The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) is writing to request that representatives of the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) working in Asia be given sufficient skilled people and funding of abuse.
Our request comes after recent communication with Mr Homajoun Alizadeh, the regional representative of your office in Southeast Asia. We had approached Mr Alizadeh to seek assistance concerning two cases in Thailand: a criminal trial that has run in Bangkok for over 14 years without completion (AHRC UA-094-2007) and the alleged torture and extrajudicial killing of a young man by the police in Kalasin province (AHRC UA-136-2007).
Initially, Mr Alizadeh replied that it was not possible to intervene due to the pending nature of inquiries. However, after the AHRC sought clarification from him concerning his mandate under international law (AHRC-OL-013-2007), he kindly acknowledged that the reason for not taking up individual cases locally is “due to the current lack of human resources”. However, he assured us that he “will certainly start dealing with individual cases in the near future”.
In our opinion, the most important role that your office can play in addressing gross human rights violations in Asia is by intervening in individual cases. Work on human rights can only be effective when it is directed towards obtaining redress for victims and thereby discouraging or preventing further abuse, through persistent critiques of legal and institutional defects arising from detailed study and close contact with concerned persons.
It is for this reason that the work of the UN special procedures—groups and individual experts assigned to particular issues or countries—is of such importance. The AHRC has for many years seen the good results of interventions on individual cases by UN working groups and special rapporteurs, and we have been able to build many more interventions and detailed discussions on human rights in Asia from these. We can say unequivocally that together with the treaty bodies, the work of the special procedures on human rights is the most important part of the activities under your auspices.
Regional representatives of the OHCHR should be expected to engage in work complementing that of the special procedures; however, from our observation they mostly hold workshops and training programmes that are of little lasting value and do not bring the office any closer to assessing and understanding the real problems of human rights affecting countries in Asia, nor contribute to a genuine culture of human rights in the region.
Therefore, the Asian Human Rights Commission calls upon you to make it a top priority that regional representatives have the skilled people and money that they need with which in accordance with the norms established under international law. We sincerely believe that if the means are available for these persons to do this work properly then it will greatly contribute not only to their own ability to comment and give advice on the situation of human rights in Asia but also to deepen and expand the work of the special procedures.
Unequivocal moral and financial commitment from your office to regional representatives as active interveners in human rights cases, not merely observers and trainers, will greatly boost confidence in the work of the UN on human rights in Asia at this critical time. Without this, your regional representatives will remain of limited relevance to human rights defenders in the region.
Yours sincerely
Basil Fernando
Executive Director
Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong
