CHAPTER 3: ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF NHRIS Nonetheless, the existence of other institutions also provides real opportunities to deal comprehensively with complex problems with multiple actors. NHRIs can address complex, systemic issues that other bodies cannot or will not address, while encouraging other institutions to take a human rights-based approach to their mandates. Organisations can, for example, work together on specialised issues, with each examining and addressing matters for which they have the main responsibility. For example, an NHRI and a specialised women’s commission or ombudsman could cooperate with parliamentary human rights groups, as well as government departments with expertise in the area, to deal with certain broadbased women’s issues. Ombudsman institutions and their relationship to NHRIs is an area of particular interest. The traditional ombudsman model, as it evolved in Sweden, was not concerned directly with human rights. As noted elsewhere in this Toolkit, there are more recent institutional models that do have specific human rights protection mandates and these bodies, together with human rights commissions, are important interlocutors as NHRIs. According to statement by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in June 2009: OHCHR also recognizes the important contribution that ombudsman institutions can make as another element in the national human rights protection system – even without an explicit mandate of human rights protection – given their role in ensuring government accountability and strengthening the rule of law. Many human rights abuses are indeed connected with maladministration, administrative malfeasance, or a lack of government accountability. The essential notion of procedural fairness, which underpins the administrative law that ombudsman institutions are mandated to uphold, is thus key to protecting the rights of individuals in their interactions with public authorities.6 The long term objective, from a NHRI and human rights perspective, is to avoid the creation of separate networks of institutions, to work with the Paris Principles, and to seek to expand the mandates of existing or planned ombudsman institutions to include human rights as much as possible. There are concrete examples of this, for example the emergence of A status Ombudsman institutions in Spain, the Russian Federation, El Salvador, and Ecuador. Another area where NHRIs should work in close cooperation with other stakeholders is the administration of justice. An important tool in this area is the Nairobi Declaration on the Administration of Justice, which elaborates upon the important role that NHRIs play in ensuring an effective administration of justice, in particular with regard to access to justice, the judiciary, law enforcement and correctional and detention facilities. Nairobi Declaration on the Administration of Justice, adopted at the Ninth International Conference of National Human Rights Institutions (Nairobi, Kenya, 21-24 October 2008). 3.4 Role of NHRIs in domestically incorporating international human rights law NHRIs have an active and ongoing responsibility to advise the State on the incorporation of international human rights law into the domestic sphere, in States where this is a requirement.7 Some institutions have the legal authority to review and comment on all human rights-related legislation and/or policy at the domestic level, to ensure its compliance with international law. Other institutions may be asked to do so as part of the legislative drafting and policy development process. Even where neither the enabling legislation nor administrative practice requires it, however, an institution may use its general authority to advise government, Parliament, the Judiciary or any other competent bodies and to intervene in discussions on proposed legislative and/or policy initiatives. National human rights institutions can influence the domestic application of international instruments by asking the following questions: Has the international instrument been ratified by the State? If so, NHRIs can argue that the State is obliged to incorporate the international instrument in national law. If not, the NHRI can develop and implement a programme that is meant to move the State towards ratification. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, H.E. Ms. Navanethem Pillay to the 9th International Ombudsman Institute World Conference http://www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf/0/1D4 2DDE904C1035CC12575D700464329?opendocument 6 General Comment No. 31 [80] Nature of the General Legal Obligation Imposed on States Parties to the Covenant. 26/05/2004. CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.13. At par. 15. 7 37