the Speaker of the Parliament, and
represented by the Minister of Home, Law,
Justice & Parliamentary Affairs, Chairman
of law Commission, Cabinet Secretary and
Members of Parliament (MPs) - one from
the treasury bench and one from the
opposition bench. This chapter also briefly
describes the key functions of the
Commission.
Chapter: 2 Institutional Framework and
Development illustrates the institutional
capacity of the NHRC to undertake the
important responsibilities assigned to it by
the NHRC Act, 2009. Since its inception, the
NHRC has been playing a very laudable role
at national, regional and global forums and
as such was awarded “B” status
accreditation by the ICC and Associate
Membership by the Asia Pacific Forum.
Some of the remarkable features of the
NHRC are its identification of the thematic
areas and vulnerable groups, formation of
theme-wise committees to address the
issues, establishment of links among the
different groups of stakeholders etc.
Holding of policy dialogue of the
Commission with the Secretaries of
Bangladesh Government and nomination
of Focal Points in each relevant ministry in
the process of UPR is a milestone in the
human rights arena. This has not only
created links between the Government,
NG O s a n d U N a ge n c i e s a n d t h e
international community but also helped
the state actors to better prepare
themselves for the 2nd cycle of UPR.
As an apex national human rights
monitoring body, the NHRC has been able
to successfully create awareness and
consensus on basic human rights issues
through a series of seminars and
workshops. Besides these, the Commission
12
has organized seminars on Prosecuting
Crimes against Humanity currently being
tried by the International Crimes Tribunal
Bangladesh (ICTB). Partnerships with
NGOs, INGOs and UN bodies have also
strengthened the institutional capacity.
The reflection of the NHRC's role in the
Honourable President's speech in the
Parliament and Prime Minister's Address to
the Parliament also bear testimony to the
successful performance of the NHRC of its
statutory responsibility.
Chapter : 3 Human Rights Complaints and
Investigation highlights the progress NHRC
has made during the year, 2012 in making
the complaints management system
computerized, transparent, credible,
responsive and accountable. A series of
steps undertaken towards this end include
among others, preparation and application
/ distribution of a Standard Operating
Procedures (SOP) Manual, a Complaints
Handling Fact Sheet, a Template for
Custodial Death Report, an On-line
Complaint Management System and so on.
Complaint statistics for the last 3 years
show a remarkable increase in the number
of complaints received and disposed of.
This clearly speaks of increased awareness
on what to do in the case of human rights
violation and successful intervention of the
NHRC in addressing those cases. Besides
these, professional exchanges with the
International Juvenile Justice Observatory
(IJJO), lodging by NHRC of 14 suo-moto
complaints of human rights violation by the
NHRC and conducting a large number of
inquiries of the cases of human rights
violation by the NHRC are some of the
examples of success stories of the NHRC.
Chapter: 4 Human Rights Awareness and
Education elaborate the achievements of
NHRC in respect of its most important