A Manual on National Human Rights Institutions 4.2. THE COMMISSION MODEL The commission model is distinguished by having a multi-member governing body that acts collectively or collegially and having a broad mandate for human rights promotion and protection.108 This model is the one that complies most readily with the Paris Principles. The model has a common structure but within the general model there are significant differences. • There is a governing board, the commission, made up of members, the commissioners. The number of members varies from three to 35.109 • The members can be full-time or part-time.110 • The members can all be appointed as generalist human rights commissioners or some or all could be appointed with specific statutory responsibilities to particular areas of human rights or particular human rights functions.111 • The members are supported in their work by part or full-time professional staff.112 NHRIs based on the commission model have broad mandates for promotion and protection of human rights. They undertake broad investigations of patterns of human rights violations. They have quasijudicial functions for investigating and attempting to resolve complaints of human rights violations and so are subject to all the Paris Principles, including the final section (‘Additional principles concerning the status of commissions with quasi-jurisdictional competence’). Twenty-one of the 24 APF member institutions have been established on the commission model.113 This model is also the most common model for NHRIs in Commonwealth countries, including the Anglophone countries of Africa. The commission model is probably the most common model among NHRIs worldwide. The office of the Australian Human Rights Commission. Photo by James Iliffe/APF. 30 108 Note that there are some NGOs that call themselves commissions but they are not NHRIs simply by virtue of the term. NHRIs are established by law in accordance with the Paris Principles. 109 The NHRI of Mongolia has three members. The NHRIs of India, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka have five members. The NHRI of Malaysia has seven members. The NHRI of Indonesia has 35 members under its law (Law Number 39 Concerning Human Rights 1999, Article 83) but in fact only seven members have been appointed to the current Commission. 110 Some NHRIs have only full-time members, others include a mix of full-time and part-time members and some have only part-time members. In general, the fewer the number of members, the more likely it is that they will all be full-time. The Sri Lankan NHRI’s law does not specify whether members should be full-time or part-time. 111 The NHRI of Australia has a president and seven full-time commissioners with individual responsibilities for age discrimination, children’s rights, disability discrimination, indigenous social justice, race discrimination, sex discrimination and human rights generally. 112 The number of the staff varies greatly, from fewer than 20 in some to more than 600 in the NHRIs of Afghanistan and the Philippines. 113 The three exceptions are the Provedor for Human Rights and Justice of Timor Leste, the Ombudsman of Samoa and the Commissioner for Human Rights of Kazakhstan, which have been established on the ombudsman model. The jurisdiction of the Ombudsman of Tuvalu was extended in 2017 to create the Ombudsman as an NHRI. It is also established on the ombudsman model. It is not yet a member of APF.