The legal mandate of national human rights institutions The mandate of an NHRI is set out in its establishing law. Where an NHRI is established by a provision in the national constitution, that provision may be very general and may need to be supplemented by an organic law that provides the details of its nature, objectives, functions and operations. The Paris Principles provide that ‘[a] national institution shall be vested with competence to promote and protect human rights’.3 This is a very broad statement that describes the core mandate or competence of an NHRI. It should be interpreted to give it the widest possible scope, consistently with the legal principle that rights and freedoms and measures to promote and protect rights and freedoms should be interpreted expansively and measures that restrict rights and freedoms should be interpreted narrowly. Under many NHRI laws, the mandate to protect human rights is narrower than the mandate to promote them. Protection commonly relates to the investigation and resolution of cases of human rights violations. It might apply to the human rights of persons within or connected to the NHRI’s home state. Promotion commonly relates to human rights advocacy, advice and education. It might apply to human rights generally in all situations, including outside the NHRI’s home State.4 NHRIs often have more scope and more discretion to act broadly in their promotional functions. The broad mandate of NHRIs is limited only to the extent to which the law includes any provisions that limit the scope of the mandate. This would include any provisions that may limit the categories of persons who may make complaints or against whom complaints may be made or that may limit the application of particular functions to particular categories of rights. For example, the law may provide that only a victim may lodge a complaint of a human rights violation or that a complaint may only be lodged against a State official or a State entity. These kinds of provision do not permit complaints by human rights non-government organisations, unless they are acting on behalf of a victim, or complaints against private sector individuals or entities. Another example is a law that restricts complaints to violations of civil and political rights and does not permit complaints of violations of economic, social and cultural rights. Every NHRI must act within the bounds of the law by which it was established and operates but it should interpret the law as expansively as the words in the law permit. 8 National action on international issues