Increasing parliaments engagement with human rights

This side event is hosted by Universal Rights Group, the University of Oxford, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), along side the Permanent Missions of Chile, Ecuador, Georgia, Maldives, Morocco, Portugal, Romania and Spain to the United Nations. A light lunch will be provided. Attendees will need to possess a UNHQ grounds pass.

The overall purpose of the side event is to spotlight the importance of parliamentary engagement with human rights and, specifically to:
• Highlight the findings of the OHCHR report (A/HRC/38/25) on “Contributions of Parliament to the work of the HRC and its universal periodic review”, including the results of the survey, the role of parliamentary committees on human rights, and the draft Principles on Parliaments and Human Rights;
• Consider the concrete experience of senior MPs in terms of their parliaments’ human rights engagement, in particular at committee level;
• Share good practices on parliament’s engagement with human rights and possible next steps.

Expected outcomes
• Sharing of existing good practices of parliamentary engagement with human rights from MPs
• Increasing awareness of on-going efforts to establish or strengthen national parliamentary human rights
committees in line with the recommendations contained in A/HRC/38/25, including the Draft Principles on Parliaments and Human Rights.

For more on this topic, see the report by Universal Rights Group & the Commonwealth Secretariat on ‘The global human rights implementation agenda: the role of national parliaments.’