UNDP-OHCHR TOOLKIT 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: 11 Own-motion investigations into human rights situations; 11 Handling of individual complaints (for NHRIs with quasi-jurisdictional powers); 11 Alternative dispute resolution mechanisms; and 11 Where the legal system permits, seeking redress or remedies through the courts or specialised tribunals, including by addressing courts as amicus curiae where warranted. 11 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. 32 •• 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. 3.1.1 Investigations and Human Rights Complaints Investigating alleged human rights abuses is fundamental to the work of most NHRIs. While the focus is generally geared towards national remedies, there are international and regional bodies where NHRIs play a role. For example, when the protocol on the establishment of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights comes into force (which provides for the merger of the existing African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights and African Court of Justice), unlike NGOs and other non-state actors, NHRIs will be entitled to bring cases directly to the new Court – and there is already precedent for NHRIs bringing cases before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. According to the Paris Principles, NHRIs may have additional powers through a quasi-judicial mandate, and these NHRIs are required to receive, investigate and resolve complaints (including through settlements, binding decisions and/or on the basis of confidential interventions); to inform complainants of their rights, and of available remedies; and to promote access to remedies, to hear complaints and transmit them to competent authorities; and to make recommendations to competent authorities for redress. UNCT staff who work with NHRIs in the early stages of establishment must ensure that technical assistance (TA), if it is part of the engagement, includes developing internal capacity to undertake these functions, including to establish effective case management systems in support of an investigation system.