The National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) organised a training workshop on reporting in the field of human rights for the benefit of the committee's staff and representatives of the ministries concerned.
The workshop was held in co-operation with the UN Human Rights Training and Documentation Centre for South-West Asia and the Arab Region.
In her opening remarks at the workshop, that was held via video conference, NHRC Secretary-General Maryam Abdullah al-Attiyah said the process of preparing human rights reports in a scientific, professional, accurate, credible and transparent manner is the backbone of the work of national institutions.
She added that the process of preparing and writing reports is considered one of the most important roles of national human rights institutions. These reports come with recommendations on human rights conditions and what must be done in accordance with the obligations of the state stipulated in the ratified international conventions, and in light of the advice provided by the national human rights institutions to state institutions contained in the objectives for the establishment approved by the Paris Principles.
The NHRC secretary-general noted the urgent need to work on training sustainable national cadres to perform the task of preparing reports in order to ensure the high quality of reports submitted by national institutions, whether internal or external, national or international and other types of reports, in accordance with its mandate and competencies in the process of promoting and protecting human rights.
It is in this spirit that this training workshop was organised to introduce and explain the methodology of reporting, its mechanisms, objectives, types and basic principles of monitoring and information gathering operations, she said, adding that the workshop targeted employees and cadres of national human rights institutions.
The Director of the UN Human Rights Training and Documentation Centre for South-West Asia and the Arab Region Dr Abdel Salam Sidahmed said that monitoring human rights is one of the most important tasks of national human rights institutions within the protection mandate, stressing the need for this mandate to include monitoring of economic, social and cultural rights in addition to civil and political rights, and that national institutions must have the power to collect information and evidence that they need to perform this function effectively.
The workshop aimed at introducing the principles of monitoring, information gathering and general principles for writing reports in the field of human rights and the process of adopting human rights standards and indicators in the monitoring and reporting process.
The workshop also reviewed the NHRC's experience in reporting at the national and international levels.
The workshop also dealt with the types of reports in the field of human rights and the purpose of preparing them and the basic principles of monitoring and gathering information in addition to the implementation of human rights indicators.
