CHAPTER 1: REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS AND THEIR RELEVANCE TO THE WORK OF NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS INSTITUTIONS 1.2. Reproductive rights and the work of national human rights institutions Over the past two decades, there has been a growing recognition of the value of a national institution that, while created by the State, is able to play a central role in promoting and protecting human rights at the domestic level. The United Nations has been especially active in promoting the establishment and effective functioning of such bodies including through the development and adoption of a set of principles (the “Principles Relating to the Status of National Human Rights Institutions”, or the “Paris Principles”) that that establish core standards for the structure, composition and functioning of NHRIs.21 Today, in many countries, NHRIs occupy an important part of the national human rights machinery. Their influence often extends beyond national borders and, through membership bodies such as the International Coordinating Committee of NHRIs (ICC) and APF, many NHRIs are playing an important part in regional and international human rights discussions and debates. The Paris Principles are clear on the point that such NHRIs should be provided as broad a mandate as possible, based on universal human rights standards.22 Breadth of mandate is seen as critical to an NHRI’s effectiveness and relevance, and is a key criterion for deciding whether an applicant institution fulfils the membership requirements of both the ICC and the APF. In practice, most NHRI member institutions of the ICC and APF are empowered to work on the full range of rights recognized in the core human rights treaties. Particularly in recent years, NHRIs have used the breadth of their mandates to expand engagement into less traditional areas such as violence against women, disability, health (including HIV/AIDS), migration and trafficking. It has been recognized for some time that NHRIs have a potentially important role to play in promoting and protecting reproductive rights. This recognition appears to be related to national institutions’ increasing engagement with issues related to discrimination and violence against women, and, more broadly, with areas of human rights concern such as health and education that lie outside the traditional field of civil and political rights. In 2002, a regional workshop on the issue of reproductive rights, organized by the United Nations (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and UNFPA) and the InterAmerican Institute for Human Rights, brought together representatives of 17 national institutions from Latin America, the Caribbean and Canada.23 The objectives of that meeting were very similar to those of the present report: to analyze work carried out to date; to examine obstacles and opportunities faced by women in the exercise of their reproductive rights and to identify ways in which NHRIs can contribute to the promotion and protection of reproductive rights. UN General Assembly, ‘Principles Relating to the Status of National Institutions’ UN Doc. A/RES/48/134 (20 December 1993), Annex. 21 22 Ibid. at para. 2. See Inter-American Institute for Human Rights, Promotion and Defense of Reproductive Rights: A New Challenge for the National Human Rights Institutions, Instituto Interamericano de Derechos Humanos, San José, Costa Rico (2003). 23 7