Equalities and Human Rights Committee

Meeting date: Thursday, June 21, 2018

Official Report 773KB pdf

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Human Rights and the Scottish Parliament

Good morning and welcome to the 19th meeting in 2018 of the Equalities and Human Rights Committee. I make the usual request to members to put their electronic devices into flight mode and keep mobile phones off the table.

Item 1 is the continuation of our inquiry into human rights and the Scottish Parliament. We have an oral evidence session with Gianni Magazzeni, who is chief of the universal periodic review branch office of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Rogier Huizenga, who is manager of the human rights programme at the Inter-Parliamentary Union. We are linking up to our witnesses in Geneva via videoconference.

I am just checking that you can both hear us okay—I see that you can; that is wonderful. I understand that both of you want to make opening remarks. Does Gianni Magazzeni want to go first?

Yes. Thank you very much, convener and distinguished members of the committee. We are pleased to provide evidence to you this morning. Our remarks will be very much of a general nature: we will outline how the secretary general, the high commissioner and the Human Rights Council see the relationship between Parliaments and human rights.

I start by referring to a report that the secretary general issued to the general assembly last year. He said:

“At the national level, Parliaments play a crucial role in the promotion and protection of human rights as legislators and as overseers. They lay the foundation for the rule of law and the respect for and protection of human rights”.

He went on to say:

“Parliaments can ensure transparency and accountability for States’ human rights obligations and in following up and ensuring the implementation of recommendations by regional and international human rights mechanisms.”

He pointed out:

“While human rights are a cross-cutting issue that should be taken into account by all parliamentary committees, the establishment of a parliamentary committee with an exclusive human rights mandate sends a strong political message and should be encouraged.”

In the same report, the secretary general recommended the development of international principles that could guide the strengthening of the engagement between Parliaments and human rights mechanisms.

Over the past years, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the IPU have worked very closely in connection with a number of Human Rights Council endeavours that were to do with strengthening the engagement of Parliaments with human rights. The most recent endeavour was last year’s Human Rights Council resolution 35/29, which called for, among other things, a study on strengthening the engagement of Parliaments with the Human Rights Council and its universal periodic review mechanism.

The report, “Contribution of parliaments to the work of the Human Rights Council and its universal periodic review” was issued just a few days ago—we have shared it with you—and it will be considered during the current session of the Human Rights Council, session 38.

Why is the connection of Parliaments with the Human Rights Council, and especially the UPR, so relevant? The universal periodic review entered its third cycle on 1 May 2017, which focuses on implementation of recommendations, and the role of Parliaments is critical in efforts to ensure greater implementation by all stakeholders. The report of the secretary general last year referred to the fact that more than 50 per cent of the recommendations from the universal periodic review required some kind of action by Parliaments in order to be implemented. It is therefore critically important that Parliaments are involved in all phases of the universal periodic review: the preparation of the national report; the review, in Geneva, in the Human Rights Council; and, more important, follow-up action at country level in connection with the implementation of recommendations.

Something that I want to flag up at the beginning is that the report that was presented to the Human Rights Council contains draft principles on Parliaments and human rights. Those principles clearly encourage the establishment of human rights committees in Parliaments and include elements of the terms of reference, transparency, composition and working methods of such committees, which we hope will provide encouragement for Parliaments that do not yet have a dedicated committee that deals with the oversight function with respect to their Governments’ responsibility for the promotion and protection of human rights, in line with the legal obligations that result from the ratification of international human rights treaties or the political commitments that Governments make when they interact with international human rights mechanisms, especially the universal periodic review.

Thank you very much, Gianni. This is the first time that a committee of the Scottish Parliament has engaged so directly with the UN, so we are extremely grateful to be able to hear from you on some of the details of the draft principles. Rogier, do you have anything to add to Gianni’s opening statement?

Yes. Thank you very much for inviting the IPU to be part of this exercise. We are very pleased to engage with your committee, because we know that it has been at the forefront of promoting human rights. We are aware of several good practices that your committee has shown, which we think can inspire other committees around the world to better promote and protect human rights.

I want to make eight points about the work of parliamentary committees in relation to the work that the IPU has been doing, which I hope will be particularly relevant to your committee. My first point is about the parliamentary human rights committee model. I understand that, two years ago, it was decided that your committee should include human rights as well as equalities in its remit. The IPU has always been a strong advocate of having dedicated parliamentary human rights committees but, at the same time, we have highlighted the importance of making sure that those committees do not work in isolation from other committees but co-ordinate and co-operate closely with them. In some cases—I am not suggesting that this is the case in Scotland; quite the contrary—such committees have been set up just to pay lip service to human rights. If there is no real willingness and commitment within the Parliament as a whole, the human rights committee will not be terribly effective.

My second point is about the importance of parliamentary human rights committees setting out clear objectives and establishing a work plan for the full parliamentary session.

Thirdly, it is important that there is strong committee involvement in UN monitoring mechanisms. As Gianni has just said, at the moment the UN is favourably disposed to engagement with Parliaments. There is a momentum, and it is important that Parliaments seize that opportunity when it comes to the universal periodic review and the work of the UN treaty bodies by making sure that they are aware that the national report is to be prepared, that they put the issue on the agenda and that they discuss that report with the relevant ministries and officials. They should also find out whether it is possible for parliamentary representatives to be included in national delegations to those UN mechanisms. Most important, perhaps, is that they are aware of the recommendations and concluding observations that emerge from those mechanisms, and that they question the relevant authorities about implementation.

Fourthly, it is important that Parliaments work as much as possible with and draw on the expertise of their national human rights commission. Not so long ago, we did a survey that looked at the implementation of the Belgrade principles on the relationship and co-operation between Parliaments and national human rights institutions. It emerged clearly from that survey that national human rights institutions regularly present reports to Parliaments, but that there is a lot to be desired when it comes to feedback on those reports and follow-up action. I will illustrate that with a figure. When NHRI reports are presented, Parliaments take follow-up action in only 25 per cent of cases, and most of the actions that are taken are not conveyed or communicated to the NHRIs.

Fifthly, effective oversight of Government action should be made a priority by addressing challenges to such oversight. That is relevant to not just your committee but all parliamentary committees. A suggestion from the IPU is that those challenges could be addressed by drawing on the best practices that are listed in the “Global Parliamentary Report 2017”, which the IPU and the UN development programme launched last year. That report deals exclusively with the issue of parliamentary oversight, and it made quite a number of recommendations that are useful across the board in Parliaments.

My sixth point is about the importance not only of reviewing the compliance of draft legislation with human rights before the legislation is adopted, but of doing an ex post human rights impact assessment of the implementation of that legislation. It should be made clear when bills are adopted that there will automatically be a review of respect for human rights within two, three or five years.

Obviously, we are aware that the Human Rights Act 1998 is formulated on the European convention on human rights but, ideally, we should also think about the UN monitoring bodies.

09:15  

My seventh point is on the importance of Parliaments taking the lead in promoting national debate on human rights issues. The IPU has seen time and again that it is important not to leave human rights to experts alone. Human rights often require tough political choices to be made. It is important that Parliaments, together with the audience at large, national human rights commissions, civil society organisations and academia, seize on the opportunity to offer a public national platform to initiate that debate. It is also important to go to citizens and to be on the move as much as possible.

My last point is on the importance of monitoring the impact of the committee’s work, in terms of processes and substantive results. Where has the committee been able to make a difference? That is useful not only for your own citizens but for us, because we are trying to collect as many global examples as possible in which we can show very clearly that a Parliament’s involvement was important not only from a purely procedural perspective but because it was able to better deliver human rights as a whole.

Thank you very much. Those are excellent points. We are already working on a number of them, so we feel as if we are on the right track.

I thank the witnesses for joining us. It is a great honour to be able to speak to you and it is great to get feedback on what the committee and the Scottish Parliament are doing well and what we could do better.

Rogier Huizenga spoke about including members of society as well as members of Parliament in the national debate that we need to have. How can the Scottish Parliament empower our society to make people more aware of their rights under domestic and international human rights law? How can we help to build a strong culture of human rights in Scotland?

As I mentioned, Parliaments should try to be on the move and as close to citizens as possible, and to be present not only in the capital. The Parliament should meet citizens, because their concerns can be different depending on the region or part of town where they live, so the Parliament should be seen to be reaching out as much as possible. That is an important symbolic step. By doing that, you might get other kinds of feedback from that which you would normally get from sitting where you normally sit.

It is important that the public sees that the work is done in a bipartisan spirit and that all parties in the Parliament can rally around human rights issues.

We have also seen parliamentarians use their work as an opportunity to have hearings on specific human rights themes not only in the capital but across the country. Such hearings can be the catalyst for bringing people together and they have a mandate to do so. That, in itself, is very useful when addressing specific and urgent human rights topics within a country’s given context.

Some parliamentarians work a lot with schools, by going to schools and talking about human rights as much as possible. Schools are incredibly appreciative of such work and, through its reporting in the media, parliamentarians are seen to be taking a particular step. It is important that the public sees that work happening. Practically speaking, it also gives a strong signal that MPs individually and committees as a whole are engaged.

My question follows on from the one that was posed by my colleague Gail Ross. How can we, as parliamentarians, ensure that the duty bearers—the people who are responsible for human rights—know what those rights and duties are and how they should be carried out?

I mentioned that the third cycle of the UPR is focused on implementation and, as part of the stronger focus on implementation on the part of the entire UN system—not just the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights—we encourage a number of steps to be considered at national level. One of them is the creation of national mechanisms for co-ordination and follow-up of all the requirements under international human rights treaties, including treaty bodies’ recommendations and the recommendations from the universal periodic review. There has been progress on that in at least 50 countries.

We are engaged in supporting the strengthening and reinforcing of such mechanisms of co-ordination. They are led by the Executive—often, it is the minister of justice and/or foreign affairs—but I emphasise that we have always reiterated that good practice includes the involvement of Parliaments in those bodies. That is because, as we said earlier, Parliaments play a key role in implementation of more than 50 per cent of recommendations from the universal periodic review—actions that require legislative reform or other steps that require them to be directly involved—and because of their oversight function vis-à-vis Government responsibility for policies and action.

The recommendations from the UPR do not end there. Countries that have gone through the third cycle already will come back in 2021 or 2022 and the focus will again be on what has been done vis-à-vis recommendations that they received, especially those that they accepted. Parliamentary awareness of the recommendations and the position that the member state concerned has taken is fundamental to the mechanism and the universal periodic review, to any plan of action for the next four and a half years and to implementation.

As the secretary general will say in his report, the role of Parliament is crucial. If there is more effort at implementation, we will see tremendous benefit on two other fronts. The first is the prevention agenda, which involves addressing and reducing the root causes of IDPs—internally displaced persons—mass exoduses and people becoming refugees. Yesterday was refugee day, and we heard from our colleagues in the UNHCR that we are at 68.5 million refugees today, which is the highest number since world war two.

The second point is that the more we focus on implementation of recommendations from the human rights mechanism, the more we will contribute to the success and sustainability of the 2030 agenda and the sustainable development goals.

One of the people who gave us evidence suggested that the introduction of human rights officers in public bodies would be an important step forward. Do you agree?

I am not sure that I am in a position to answer that question. We are emphasising the need for all Parliaments to have a strong focus on human rights and to have a parliamentary committee that deals with them, and not just the foreign-policy aspects—the situation in other countries, which is tremendously important, especially for official development assistance—but because of the Parliament’s oversight role vis-à-vis the legal obligations and political commitments that are made by the state. That is already an important step forward in many jurisdictions.

Thank you for joining us this morning. A lot of people who have given evidence to the committee have raised concerns about Brexit, and the idea that it might weaken Scotland’s and the United Kingdom’s human rights protections. Have you any thoughts on that, and on how this Parliament could seek to protect such rights as we go through the Brexit process?

I am not sure that I am in a position to comment on that. I would say that it goes beyond my responsibilities.

I reiterate that, for us, one of the most important objectives of this meeting is to encourage greater action on, and knowledge of, international human rights obligations and the recommendations that are made to member states, so that follow-up action can be taken. In our view, that can only contribute to advancing the promotion and protection of human rights, and to the strengthening and resilience of society. As I mentioned earlier, we also make an important contribution to developing peace and security.

As well as Brexit, there is the issue of the UK’s relationship with the European convention on human rights. This is also an important opportunity to highlight the importance of the UN human rights treaties and mechanisms. In the UK context, the focus has been very much on the ECHR, which is understandable and welcome. However, in this time of uncertainty as to where things will go with the Human Rights Act 1998, it is also wise to make sure that the work of the UN human rights treaties and monitoring bodies is fully included as a reference in the committee’s work.

I start with a brief follow-up to the previous question. Could the panel comment on the fact that a large number of countries outside the European Union have good human rights practices?

We not only encourage good practice but try to share good models so that countries undertake their obligations and follow up recommendations, especially those that they have accepted and that strengthen their national protection systems. For us, that means having a variety of things, including a strong independent judiciary, a Parliament with a human rights committee, national institutions in line with the Paris principle, and space for civil society and for human rights defenders to do their investigative work. There are certainly some good examples in the European context, and we encourage those as well as those in other contexts.

Again, for us, the most important thing is to make the third cycle of the UPR focus on the implementation agenda. We very much look forward to greater engagement at national level on the part of Parliaments. In our view, it is important that the examples of those that already have human rights committees and play an oversight role vis-à-vis international obligations on human rights action and policies are well known and, potentially, followed by other countries.

We certainly encourage such good practices. A week from today, we will have a discussion at the IPU and the Human Rights Council to share a few of those practices so that member states and representatives of Governments, as well as all reporting stakeholders, can take stock of such positive developments and learn from them. We hope that we will then see increasing engagement on the part of Parliaments at international, national and regional levels.

You talked about national and regional levels. The UK is the member state, so most treaty obligations, and certainly the treaty-signing process, rest at UK level. How do you see the interaction between devolved Parliaments such as ours and national Parliaments such as the UK Parliament?

09:30  

I am not sure that I am in a position to comment on the internal distribution and devolution of powers and responsibilities. The critical issue is having more engagement by Parliaments, especially if we want progress on the implementation agenda as part of the third cycle. If we want more results that improve the human rights situation at country level—especially for vulnerable groups and other affected minorities—we need greater knowledge, greater involvement and greater oversight by Parliaments. We hope very much to contribute to that with today’s endeavour and others that will follow this year.

Europe is in the lead on good practice in some ways, which is maybe not a surprise. However, Europe is not necessarily in the lead in other ways. A number of Parliaments in western Europe do not have a dedicated human rights committee. Some of them argue that human rights are not an issue in their country—they say straightforwardly that human rights are a concern outside their country’s borders, so there is no need to talk about human rights in their country. That means that some other countries and regions are much more advanced in dealing with human rights issues.

I will give one example. Mexico’s Parliament has two chambers. The upper chamber—the Senate—and the lower chamber both have a human rights committee. The Senate’s committee has been involved from start to finish in several of the universal periodic reviews of Mexico’s human rights record by the UN Human Rights Council. That committee’s president took the lead on preparing part of the report that was submitted to the Human Rights Council and was part of the official delegation from Mexico that came to Geneva. The President addressed the council to give the Parliament’s perspective on the human rights situation in Mexico. After the delegation returned to Mexico, the Senate committee took forward the recommendations by questioning ministers on how they would implement the recommendations.

There are a number of good examples—including examples from outside Europe—of Parliaments that have taken such steps to ensure that they are fully in the picture and in the lead as much as possible in ensuring implementation of human rights.

The Scottish Parliament has a proud record of debating human rights issues; we established this committee and we are actioning many of the points that you identified. My question is similar to others that have been asked. How can Parliament ensure a human rights focus in local delivery of services, many of which are delivered at the municipal level?

The question is difficult, and it relates to the earlier question about having human rights officers in public bodies. It is important to ensure that all state structures are sensitive to human rights. I do not know whether having in each body a dedicated public officer who is focused on human rights would be the answer. However, some of the recommendations and observations that I started with, which I hoped and understood would somehow be relevant to the committee, are also relevant in different ways for other bodies in Scotland.

Making sure that you reach out as much as possible to communities, establishing clear objectives in a work plan and being as close as possible to citizens are all valid things not just for the committee’s work but for other entities in the Scottish context that work on human rights. It is up to them and you to define what that means in practice.

Are there good international examples where that is already taking place?

I gave the examples of parliamentarians reaching out to citizens by holding public meetings in town halls together with civil society organisations, by going to schools and by carrying out bipartisan visits to regions where there are particular tensions. We have seen Parliaments take on a number of suggestions.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. My question is about the balance of human rights. How do we, as a Parliament, achieve the correct balance of human rights when there are lots of competing human rights and interests, especially when it comes to new legislation?

That is a critical question. I return to my observation that it is important to make sure that your work is fully connected to that of the other committees. If everyone thinks that human rights are just this committee’s responsibility, it could easily be said that once you have been heard or been involved in a discussion, that is the end of it. It is important for the committee to ensure that people understand that human rights are a responsibility for the whole Parliament, even though you take the lead. It starts with that.

At the end of the day, there is only so much you can do. There is the Human Rights Act 1998, the UK has clear human rights obligations, and you have the procedures and mechanisms in place to make sure that the state as a whole can be held to account, which is the committee’s role. The obligations remain regardless of ministers coming and going and of whether they focus more on trade or on other issues. The obligations must always be put up front to ensure that they are in everyone’s minds and that they will not go away, regardless of there being a stronger focus on trade or other issues. Ultimately, it is Parliament’s duty to ensure that the obligations are respected.

Good morning to our guests by videoconference. I apologise for my late arrival.

Rogier, in your reflections, you talked about our inquiry into making human rights real in the Parliament, and you made several suggestions and observations. That was very helpful. One thing that we have focused on is how we ensure that our focus on human rights in our inquiry continues into the long term. We are all excited about and committed to human rights and to drawing that thread through all the work of this Parliament, but we are all politicians and we have, sadly, limited job security. We may not all be here in the next session of Parliament.

In that vein, thinking about institutional memory, we have been talking about the need, perhaps, to have staff within the Parliament who can be the guarantors of that institutional memory, or legal advisers, even. What are your reflections on that? How important is it to continue that work?

That is a critical point. We see this in many Parliaments around the world. As you say, parliamentarians come and go.

Parliamentary staff do not necessarily have more job security, but they are likely to stay around for much longer and they will have that institutional memory. It is precisely for that reason that, as an Inter-Parliamentary Union, we work with both parliamentarians—members of Parliaments—and parliamentary staff. It is critical to engage with parliamentary staff, because they are often the institutional memory of the organisation. That also means that they need to have the requisite training to be helpful to the committees that they serve.

It is absolutely critical that you are able to rely on expertise: that you can draw on expert legal advice for your inquiries, and on research facilities to help you to put together questions to ask of relevant authorities and help you to organise your inquiries. Expert legal staff are indispensable. We have been pushing to have them in Parliaments everywhere around the world, and we have been pushing to make research facilities available.

That is really helpful, and it certainly chimes with the shared view that is emerging across the committee. You raised the idea of a specific human rights committee, and a number of members have touched on that. This committee is not just a human rights committee—it is the Equalities and Human Rights Committee. For example, we spent much of the past year looking at the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Bill, which was addressing not a human rights but an equalities issue. Do we need to disaggregate those two functions, so that we have a specific committee in the Scottish Parliament that is solely focused on the human rights guarantee?

Ultimately, it is your call to make. We have always been strong advocates of dedicated parliamentary human rights committees. However, in reality, many human rights committees in Parliaments around the world have something else in their remit. We see a variety of situations. You have equalities as well as human rights, whereas others may have national minorities. It depends on the context and, often, the history. As I understand it, your committee started as the Equal Opportunities Committee.

At the end of the day, you will have to draw your own conclusions as to whether you are sufficiently effective in promoting a human rights agenda. If you think that the other issues are taking too much focus away from that and not allowing you to come out with a coherent message on human rights, perhaps it would be useful to separate the two. However, that is on the understanding that a committee that had an exclusively human rights mandate would need to be powerful and effective enough to relay the message internally in Parliament.

On the issue of where to focus the work of this committee, when we first grappled with the human rights remit when we took it on at the start of this session, we looked with fresh eyes at the fact that there are some 900 points in the concluding observations where the United Kingdom and Scotland are still out of step with or adrift from the obligations of our international human rights treaties. It is quite a daunting exercise to establish where to start and how to eat away at that, one bite at a time. How would you advise this committee, and our successor committees, to approach those outstanding areas of Scottish life where we are still adrift from international treaty obligations, and to manage that as a workable work programme?

There are, of course, many contexts in which the number of recommendations is daunting and frightening for those who have to act on their implementation and follow-up. We encourage member states to try to cluster and prioritise the recommendations, especially in the context of their action vis-à-vis the plan of implementation over the next four and a half years—the one that I referred to before, for which we also see an important role for Parliament, other national institutions, civil society organisations and the judiciary.

In a database that we created, we are facilitating the clustering, country by country, of all recommendations of not only the current cycle of the universal periodic review, but all the other mechanisms, SDG by SDG. That is to facilitate tasks for our developing colleagues worldwide and to see to what extent certain recommendations might advance a certain SDG target and certain implementation that can be considered in that context.

09:45  

I flagged that aligning the development and human rights requirements seems to us to be important. The additional step that the High Commissioner has consistently done, starting with the third cycle of the UPR, is to send letters to foreign affairs ministers to indicate which areas deserve particular attention in the next four and a half years. That useful tool can be helpful to not only Governments but other stakeholders, because the communication is available on our website as an open document.

That is helpful. I have another question—the final one, I promise. Throughout the inquiry, we have discussed the possibility that the incorporation of certain human rights treaties into Scots law might be one of the most effective ways of guaranteeing their observance. If people have access to justice when their rights are infringed, decision makers have to concentrate their minds that little bit further when making public policy to make rights real. In your experience of working with other countries, how effective is it when countries incorporate treaties, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child?

When it comes to the United Nations and the office of the High Commissioner, encouraging member states to ratify is the first step that we take. The next important issue when it comes to international human rights treaties is implementation and follow up, in addition to regular reporting to the treaty bodies. I am not sure that I am in a position to say much vis-à-vis internal division of labour, devolution and modus operandi.

On how we do things better in the Scottish Parliament, one of the emerging themes from the inquiry has been impact assessments. We all have our own challenges with them, because they are only as good as the way in which they have been done. The emerging theme has been that there should be a human rights impact assessment of each piece of legislation that is introduced here, especially when it comes to looking at incorporation. In Rogier Huizenga’s opening remarks, he said that it would be good practice to have such an assessment of any piece of legislation that comes through this Parliament.

The other theme that has emerged in that regard is about opportunities for further incorporation of treaties into legislation, including at the earliest point of policy making. The human rights impact assessment should include the opportunities that are available, too. Do you have any international examples that we could use to inform our work, or thoughts on whether that is a good idea?

When it comes to reviewing draft legislation to see whether it is compatible with human rights, many Commonwealth Parliaments that have a Westminster system have taken the lead and made sure that a rights-based review of legislation comes before their Parliament. That is the case in not only the UK, but Uganda, Australia, New Zealand and, if I am not mistaken, Kenya. It has become standard practice. I am not saying that it has always been very successful, because, as the convener said, it depends on the assessment and the seriousness with which the minister and ministry involved present the memorandum on compatibility. It also depends on the parliamentary committees to make sure that the memorandum is carefully and critically reviewed.

We do not know of concrete examples of where Parliaments have reviewed the implementation of legislation three, four or five years afterwards to see whether its compatibility with human rights has been respected in reality. We do know, however, of examples in other areas where that has become standard practice. As Parliaments are doing that more and more in other areas, it makes a lot of sense to ensure that, when it comes to human rights, legislation and its implementation are properly and systematically reviewed after a number of years.

That is incredibly helpful. Thank you for that. The committee will pursue that idea with vigour.

I want to ask a brief question of both witnesses. One of the other themes that have come out while we have been taking evidence is that it may be an idea to consider suggesting that every single committee has a human rights rapporteur. Would that be a sensible way forward? Do you have any evidence of that happening in other jurisdictions?

It is a very interesting idea. Obviously, it would be done on the understanding that the person on the committee is open to and committed to human rights, and has sufficient leverage in the committee to ensure that human rights are taken on. I am not aware that that suggestion is being followed anywhere else, but it could be an interesting way of helping to ensure that human rights are mainstreamed and that your committee’s work is conveyed to all other committees. Again, that is on the understanding that the rapporteur is the ideal person in the committee to take that forward.

Rogier Huizenga and Gianni Magazzeni, you have been very patient with us this morning and have given us lots of great information. Do you have any final thoughts for the committee?

Thank you for the opportunity. We think that your own experience is way ahead of where we are in other jurisdictions in this context, but I would like to emphasise a point that has been made by Rogier Huizenga, about the importance of strengthening the relationship with the national human rights institutions and ensuring follow-up action. One thing that we have noted is that, in a context where there is a parliamentary human rights committee and a national human rights institution, that partnership can enhance the level of implementation in law and in practice vis-à-vis the recommendations that emerge from the human rights system—from the human rights council, the treaty bodies and the special procedures mandate holder—so we would encourage you to see the possibilities there.

Thank you for those kind remarks. Following this session with you, we are having a follow-up session on the work that we did last year on prejudice-based school bullying, so we are very much taking up the role of ensuring that we look at things that have been done previously to see whether there has been any progress. If there has not been any progress we will ask why not, and if there has been progress we will ask how we can use that good practice to push forward the agenda.

On behalf of the committee, I offer you our thanks for participating in this morning’s meeting, all the way from Geneva. We hope that this will be a long and mutually beneficial relationship between our committee and the work that you do in Geneva and at the UN. Thank you for your attendance and participation this morning.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

09:54 Meeting suspended.  

10:04 On resuming—