucially, no budget allocated to the exercise. Mongolia has had a long history, I think I can say, of national plans which never get implemented and when last I saw it, the NHRAP was well on its way to being added to the list. If there has been progress made with the plan since, perhaps someone from the country team there could update us.

All of which is to say that there is little point (aside from some human rights awareness raising which can result from the development of a NHRAP) in putting significant resources to a document which languishes somewhere gathering dust.
Best, Peter

No comments: