December 17, 2024
MENA Rights Group welcomes the conclusions and recommendations made by the Sub-Committee on Accreditation (SCA) of the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI) to downgrade the national human rights institutions (NHRIs) of Egypt and Iraq to status B, and to maintain the status B of the Bahraini NHRI. These recommendations echo our concerns over the three NHRIs’ lack of independence, effectiveness and engagement with civil society.
NHRIs are established with the purpose of holding perpetrators of human rights violations accountable, including state authorities. Consequently, they must be independent from all branches of the state; legislative, executive and judiciary. Furthermore, NHRIs should operate effectively and fulfil their core mandate of documenting violations, addressing complaints and holding all perpetrators of human rights abuses to account. Such effectiveness is enhanced by pluralism, meaning that NHRIs must actively engage with civil society actors that document violations and advocate for the protection of human rights. These conditions were set out by the Paris Principles, which serve as a benchmark to assess the competence and legitimacy of NHRIs.
In this context, the SCA oversees the compliance of NHRIs with the Paris Principles through a peer-review process in which civil society can contribute by submitting reports. If an NHRI complies with the Paris Principles, they are granted status ‘A’, and if they partially fail to do so, they receive status ‘B’.
In 2023 and 2024, MENA Rights Group submitted detailed reports to the SCA regarding Egypt’s National Council of Human Rights (NCHR) and the Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights (IHCHR). In our reports, we urged the SCA to downgrade the statuses of the NCHR and IHCHR, which had previously received ‘A’ grades, down to a ‘B’. In 2023 and 2024, MENA Rights Group also submitted reports to the SCA regarding the National Institution for Human Rights in Bahrain (NIHRB), in which we urged the SCA to maintain the Institution’s ‘B’ status.
Citing our reports, the SCA’s recommendation to grant status ‘B’ to all three NHRIs reflects growing UN concern over the NCHR, IHCHR and NIHRB’s inability to address human rights violations in Egypt, Iraq and Bahrain due to their lack of compliance with the Paris Principles, specifically regarding their independence, effectiveness and commitment to pluralism.
MENA Rights Group is pleased to see that our repeated calls on these NHRIs to improve their compliance have made a direct impact on their status. The NCHR, IHCHR and NIHRB must imperatively strengthen their independence, enhance their effectiveness and actively engage with local civil society actors to protect and promote human rights in their respective countries. MENA Rights Group will continue, together with our civil society partners, to monitor and assess their independence and efficiency in the coming years.
