3.1 Protection

The goal of human rights protection is first and foremost to ensure the establishment or reinforcement of a protection framework, to identify and investigate human rights abuses, to bring those responsible for human rights violations to justice, and to provide effective remedies and redress for victims, within a structural framework of policies, laws and programmes that ensures prevention and enforcement.

While there are differences in how NHRIs approach their protection responsibilities, some typical roles and responsibilities in the protection mandate include:

Investigating alleged violations of human rights, including through:

• Own-motion investigations into human rights situations;
• Handling of individual complaints (for NHRIs with quasi-jurisdictional powers);
• Alternative dispute resolution mechanisms; and
• Where the legal system permits, seeking redress or remedies through the courts or specialised tribunals, including by addressing courts as amicus curiae where warranted.
• Monitoring human rights at the national level, including:
• Issues-based monitoring, especially on thematic issues affecting specific groups such as migrants, minorities, indigenous peoples, disabled and the elderly. The focus may also be on women’s human rights and empowerment, as well as on the integration of gender equality, enforcement of children’s rights and other thematic issues that are priorities in the country;
• Prisons and other places of deprivation of liberty, including preventing torture, to minimize pre-trial and preventive detention, and to ensure that international standards are respected;
• Monitoring progress in the realization of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights; and
• Monitoring progress in achieving development goals such as the Millennium Development Goals and other internationally-agreed goals.
• Undertaking public inquiries into significant human rights issues.
• Protecting human rights defenders.

For details on the rule of law and “core protection mandate” – issues related to serious violations of civil and political rights, including torture, arbitrary detention, and enforced disappearances, and to protecting human rights defenders readers are encouraged to review Chapter 4.