2.4.3 Hybrid Institutions5

“Hybrid” NHRIs may be characterised as follows:

• They are State-sponsored, with multiple mandates: they not only protect and promote human rights, but may also prevent maladministration, corruption, and even deal with environmental matters;
• They usually share the attributes of an “ombudsman-like” NHRI, that is, they are headed by a single person, they have recommendatory powers only, etc.

Since most hybrid institutions share the features of human rights ombudsman offices, they share their relative advantages and disadvantages. Hybrid institutions, however, clearly have the additional advantage of being able to deal with a range of issues of broad concern to the public, most of whom are not experts and don’t understand and should not be expected to know the difference between “human rights abuse” as compared to “maladministration” or corruption.

In countries without hybrid NHRIs, complainants may be referred from one agency to another to “find” the proper agency or government office; where hybrid institutions exist, people receive “one-stop” service. In addition, an investigation of an allegation of discrimination may disclose that there was an administrative abuse committed but that it did not relate to any particular human rights violation, for example. If the institution undertaking the investigation has a human rights mandate only, it would be forced to make a finding of no discrimination; a hybrid commission could deal with the matter. There are also financial advantages to having one rather than two redress agencies as duplicate premises and services could be avoided. Finally, hybrid-NHRIs can find synergies and strategies to work cooperatively on complaints and national approaches to issues involving human rights and good governance.

The disadvantages of hybrid NHRIs stem from the broadness of the mandate as well as the difficulty with “equating” human rights with maladministration, corruption or other areas.

With regard to the latter, human rights are not of the same category as maladministration and corruption: human rights form one of the three pillars of the United Nations (peace and security, development and human rights) and are enshrined in the Universal Bill of Rights. They are fundamental and inalienable. This cannot be said about either maladministration or corruption, regardless of how serious these other issues may be. There is a possibility that mixing human rights with other issues will diminish the weight and value we give human rights. If so, the risk is that human rights abuse will come to be seem more tolerable, and action to deal with it less necessary rather than more.

As to the former, broader mandates impose broader responsibilities and hybrid commissions must have the resources needed to discharge these.

Trying to get an institution to cover more mandate areas, but only allocating the same budget as to single-mandate institutions, may overburden the NHRI, or may simply mean that some mandates will be unfulfilled. Care needs to be taken to ensure that support to particular mandate areas does not create an imbalance in operations where other parts of the mandate are less popular with donors and thus underfunded.

Functional Issues:

All hybrid NHRIs have multiple mandates.

In Spain and some Latin American jurisdictions, for instance, the practice has been to create a single institution having human rights and traditional ombudsman functions.6

Examples:

Elsewhere, the focus may be broader yet: on human rights, anti-corruption and maladministration (Timor Leste and Tanzania, for example) or human rights, maladministration, anti-corruption, and complaints about environmental matters (Namibia):

Examples:

5 Many of these institutions also share membership in both the ICC and the IOI, but often are not full-members of the latter.

6 L.C. Reif, The Ombudsman, Good Governance and the Human Rights System (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2004)