Effective Parliamentary Oversight of Human Rights

The Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London, held a high level workshop on 13 and 14 November. Effective Parliamentary Oversight of Human Rights brought together leading academics and policymakers and practitioners, including from the United Nations, national parliaments and National Human Rights Institutions from nine jurisdictions.

Dr Phillipa Webb, Dean Professor David Caron and Professor Yuval Shany

The aim of the workshop was to identify best practice in parliamentary oversight of human rights and identify practical measures to enhance effectiveness. Speakers included, Professor Yuval Shany, Hebrew University and UN Human Rights Committee and Murray Hunt, Legal Adviser to the UK Joint Committee on Human Rights.

Dr Philippa Webb and Ms Kirsten Roberts, who are running the project, said:

“While parliaments can play a crucial role in human rights protection, the effectiveness of parliaments as human rights actors is not being fully realised. At present different methods are used by parliaments around the world to monitor human rights within their countries, with starkly varying degrees of success. Using the latest academic thinking on assessing the effectiveness of institutions, our project aims to encourage a fundamental shift in parliaments approach to Human rights and to improve domestic human rights protections. This workshop was the first step in that process.”

Panel sessions covered examined parliaments and human rights from a range of perspectives through panels on how to measure the effectiveness of parliamentary oversight of human rights; international and national regional perspectives on parliamentary oversight of human rights and stakeholder perspectives. Speakers included leading experts on human rights and on parliaments from the Philippines, Bosnia, Australia, Canada, Ireland and the Netherlands. Participants included attendees from international organisations, academia and diplomatic missions.

Dr Webb said,“the dynamic and fruitful discussions that took place at the workshop were a clear indication of the importance of this topic and the need for a fresh perspective. We plan to build on this in the coming months with the development of an outcome document, website and network.”

The project will now develop an outcome document and network to develop and progress the work begun at the workshop.

The Effective Parliamentary Oversight of Human Rights is a King’s Policy Institute (KPI) funded project.

Find out more on the KPI website and by visiting  the project pages