Introduction to the Guide 0.1 About the Guide The Paris Principles (relating to the Status of National Human Rights Institutions) direct NHRIs to inform and educate about human rights, to foster the development of values and attitudes which uphold human rights, and to encourage action aimed at defending human rights from violation. Specifically, NHRIs have a responsibility to: • build practical understanding of human rights • enable and mobilise others to become human rights actors and defenders • use their unique national position to build cultures of human rights across all levels and sectors of society. Building Human Rights Communities (the Guide) aims to support NHRIs meet their mandate by building self-reliant and respectful ‘human rights communities’. These are communities that are able to: • identify, examine, document, and monitor human rights violations that impact on them, • develop and implement sustainable strategies to address these human rights violations using local knowledge and local solutions, • monitor and evaluate the success of these strategies. Human rights community-led development is an approach - a way of working. This Guide sets out the principles of the approach and introduces a high-level implementation process. However, the Guide relies on the user to make sense of the approach for their own context. The Guide also makes the assumption that while staff may be ‘insiders’ to a community of focus, the NHRI as an organisation is independent from it. We recognise that many NHRIs already have robust community-led engagement processes in place. The Guide is not intended to replace these processes. Rather, we hope it offers some approaches, tools and resources that may support NHRIs to strengthen their work. We look forward to building and strengthening the Guide with case studies, tools and processes from around the region. A human rights community-led approach is not an appropriate response for all human rights situations. Rather it is most effective when you have the time and resource to facilitate a process that enables a community-owned, sustainable response to human rights violations. 1. “Community” in this context refers to wherever people live, work and play, such as a workplace, a school, a group of people with disabilities, a street, a village or a region. It involves everyone in that community, rights holders, duty bearers and influencers. APF HRCLD Guide 7