MOROCCO: Strengthening the capacities of the National Human Rights Council (Twinning)

With the Moroccan constitutional reform of 2011, the mandate of the National Human Rights Council (CNDH / Conseil National des Droits de l’Homme) has been expanded and strengthened, giving the CNDH enlarged responsibility for the protection and promotion of human rights in Morocco. Increased expectations of the Moroccan population in regard to the implementation of human rights in everyday life as well as the international obligations of the Kingdom of Morocco and the political situation in the neighbouring countries of the Mediterranean and Northern Africa are challenging the CNDH in its role of being the main actor in the implementation of national and international human rights mechanisms in the country.

Project activities and results

The kick-off meeting of the Twinning project took place in Rabat on 12 October 2015.

During the implementation of the Twinning project, the activities focused on three main fields:

• Accompanying the establishment and strengthening the new organizational structure of the CNDH
• Strengthening the technical capacities of the members and the administrative staff of the CNDH and its regional human rights commissions
• Increasing the visibility of competences and activities of the CNDH and its constituent bodies at a national and international level

Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Fundamental and Human Rights (LBI-GMR) participated in the organizational development process by undertaking a comprehensive analysis of the existing internal human resource development system at the CNDH and the regional commissions, by refining the internal training needs and by proposing a path to allow for better staff development in the future. For this activity, LBI-GMR conducted interviews and briefing sessions all over Morocco, thereby getting a more comprehensive picture of the specific human rights situation in different parts of the country.

In addition, LBI-GMR developed a training programme on investigation of possible human rights violations and started the cycle of trainings for CNDH staff and members of regional commissions. Four trainings modules were developed, focusing on:

• identification of human rights violations
• investigation techniques and methodologies
• reporting
• development of recommendations and follow-up to recommendations

Based on the pilot training sessions, which took place from May 2016 until March 2017, a draft methodological training handbook was developed for future reference by the CNDH and its associates. This handbook was tested for its usability during additional training of trainers session and subsequently improved based on the feedback of CNDH. LBI-GMR is convinced that with these activities a good basis for future internal training sessions was created.

Lastly, in September 2017 a CNDH staff member’s participation during the workshop for National Preventive Mechanisms for preventing torture, held by the International Ombudsman Institute in Vienna, was organized.

The project was successfully completed in November 2017.