EC Call for proposals:

Concept Note: Joint Programme on Human Rights - Part 2

Continued from last week

THE FINAL report has never been utilized, but would be an excellent basis for prioritizing legislative reforms. The HRC has also proposed the establishment of a “Bills Watch” unit which could monitor and comment on all new legislation submitted to the Parliament.

This pillar would also allow for initiatives to promote specific pieces of legislation, for instance passage of the Women’s Rights Bill (UNFPA) or national legislation on IDPs (UNHCR): or specific amendments to the Children and Young Person Ordinance and related juvenile justice legislation (UNICEF).

D. Facilitating access of claim holders and civil society to national and international protection mechanisms.

The fourth pillar will focus on empowerment strategies, by which claim holders and civil society representatives are equipped with the tools (and opportunities) to access national and international protection mechanisms.

This will tie closely with support to the Human Rights Commission, particularly at the regional level and the support to the Legal Aid desks (currently a core part of the UNDP Access to Justice Project), and it would also provide scope for work on impunity issues, for instance support to the Commission of Inquiry on serious human rights violations and witness protection measures.

The overall programme will be designed to maximise the effectiveness with which the human rights situation is addressed in part, through the fostering of synergies.

In this area therefore, to complement the focus of the support for regional offices, at least initially, in conflict affected regions and the specific monitoring programmes around Resolutions 1612 and 1325, empowerment strategies will also prioritise these issues.

In the delivery of programmes in this area, the UN will continue to work with civil society and NGO partners such as Savodoya.

E. Human rights training and awareness programmes, particularly for the security forces and on human rights based approaches to development.

To mirror the support for claims holders, the programme will also work with duty bearers at the national and local level. As a first step, the programme will support the development of comprehensive strategy for human rights training, which includes as priorities:

- Training of the military, policy and security forces in both general principles and specialized aspects of human rights and humanitarian law;

- Capacity building within line ministries and district level officials for applying rights based approaches to the delivery of services.

The training strategy will build on existing and well-developed programmes of training for the military and police, such as the Sri Lankan Army’s well developed programme of dissemination on human rights and humanitarian law, supported by the ICRC.

3. Sustainability of the action

Risk analysis

Support to the HRC and MDRHR

The risk for the activities under pillars A and B, which directly support the HRC and the Ministry are closely related. Perhaps mot importantly, as a national human rights institution with its own statute, the HRC must be kept wholly independent of government.

In advocacy during preparations for the project, the importance of the Government addressing key factors, such as the 17th amendment and appointments to the Human Rights Commission will continue to be stressed.

In addition the government will be encouraged to provide clarification around the appropriate roles and boundaries between the MDMHR and HRC.

It is important that these issues are addressed to ensure the legitimacy of the human rights apparatus. Without advancements in this area, there is a risk that development partners reassess their policies of support.

At another level, the programme will work closely with government to ensure that donor and state funding are balanced (e.g. at present the HRC is 60 per cent donor funded and there has been a two per cent cut in its state funding over the past year), and sustainability is supported by limiting the risk of dependency on donor funding.

Parliament and Committee

As noted above, the political will for a Select Committee on Human Rights needs to be strengthened and therefore the UN will continue to advocate for a change in standing orders to allow for the (re)creation of select committees.

This project will also address the other priority areas outlined above, but will be ready to provide support for a Select Committee should the environment change.

Claim Holders and Civil Society

The success of initiatives in this area will first and foremost depend on the success of the activities under the other pillars.

Awareness campaigns can only do so much, and for people to report human rights violations they must believe that they will be heard, that they will not be threatened for reporting and most importantly, that systems are in place to hold the violators accountable.

Training for Duty Bearers

The largest risk to the success of activities under this pillar is that only limited access is given to the key actors. The programme will therefore take steps to ensure that it partners with national actors who have access and experience working with key security actors at all levels.

Overarching Risk

Since so many of the activities of this programme are based outside Colombo, a major risk which cuts across all pillars is directly related to the security situation. The programme will therefore need to remain flexible to adapt its focus and/or strategy as situations change.

Sustainability

To encourage sustainability across the programme, interventions will avoid building parallel mechanisms, and will wherever possible deliver support through existing institutions, be they be government or civil society partners.

Where projects do require that UNVs or technical assistants are brought in, short term, to fill critical gaps the programme will ensure that capacity building of national permanent staff is a key component of their terms of reference.

Sustainability of the activities themselves will also be aided by careful monitoring and evaluation by project teams and the recording of lessons learned and implementation of best practices.

The M&E system for the project will also carefully assess the degree of ownership, and the potential for full handover from project to national actors.

The joint programme will draw closely on two other UNDP projects to help ensure sustainability. First, the programme will utilise the results from the baseline assessment in the access to justice project to be conducted in early 2008, in order to identify civil society organisations with which to partner.

CSO and CBO partners will also be given access to UNDP’s strong places project which aims at building the basic business skills of CSOs so that they are better equipped to plan and mobilise resources, and thus are more likely to be sustainable.