National Human Rights Machinery

At their Special Leaders Retreat in April 2004, Pacific Islands Forum Leaders encouraged the development of national human rights machinery.

 

A regional workshop in conjunction with the Asia Pacific Human Rights Forum was held in the first quarter of 2005 to enhance and improve institutional frameworks for human rights in Forum Island Countries by increasing the internal capacities and knowledge of senior officials of both the Justice and Foreign Affairs Ministries of Forum Islands Countries. Assistance is available to Forum Islands Countries to identify national needs and capacities and establish national human rights machinery. The workshop identified a range of challenges facing Forum Island Countries in the promotion, protection and monitoring of human rights.

 

As a first step, the Forum Island Countries could consider conducting national human rights needs assessments. The assessments would identify existing capacities and priority needs in the government and non-government sectors, and present recommendations on the most appropriate models for human rights machinery in each country.

The initiative is based on information from Forum Islands Countries, workshops and in-country visits and consultations. Participants at the workshop were Forum country officials, civil society representatives and academics.

 

Information were collected through pre-workshop questionnaires. During in-country visits, information would be sourced form government officials and civil society representatives.

During the workshop, there was no conscious measurement methods used as the objective of the workshop was to raise Forum Island Countries' awareness of human rights and elicit whether there was any interest in establishing human rights institutions.