UN HUMAN rights monitoring in conflict areas such as Bosnia and Rwanda lacks consistency and coherence, and field staff are often poorly trained, a report commissioned by the Department of Foreign Affairs states.
Failure to learn from the experiences of one field operation to the next - as in Haiti, El Salvador, Cambodia and Rwanda - has had serious and negative consequences, the report states.
Written by an Irish human rights lawyer, Ms Karen Kenny, of the International Human Rights Trust, the report is due to be published today by the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ms Joan Burton.
The study was commissioned to coincide with Ireland's EU Presidency, at a time when deployment of human rights field operations, has become an integral part of the international response to complex emergencies.
"Reinventing the wheel" in each situation wastes valuable time, the study states. It criticises the lack of any central body in the UN which would take responsibility for recruitment, training, deployment and debriefing of human rights officers.
This contrasts with the system developed for UN peace keeping, the author notes. Training is clearly identified as the responsibility of the troop contributing nation, and a "lessons learned unit" was established in April 1995, to make the most of "institutional memory".
A standing team of human rights monitors, which would be at the disposal of the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, is identified as a priority in Ireland's White Paper on Foreign Policy. Studies in Canada and the US have also proposed stand by teams.
If modelled on the successful Norwegian system of standby rosters, such proposals would represent a prime opportunity to rationalise training, the report states.
In spite of its remit to monitor, verify and/or observe, UN human rights monitoring has often failed to publish reports, the study indicates.
When reports are published, however, they are only as useful as the information they contain, the author notes. If they are not accurate, monitors may contribute to negative effects such as those identified by the UN special rapporteur on former Yugoslavia.
Guidelines are needed for corroborating information, winning the trust of the host population so that witnesses can be interviewed, and applying analytical tools.
On the selection of volunteers, the report states that there has been an overemphasis on legal qualifications. A background in law is not necessary, it says.
"There should be no single profile of a human rights officer: not only lawyers, but also educators, police, military, anthropologists, communications or trauma specialists may be needed to fulfil the human rights officers' task."
Selection should depend on interviews and on testing, with emphasis on functioning effectively and ethically in an extremely stressful environment, the report recommends. Clear conditions and procedures should be in place for repatriation of officers who are not working out, it says.
To back this up, it quotes an incident cited by Human Rights Watch: "In the early stages of human rights monitoring in Rwanda, monitors were rushed to the country without proper training. Tragically, an inexperienced monitor's report to prison authorities about prisoners' statements of torture apparently resulted in the punishment of some prisoners through beatings by prison authorities."
Ms Kenny's work is the firsts report published by the International Human Rights Trust, which was established in Ireland this year with the support of the former director of Trocaire, Mr Brian McKeown. It will be discussed by a group of international human rights specialists who are meeting in Dublin today and tomorrow.
Towards Effective Training for Field Human Rights Tasks, by Karen Kenny, is published by the International Human Rights Trust at tel/fax (01) 282 2538.
