Sam Kaye
Exclusive interview with Hilary Ogbonna, senior human rights Adviser to the executive secretary National Human Rights Commission after a recent stakeholders consultative forum on the tripartite partnership to support national human rights institutions
About 120 victims of the violent anti SAS campaign got N480 million for infringements on their human rights after the SAS panel verdict……. Hilary Ogbonna national human rights commission
Who are the three parties in the tripartite agreement you mentioned earlier during the stake holders forum and how long will it last?
It’s a partnership to support human rights institutions. It is also a partnership started by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the office of the High Commissioner for human rights, and also that of the global alliance for national human rights institutions. And this is supported by the Norwegians, being a big supporter of the partnership. The three of them came together with their respective mandates. Undp is the front runner organization for the UN in terms of development, cooperation and rule of law and governance. The office of the high commissioner for human rights is the gate keeper for global human rights and the global alliance for national human rights institutions is the coalition and secretariat of all national human rights commissions across the world, over a hundred of them. So the three of them came together to decide to support the national human rights institutions to be able to achieve their mandates of promoting and protection of human rights and ensuring that they work with stakeholders in civil societies across the world. They pick and choose which national human rights commission they will support at any given time and this is the time of Nigeria. So they decided to support us from January to December 2024. By January 2025 they will decide whether to continue and how. So what are they supporting? The main support they give is capacity of national human rights institutions to enable them achieve their mandates for human rights monitoring and reporting, sourcing for data for human rights, support the national organizations to establish frameworks for business and human rights. Training and capacity building for human rights commissions and for their sub national level offices. Since we have an office in Borno, the reason we are here is to use this week to build the capacity of our staff so that they are able to support the people of this state. So under the Tpp we are also doing a lot around promoting women’s rights and gender equality and human rights education. So all of this, we are going to support Borno State office of NHRC and it would be done through out the year. The overall goal is to ensure that human rights commissions are effective in implementing their mandates which is why we came here.
Speak on the final document you intend to propound as a roadmap for business and human rights framework to hand over to the Federal Government, the planned pillars inside etc.
I can tell you that we have already set up that standard. We have all the necessary documents. The only people without the document as i speak to you is the Borno State Government. At the federal level we have these two documents one which is the national action plan on the protection of human rights .That is a human rights obligation of Nigeria under the Vienna declaration. President Buhari approved this in April 2023. So instead of presenting another action plan on business and human rights to them, we included it as a chapter under this national action plan. So in passing this, they have passed the two of them. The implementation of this one is ongoing by all the ministries. It’s a national document for everyone not only the human rights commission. As ministry of environment or information there is a role for you to play here. But this one is a specific national human rights mechanism for business and human rights. Its under this one that we have established the national working group on business and human rights. Its this one we want to establish in Borno state. So for us, we have outlined this road map and under it, we will first develop a consent note that we would hand over to the government on what they need to know and do. And when the government understudies that note, we would also include these processes. They will do stake holders mapping to know who is who and who is doing what. After that they will convene a state consultative forum on business and human rights which will mandate the state government to go ahead and develop a state action plan on business and human rights. This action plan will take into cognizance everything that is contextual to this state as it concerns the human rights of people of the state. They will copy a lot from the national action plan but they will also make their own specific Borno plans. And then the action plan will say who and who will belong to the state working group and they will inaugurate the state working group. Then they will begin the process of implementing where they will stipulate what are things they will do, such as the capacity building that must be done to ensure that businesses conforms with the National human rights principles and standards. Across Nigeria with the social challenges we are having, any company that decides to have social responsibility they will go and bring bags of rice ask people to queue up and there will be stampede. People will even die due to the struggles for palliatives and that is human rights violations. So we need to have a standard on what to do and we are already developing one especially when it comes to business compliance on the issues of social care. You don’t kill people while trying to help them…….cuts in.., .. like what happened during the customs palliative saga ……its not only the Nigerian customs that made such mistakes, even churches do it. Churches say they are coming to help with food. You will not ask how many people will come, you did not issue tickets neither did you ask for a central exit or entrance so that when the place is full you will close the door. And then, you don’t have emergency medical response units in case anything happens. It’s a general Nigerian thing even where we are now. If someone collapses in this hotel now God forbid, i am sure they do not have a system to evacuate the fellow. And if they are evacuating you, do they have ambulances or amenities to use? So its just a whole gamut of unsolved problems.
..cuts in..,. Everything depends on the state government. If they ask us to jump we will ask how high do you want. So it’s up to them but if they don’t have this state action plan, our own action plan will cover them. Because human rights is a federal thing that is why they cant do state actions plan for the protection of human rights because the Vienna declaration is very clear about it. But they can do a state action plan on business and human rights because even state government taxes and also regulates businesses.
Alternative justices…speak on it and judicial remedies, will it be embedded in this package of the action plan?
Alternative justices will be embedded into the state based package on the non judicial remedy… There is the state based judicial mechanism and non judiciary mechanism. The state based non judicial mechanism include the human rights commission…. The ulamas are non state based judicial mechanism and they can equally perform some functions with limited quasi judicial roles. The good thing is that each of them can actually perform judiciary roles and award compensations. Like the HRC will award compensation based on its laws like if it’s the DSS or police that infringed on your rights, we will ask them to insert same in their budget and it would be paid to you. And i tell you, we have been successful in all this. But whether we speak about it enough i can tell you we don’t. But like the special anti robbery squad (SAS) panel, i can tell you we paid over N480m to 120 people for all the infringements that were incurred by their personnel in that incident.