Zawaya

Independent human rights bodies: Yes, but...

By: Sofiene Ben Hamida

Morocco announced the establishment of an independent National Council for the protection and promotion of human rights. The timing of this resolution coincides with the recent changes taking place in the country, in the wake of the King’s speech announcing political reforms.

Such independent institutions in charge of protecting human rights are extremely important. Morocco is not a pioneer in this field, as many other Arab States have already carried out political reforms in an attempt to polish their image, particularly in terms of public and individual freedoms and the protection of human rights.

However, most of these initiatives failed due to dishonest intentions, and to the fact that those bodies weren’t established to protect human rights and carry out genuine democratic reforms. It was all smoke and mirrors to distract citizens, and promote the image of the regimes abroad.

Morocco might have greater chances to make this experiment succeed today, given the quantum leap made by the country in the past few years in terms of political openness, and the distinctive features of Moroccan civil society, when compared to other Arab countries, such as its high spirit of struggle and its vigilance that enable it to reject any manipulation of both its old and new achievements.

Although such bodies are important symbols that highlight the involvement of governments and regimes in the system of freedoms and human rights, they remain unable to ensure efficiency on their own.

The protection and promotion of human rights is above all the responsibility of civil society bodies. Human rights institutions cannot impose top-down decisions on communities; this kind of decisions should rather reflect the real needs of societies.

Therefore, the independent bodies announced by the governments are mere tributaries of national human rights activism, which is carried out primarily by human rights groups and associations whose inception didn’t stem from any official resolution.

However, the foregoing points do not mean that the independent bodies announced by the governments should be rejected. The human rights issue cannot be harmed by the existence of multiple platforms.

Disseminating human rights principles and attracting more supporters require concerting the efforts of all human rights activists, with their various intellectual orientations, as long as they all converge toward human rights education in communities where concepts such as difference, freedom and equality are still weak.

All these parties can interact and collaborate based on clear references – namely the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights -, and on the established principles of the comprehensiveness and universality of human rights.