human rights issues of the each of these
groups.
yDuring the year 2012 another area of success of the NHRC was its positive role in
the training and development of a large
number of human rights defenders and
activists including police officers, lawyers and social service officials. These
well-informed activists will now onward
play a proactive role in defending human
rights.
Challenges and the Way Forward
In spite all these successes, there are still a
large number of challenges the NHRC has
to combat and overcome:
yThe NHRC is in need of restructuring and
strengthening to cater to the increasing
demand for investigating human rights
violations. Such strengthening should be
in terms of enhancing its organizational
capability, manpower and other administrative resources.
yFor ensuring human rights in a country
like Bangladesh with very high rate of illiteracy and poor level of social awareness, the role of an organization like
NHRC should be of continuous nature.
The NHRC should therefore be housed in
a permanent office building with modern facilities. Currently, it is located at a
rented premise and is therefore, prone
to frequently shifting from one location
to another.
yThe existing NHRC Act, 2009, has entrusted the NHRC with a number of important responsibilities. In order to carry
out these responsibilities the NHRC,
quite often is in need of working with law
enforcing agencies, particularly the Police Department. As per the current legislation, the NHRC can refer these cases
to the police Department. But the NHRC
Act 2009 does not empower the NHRC to
compel the authority to take action. So,
54
in view of the nature and type of complaints, the NHRC Act, 2009 should be
revised to empower the NHRC with adequate authority to enforce its decisions.
The Recruitment Rules also needs to be
revised in regards to secondment at the
senior level positions for ensuring compliance with the 'Paris Principles'.
yThe NHRC's complaint management capacity should be strengthened so that
complaints on human rights violations
can be received and disposed of quickly
and properly. Modern on-line complaint
handling system should be introduced to
gear up the process with additional resources, manpower and training.
yThe NHRC has decided to continue with
the follow-up on the progress made on
the recommendations made during 1st
Cycle of Review after submission of the
report to the Human Rights Council and
thus to conduct a stock taking of the progress made and also arrange a Mock UPR
with support of the Stakeholders before
the 2nd Cycle of Review in April-May,
2013. The NHRC has also planned to develop its own and government's capacity
on reporting to Treaty bodies culminating in submission of Stakeholder Report
to at least one of the Treaty bodies
where the State party report is overdue.
yThe NHRC is relatively a new entrant to
the arena of human rights organizations
in Bangladesh. Compared to its size,
strength and experience, the Commission has undertaken large number of
programmes and activities on priority
basis. The efforts were not always
crowned with hundred percent success;
but the interventions have already made
perceptible impact. Myriads of cases of
human rights violations are prevalent in
almost all spheres of life of our society
and the Commission believes that this
situation has to be changed through sys-