CHAPTER-5 Challenges & Way Forward The National Human Rights Commission, Bangladesh is now a decade-old institution but it is still a new Commission compared with many other NHRIs of the Asia Pacific region. Much of its institutional development is done but much remain undone. Until now, institutional strengthening and enhancing manpower and capacity building of officers and staff is very important for the Commission; especially, developing training and a learning culture, grappling with obstacles to develop offices in the region and sub-region and building own infrastructures fall in this line. Strengthening NHRCB also means streamlining the ways and means for achieving “A” status. Institutional strengthening also entails making NHRCB-job lucrative enough so that employees will not be quitting jobs and skilled manpower remain in place. Commission’s ability to working independently without financial constrains need to be maintained intact and whether there is any vulnerability and changes in the donor landscape is also to be calculated on time. Of course, Government is expressing willingness to strengthening the Commission and the Commission is faring well in embodying itself as the prime institution for promoting and protecting human rights in the country. Legitimate optimism has been generated in the minds of people that NHRCB can deliver more for safeguarding human rights with better manifestations. Until then some conspicuous hurdles and barriers need to be overcome by the Commission. The first and foremost challenge of the Commission still remains to be the manpower enhancement. On the way to augmenting manpower there are some definite problems. The major one is the turnover of employees. Very often employees are coming in and leaving the organisation because NHRCB-job has still not assumed a lucrative feature. NHRCB is now lacking a permanent office-building. A permanent office is believed to be instrumental for providing a better working environment and creating a sense of ownership among the officers and staff and that consequently can help enhance the Commission’s image and prestige to a new height. To have a piece of land acquired and to have a building erected is an emerging challenge for the Commission. The Commission is advocating and lobbying with the Government to this end expecting an impending solution. Upgrading NHRCB to “A” Status is a vital point. The Sub Committee on Accreditation (SCA) of ICC (GANHRI) still maintains its censorious observation and reservation that NHRCB falls short of meeting the criteria of the Paris Principles. There may be variation of perception or interpretation of the situation, but as a matter of fact, NHRCB is yet to answer the questions of SCA that do not depend on the individual performances of NHRCB. Government needs to come forward to streamline the selection procedure of the Chairman and Members of the Commission empowering it with enough power as to investigate the human rights violations committed by the law enforcement agencies (LEAs). The Commission wants to listen to the grievances and complaints of people with full potential. Maximum attention is employed to the disposal of complaints but, as a matter of fact, due to shortage of 37