NHRC Chairperson, Mr. Justice H.L.Dattu calls upon all the Commissions to join the process of monitoring of the recommendations of third Universal Periodic Review (30.01.2020)

New Delhi, 30th January, 2020

Mr. Justice H.L. Dattu, Chairperson, NHRC, India today said that the Commission wants to work closely with all the Commisions during the process of monitoring of the recommendations of third Universal Periodic Review, which is under way. He was chairing the Statutory Full Commission having onboard various National Commissions, at Indian International Centre, New Delhi. The NHRC Members, Mr. Justice P.C. Pant, Mrs. Jyotika Kalra, Dr. D.M. Mulay, Secretary General, Mr. Jaideep Govind besides Chairpersons, Members and senior officers of various National Commissions were present.

Justice Dattu called upon all the National Commissions to join HRNet portal of NHRC to avoid duplication of complaint registration on the same issue. He also invited the various Commissions to share their best practices in order to build a strong support mechanism for protection of human rights. He gave an overview of various rights issues being looked into by the NHRC, India and initiatives taken by it to expand its outreach.

Chairperson of National Commission for Backward Classes, Dr. Bhagwan Lal Sahni, Chairperson of National Commission Minorities, Mr. Syed Ghayorul Hasan Rizvi, and Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities, Ms Shakuntala Gamlin, NCW Members, Ms Chandramukhi Devi and Dr. Rajulben L. Desai were among the other prominet speakers dwelling upon the activities and challenges related to the work of their respective institutions.

Earlier, Mr. Jaideep Govind, Secretary General, NHRC said that the NHRC has expanded its outreach through various means including linking its online complaints filing system with the Common Service portal of the Government of India so that people could easily file complaints of human rights violations. It has also taken several State Human Rights Commissions on board its HRCNet portal to avoid duplication of complaints and timely processing of the same. The Commission has also expanded its outreach through its internship programmes, training workshops, seminars, research projects, open hearing and camp sittings.

Many suggestions came up during the discussions, some of which are as follows:

• All the National Commissions should explore how best they can jointly expand the outreach of human rights protection and promotion mechanism;

• They need to share best practices and also work on a mechanism to cut short duplication of multiple complaints in a matter by joining HRC Net portal of the NHRC;

• Organize a national seminar on a subject and theme of common areas of interests may be organized having on borad all the Member Commissions of Statutory Full Commission;

• Need to collectively evolve a joint strategy, particulary, to address the issue of discrimination of people suffering various disabilities, which are now manifesting with new types of diseases;

• Need to work jointly to address the problem of child labour in bidi, polishing and other such unorganized sectors;

The meeting was significant as it was called for the first time since the recent amendment in the PHR Act adding Chairpersons of National Commission for Backward Classes, National Commission for Protection of Child Rights and the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities as the new deemed Members of the NHRC. The Chairpersons for National Commissions for Minorities, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Women were already the deemed Members of the Commission.

The NHRC has been holding the Statutory Full Commission meetings on time to time to explore new areas of cooperation, share best practices and activities of different National Commissions to work towards promotion and protection of human rights in a more cohesive manner as specified in the statutory clauses (b) to (j) of Section 12 of the Protection of Human Rights, PHR, Act.

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