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The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is the only specialist unit within the United Nations that deals with national institutions established on a legislative basis by states to protect human rights.
In an exclusive interview with World Internet News, Orest Nowosad, coordinator for the National Institutions Unit in Geneva, talks about the role the United Nations plays on human rights and addresses the prospects for promoting these rights in the Arab world.
What is your evaluation on conferences of human rights in the Arab world?
The first conference was held a year ago in Cairo. The Doha conference is the [second] of its nature dealing with national [human rights] institutions. This was an extremely successful conference in the sense that the dialogue was extremely open. The conversations were very open. We did not have any sense of anyone holding anything back. People were quiet respectful of other opinions. There were substantive discussions around difficult issues[like] the rights of women. The success of a conference is always told by the results afterwards and the implementations. This is what we have to watch for.
When you say “We are going to watch for,” who exactly are “we”?
It is the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and [currently] the national [governmental] institutions of Qatar, Egypt and Morocco. The three institutions have agreed to create a follow up committee to the recommendations. Some of these follow-ups will take years. We must keep the dialogue open.
What is exactly the role of your unit on the international level?
We have a committee for national institutions working with the commission on human rights and ensuring that national institutions have the rightful place to be there; those that are independent and effective working on the treaty body system of the UN.
And the regional level?
We bring groups and parties to discuss [things] nationally. So if a government wants to establish an institution and comes to us for an advice, we give [it] a comparative text. We give examples of the other legislations with best practices. If we get the legislation, we comment on it to see whether it is in compliance or not with the Paris Principles then we take the next step. We look at capacity building if it is required. This could be a technical cooperation project where we invite them [governmental officials and non-governmental representatives] to seminars that can be undertaken by our office or by the UN for example via our field office in Beirut. We could be dealing with issues of economic, social and cultural rights, bringing institutions together so they can discuss [such] issues. Finally, for information flow and information management, we created a website that provides information on institutions.
Can you give an example?
Sudan is establishing a human rights institution. We have given three advices on the legislation and we hope we made an impact on that legislation. [At the end], it is always up to the state to take or leave the advice. Same thing happened with the reform of a similar legislation in Palestine. We have brought experts to help them [Palestinians] on the complaints handling procedure. If you are looking at other countries in the region, we have engaged with Saudi Arabia, when it had a national society. We guided on whether to have a legislation complied or not with the Paris Principles. The same thing occurred with other countries like Qatar, Jordan and Morocco.
You said that you give advice, you give guidance and you share information. How serious is the response? Once you do this, what do you expect in return?
I hope the [involved] partners will dialogue with us to better understand where we are coming from rather than something we agree on or dismiss…
In order to...
In order to have an institution that complies with the international standard expressed by the Paris Principles, meaning an independent and effective institution. That is not an over night process. It takes time and you have to invest that time. This can take many years. We have countries in the world where it took seven or eight years. It is not only up to us, you need to mobilize civil societies, so when we do these things, we bring civil societies along with us and we bring the media with us.
Would you give an example of an incident where the media was involved?
I had a call from a country in Africa where the media was very unhappy with the way things were being done when I was interviewed. We responded to that. So you want to mobilize all the forces, but you do not want to make the governments feel like we are gaining up on them because at the end of the day, the governments have to buy into this if it is going to succeed.
How do you observe progress in your unit in regard to the Arab world?
Our office in Palestine was very instrumental. The Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizens’ Rights (PICCR) engaged [itself] in a broader family of national institutions. Now, we recognize it is one of the strongest institutions in the region. When we first started dealing with the Moroccan Council of Human Rights, there was only one woman. Following our intervention, we were able to influence the government to ensure it brought more women into the council. We now have eight women in the council.
What kind of challenges do you face when working the Arab world in comparison to other countries and how do you tackle such challenges?
I do not think the Arab region has any strong particularity to others. Every region seems to think it does [but] it does to a degree. Issues of universality, universal applications, cultural sensitivities, these are the obvious challenges that one has to face. Our challenge as at United Nations is to ensure people understand that there are universal values. The rights of the child are universal; domestic violence is not sanctionable anywhere. Torture is not at all acceptable anywhere. Institutional challenges [exist] where there is lack of democratic structure, lack of an effective parliament, lack of strong judiciary and lack of free media.
How did your commission react to violations of human rights due to occupation in Palestine and Iraq?
I would not use the term "occupation" necessarily in Iraq. Our concern is the domestic consideration. What has been tried is creating a society for the future. We believe in a future for Palestine. We believe in a future for Iraq. So we are creating an institutional structure for that future, while at the same time, both of these entities are dealing with serious issues of the present violence and circumstances, which are in part historical. We know there are internal factions ‘quiet decisive’ within both societies that create problems. That is why I come back to universality. You have to remind all parties in the situation [about] their rightful obligations. We have not shied away from reminding those forces that enter these territories of their human right obligations. We must continue to do that.
But the United States has been reserved on human rights reforms in the United Nations and the establishment of a council for this purpose. What do you make of this?
Our council of human rights, the Secretary General of the United Nations, the High Commission, the president of the General Assembly have been all clear on this. The council needs to move forward. Every one of those I mentioned wants to have a strong human rights council and that was the whole idea of the reform. The United Nations secretary has been clear on that.
© Copyright World Internet News 2006-07
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