The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) will host a two day Stakeholders Consultative Workshop on 5-6 December 2006 at its head office, 29 Princess of Wales Terrace, corner of St Andrews, Parktown, Johannesburg.
The workshop will review the SAHRC’s ESR monitoring regime to ensure that it is effective, efficient and more responsive to the expectations of stakeholders.
The Commission has been monitoring ESR rights since 1997 and is of the opinion that the current monitoring regime needs to be revamped fundamentally so as to make it more efficient and effective. The Commission, therefore, seeks to involve diverse stakeholders in a participatory process to craft a new monitoring regime.
Section 184 (1) (c) of the Constitution mandates the South African Human Rights Commission (Commission), to monitor and assess the observance of human rights in the Republic. The State on the other hand is required to respect, protect, promote and fulfil the rights in the Bill of Rights (see Sec. 7 (3) of the Constitution).
According to section 184 (3) of the Constitution, the Commission is obliged each year to require relevant organs of the state to provide it with information on the measures they have taken towards the realization of the rights in the Bill of Rights concerning housing, health care, food, water, social security, education and environment.
Since 1997, the Research and Documentation Department of the Commission has been monitoring and assessing the observance of socio economic rights. The current monitoring regime of the Commission includes desktop research, review of relevant documents such as Annual reports of the government departments, strategic plans, policy documents and Acts of Parliament. The monitoring process also includes the use of protocols or questionnaires to obtain information from the organs of the state.
In early 2006, the Commission initiated an internal review of the ESR monitoring regime. The review was motivated by a desire to make the Commission’s ESR monitoring regime more effective and responsive to the needs of the stakeholders.
An ESR monitoring concept paper has been developed and will be presented to the workshop by the ESR Unit of the SAHRC.
Released by
Lorraine Molepo
Acting DD: Media and Communications
Cell: 072 011 3621
Fax: (011) 643 6472
E-mail: Lmolepo@sahrc.org.za
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