Chapter 3: Choose the issue KEY QUESTIONS • Why is it important to choose the right human rights issue for a national inquiry? • What issues lend themselves to the national inquiry approach? • What criteria can be applied in choosing the issue? 3.1. THE IMPORTANCE OF CHOOSING THE MOST SUITABLE ISSUE The national inquiry process is especially suited to the investigation of complex situations of human rights violation. National inquiries are a good means to address the most complex human rights situations that NHRIs confront. They are not suitable to address individual or isolated complaints of human rights violation but rather patterns of violation that apply to the entire country or a significant part of it. This is a space dimension. There is also a time dimension. A national inquiry is a good means to handle historic patterns of human rights violation, such as practices that have become embedded over many years or decades in the history and culture of the country and that are difficult to investigate on the basis of isolated individual actions. The complexity of the situation being investigated requires that any response be undertaken by a significant number of different actors, not only the Government. The national inquiry process enables the identification of all those who have some past, present or future role in relation to the situation or some responsibility for its causes or consequences. It therefore permits findings and recommendations to be made in relation to all those who share responsibility. In choosing the issue to be the subject of a national inquiry, these factors should be taken into account. Not all issues lend themselves to the national inquiry methodology. The issue to be investigated should be selected on the basis that a national inquiry is particularly suitable as a mechanism to deal with systemic or historic patterns of human rights violation. Three broader considerations should be borne in mind. • The issue must have a strong, clear human rights dimension. It may involve violation of a particular right or group of rights but the individual right or rights should be clearly identified at the very beginning so that the NHRI and the broader community know that the inquiry concerns human rights and what exactly those rights are. • The inquiry process is especially suited to investigating and addressing violations of economic, social and cultural rights. Careful consideration should be given to whether there are any situations of violation of these rights into which the NHRI should and could inquire. • The issue should be selected with a view to the possibilities for human rights education through the public nature of the national inquiry methodology. Chapter 3: Choosing the issue | 13