10.1.1 A Brief History

In 1991, the UN Centre for Human Rights (today's OHCHR) convened a conference of national human rights institutions to define common attributes that all new or existing NHRIs should possess. Because the meeting was held in Paris, the resulting standards came to be known as the "Paris Principles".

The Paris Principles have become part of the human rights lexicon: the Vienna Declaration, for example, qualified any mention of national institutions with the phrase "established in conformity with the Paris Principles". The Principles were approved by a UN General Assembly resolution in 19931 and today are broadly accepted as the international standard or test of an institution's independence and effectiveness.

Understanding the requirements of the Paris Principles takes some effort, since they are vague at times and can often be fully appreciated only with reference to 'best practice' or at least 'good practice'. The following discussion identifies each standard, and outlines the requirements as expressed in the Principles on how those requirements may be satisfied. A checklist to assess the degree to which a proposed or existing NHRI meets the standard being discussed is provided. A compilation of these checklists is also provided at the end of the Chapter2.

1 Principles relating to the Status of National Institutions, General Assembly Resolution 48/134, 20 December 1993.

2 The compilation is formatted to follow the sequence of standards as they are set out in the Paris Principles and so does not 'match' exactly the individual checklists provided following the discussion of each Principle.