WATANI International 31 January 2010 An assessment of the six-year performance of the NCHR
With the passage of six years since the foundation of the National Council for Human Rights (NCHR), a call to evaluate its performance and reformulate its agenda became widespread within human rights circles. Among activists there is a near consensus on the need to reconsider the law governing the work of the NCHR in a way that equips it with wider prerogatives.
A recent workshop organised by the One World Foundation for Development and Civil Society Care in cooperation with Konrad Adenauer Foundation discussed just that.
State-sponsored human rights?
The performance of the NCHR witnessed great improvement over the past six years, Mustafa al-Fiqi, head of Parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee and member of NCHR, said. When it was first established the council used to receive a handful of complaints every month; now, he explained, hundreds contact the NCHR to report curtailed rights.
The council uses its connections with decision-makers to make propositions for improving human rights. According to Dr Fiqi, it monitors prisons and sends fact-finding committees to sites which witness sectarian violence.
“The NCHR has opened channels of communication with government bodies,” he explained. “It opposes the emergency law and the trial of political prisoners before military courts. Dr Fiqi informed that a committee has been formed to draft an anti-terrorism law. But the bill has stirred wide controversy given the possible contradictions between it and some constitutional articles.
Yet the picture is by no means rosy. The NCHR faces two challenges that go back to its foundation as a State-sponsored institution. First, Dr Fiqi pointed out, many Egyptians see the council as a government representative whose function is to defend the government’s record in the area of human rights. Second, human rights problems in Egypt cover a host of fields including poverty, democratic rights, sectarian violence and others. “The NCHR needs to properly define its priorities in the upcoming period,” he stressed.
Updating the law
Ahmed Rifaat, former head of Beni Sueif University and a member of the NCHR, said that the past six years revealed the need for modernising legislation to further enhance human rights in Egypt. In line with international conventions, Dr Rifaat said, the council has suggested amendments to the penal law to stipulate harsher penalties on crimes of torture. Laws governing legislative and local elections should be reconsidered so as to guarantee wider representation, especially of women and young people, he said.
“The promulgation of the unified law for building places of worship is especially significant to help put an end to sectarian violence. The NCHR has submitted a bill stipulating equal opportunity and preventing discrimination on religious grounds”
A mere consultative body
The problem with the NCHR, according to Mohamed Zarei, secretary-general of the Arab Organisation for Criminal Reform, is that most of its members are members of the ruling National Democratic Party. “There should be diversity in the NCHR composition,” he said.
The NCHR is, moreover, a mere consultative body. Its recommendations are not obligatory. “The law governing the work of the NCHR has to be changed if human rights conditions in Egypt are to be ameliorated,” Mr Zarei stressed.
On sectarian issues
As far as religious issues are concerned, “The NCHR has called for the removal of the religious affiliation slot off ID cards, and for the passage of the long-awaited unified law for building places of worship.” Dr Fiqi said. He stresses that, should the law see light, it would defuse 60 to 70 per cent of sectarian conflicts. He assured that the NCHR did not miss an opportunity to press ahead with the law issue.
“There is a proposition that the NCHR should shoulder the responsibility of the thorny issue of religious conversion, so that counselling sessions for converts-to-be would take place at premises affiliated to the council instead of at police stations. Such sessions, which had been discontinued since 2004, gather the convert-to-be with a cleric of the religion he or she intends to abandon, to discuss the reasons for the conversion and make sure it would be based on free will.