14. Regional and international partnerships Human rights activity at the national level cannot be separated from human rights activity at the international level. The Charter of the United Nations states that human rights are of international concern, while international human rights norms provide the basis for standards and legislation at the national level. Whether the aim is to combat racial discrimination, to promote the rights of indigenous peoples, to elaborate the right to development or to promote human rights education, the stimulus comes from international activity. National action plans fit into this picture. As national plans, they must focus on activity taking place at the national level. However, the concept of national action plans originated at the international level (see chapter 2) and international meetings have been held to develop the concept. It makes sense for those working on action plans at the national level to have an international orientation so that they can both gain from international experience and enable others to learn from theirs. In addition, expertise and resources available at the international level can be accessed in this way. The international dimension has already been discussed at a number of points in this Handbook. Some international aspects of national action plans are summarized below. 14.1 Sharing experience Each country that has developed a national action plan has the potential to provide useful guidance to other countries embarking on the same path. The range of countries, situations and cultures is so vast that a country that is developing a national action plan needs a variety of examples to draw on as a source of guidance for its work. Thus, every new plan that is put in place will expand the range of examples available. A new plan may well contain features that have not been addressed elsewhere and this may be useful to countries facing similar issues. As part of this process of sharing, it will be possible to cut across traditional boundaries of donors and recipients of technical assistance. As most countries that have developed national action plans to date have been developing countries, much of the existing expertise is located in the developing world. As a result, where consideration is being given to funding and provision of expert advice under technical cooperation programmes, the expertise will be drawn largely from developing countries. Such a role for representatives of developing countries is likely to contribute helpfully to a more balanced, vigorous and constructive international debate. As this Handbook has suggested, a national action plan is not a single event but should be a continuing process. This makes the sharing of experience even more important, as every country that has a plan will wish to review its approach in the light of what may be described as best international practice. In this way, successor plans will benefit not only from the experience of the country concerned in implementing its first plan but also from the accumulated experience of all countries that have been working with national plans. 106