MANAGEMENT
counterparts based in Geneva, such
as UNHCR. During the meeting, they
exchanged best practices and established an informal partnership with the
University of Geneva’s Innovation Hub
in charge of the Master’s Programme
in Innovation, Human Development
and Sustainability.
• UN Human Rights organized a workshop with Element AI to generate
ideas for repetitive tasks that would
benefit from the use of automation and
artificial intelligence. Four ideas from
different parts of the Office emerged
at the workshop, two of which will be
further developed during 2020. UN
Human Rights also deepened its relationship with the Masters’ Programme
in Innovation, Human Development
and Sustainability of the University of
Geneva in partnership with Tsinghua
University (THU, Beijing) in order to
connect with its students for joint innovation projects. Three of these projects
have been agreed upon for implementation in 2020.
• Due to the lack of access to the country, the Myanmar Team had to resort
to alternative ways to monitor human
rights developments. This included the
use of Internet-based and encrypted
applications to obtain and share
information. This proved particularly
effective for the work in Cox’s Bazar
where the Myanmar Team reached
out to victims and witnesses in northern Rakhine to build its analysis of the
situation on the ground. The Myanmar
Team is also making use of satellite
images to assess developments to
areas where it has no access with a
particular focus on land rights, conditions for safe and dignified returns and
economic development.
74 UN HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT 2019
Dynamic Knowledge
UN Human Rights’ knowledge base is
used strategically to actively shape programming, capacity, culture and structure.
• UN Human Rights launched “2030
CoP,” the Community of Practice on
the SDGs, economic, social and cultural
rights, prevention and right to development as one of the outcomes of the
three task forces on SDGs, prevention
and ESCR that were convened by the
High Commissioner in 2018. The 2030
CoP has three objectives, namely, to (i)
facilitate peer to peer support so that
colleagues can share knowledge and
experiences and support each other
in their work; (ii) share good practices,
materials, stories and initiatives so that
colleagues can build on work that is
already underway; and (iii) serve as
a directory for cross-fertilization so
that colleagues with specific thematic
expertise and practical experience
can be easily identified. Soon after
its launch, in October, participants
identified several promising practices
and opportunities for cross-fertilization, including on the right to water
(Colombia, Kenya and Mexico) and
the justiciability of ESCR (Tunisia). A
focused discussion was also held on
economic analysis and human rights. As
of December, the 2030 CoP, operating
through the Yammer social networking service for private communication,
had more than 300 members and was
comprised of UN Human Rights staff
from headquarters and field presences.
• The first phase of the review of the
new “welcome mat” for onboarding
colleagues into new jobs at UN Human
Rights was completed. The review
included an all-staff survey; bilateral
and small group consultations; a mapping of internal and external induction
modalities and practices; consultations
on Knowledge Management and
Learning; and collecting input from
other UN system entities. A Knowledge
Fair was organized in the context of the
Global Meeting with over 100 knowledge products that were inventoried,
catalogued and shared.
• UN Human Rights selected a partner
to begin the process of systematically
classifying its archive files. The partner reviewed all of the Office’s paper
archives to assess what should be sent
to the archive in Geneva, what should
be digitized and stored in a centralized
repository and what could be eliminated. The digitization will begin in
2020. These efforts will complement
the final phase of the transition to the
human rights database (HRDB) for
which the Office recruited a temporary
staff member. The staff member helped
to optimize the contents of the HRDB
and coached staff on knowledge management. He also developed several
formats to facilitate information gathering, analysis and sharing, including
legal analyses for certain types of
human rights violations.
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