Strengthening human rights monitoring missions : an options paper

Findings demonstrate that human rights monitoring missions (HRMMs) represent a worthwhile investment when they are properly organized, have clear and appropriate mandates, and, most importantly, enjoy sufficient political support from the international community and/or host government. Nonetheless, they cannot substitute for international or host government political will, nor for more forceful interventions. Neither can they cure the structural inequities and inadequacies hampering the administration of justice in host countries. To date, HRMMs have not significantly undermined the impunity of human rights abusers. However, where political will is present, as in El Salvador, HRMMs can help to generate the internal and external pressure to restrain violations. Even in the absence of such political will, anecdotal evidence from Haiti, Cambodia, and Guatemala indicates that the arrival of such missions may have a short-lived and limited dissuasive effect on human rights violators. As in South Africa, the physical presence of monitors at sites of potential confrontations can deter violence. By virtue of visits to prisons and detention centers, monitors in El Salvador, Cambodia, and Haiti have been able, to varying degrees, to help to secure the release of some detainees and prisoners and improve prison conditions. More generally, the presence of monitors can have an important attitudinal effect on citizens accustomed to no redress for human rights violations and no awareness of whether the international community cares about their plight. HRMMs may also serve as objective sources of reporting to counteract the misinformation and disinformation that can fuel political or ethnic violence. Finally, as in Cambodia, the greatest long-term contribution that an inevitably short-term HRMM can make is to fortify indigenous NGOs that will work on justice issues long after the mission has departed. The study describes the gaps in the international system for fielding HRMMs and provides a number of recommendations. (Author abstract, modified)