GANHRI President and NHRC Chairperson H E Maryam bint Abdullah Al Attiyah (centre) speaking during the meeting.
Geneva: President of the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI) and Chairperson of Qatar’s National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) H E Maryam bint Abdullah Al Attiyah stressed the need for national human rights institutions (NHRIs) to enjoy financial and administrative independence, which is one of the basic conditions for their classification and approval of their membership in the GANHRI, and for them to gain the confidence of the international community.
Addressing the GANHRI 2023 annual meeting in the UN Office in Geneva, Al Attiyah said that the process of accrediting and classifying national institutions according to their commitment to the Paris Principles represents the core of the work of the joint coalition, and the essence of its collective responsibility in order to ensure a trustworthy, robust and transparent process that supports members of the coalition at all stages of the process.
The meeting brought together heads of the four regional networks - the Americas, Asia, Europe and Africa, regional coordinators, and the chairperson of the Subcommittee on Accreditation, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and UNDP.
She added that the aim of the accreditation process is to ensure the support of national human rights institutions, and to prepare them to implement the Paris Principles in practice, while recognising their comprehensiveness and universality as standards, and studying how to apply them in the operations and activities of national human rights institutions within the specificities of national contexts, pointing out that the coalition will organise its 14th international conference later this year, with the participation of NHRIs, including Danish and Ukrainian.
Al Attiyah emphasised the importance of this gathering of members and partners, highlighting that the topic of the conference, which will discuss the role of national human rights institutions in preventing and responding to torture and ill-treatment, is important. The conference will be an opportunity for members and its partners to show solidarity with the National Institution for Human Rights in Ukraine in this difficult time, she added.
