Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association

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UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association
Emblem of the United Nations.svg
Incumbent
Maina Kiai
since May 1, 2011
Term length Three years
Inaugural holder Maina Kiai
Formation UN Human Rights Council resolution 15/21 (October 2010)
Website Freeassembly.net

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association works independently to inform and advise the United Nations Human Rights Council. The Special Rapporteur examines, monitors, advises and publicly reports on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association worldwide.[1]

The position was created by Human Rights Council resolution 15/21 in October 2010. This position is voluntary, and the expert is not United Nations staff nor paid for his/her work.[1]

The first mandate-holder, Maina Kiai, took up his duties on May 1, 2011, for an initial period of three years. He began his second three-year term in May 2014. Kiai is a lawyer and human rights defender from Kenya.[2][3]

Mandate

The Special Rapporteur is mandated to gather all relevant information relating to the promotion and protection of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association throughout the world. The Special Rapporteur is also mandated to make recommendations on ways to ensure the promotion and protection of these rights, to report on rights violations, and to issue reports on his findings.[1]

The mandate was initially established for three years. In September 2013, it was extended for an additional three years, through 2017.[4]

Working methods

In the discharge of his mandate, the Special Rapporteur:

  • Transmits urgent appeals and letters of allegation to Member States on alleged violations of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and/or of association;[5][6]
  • Undertakes fact-finding country visits;[7]
  • Submits annual reports covering activities relating to the mandate to the Human Rights Council and to the General Assembly;[8]
  • Engages publicly on issues of concern, including through press statements.[9]

Work of the current Special Rapporteur

As of March 2016, current Special Rapporteur Kiai has presented five reports to the Human Rights Council on the subjects of:

  • Best practices in promoting the freedoms of assembly and association (May 2012);[10][11]
  • Civil society’s ability to access funding and resources (April 2013);[12][13]
  • The plight of groups "most at risk" when exercising their assembly and association rights (June 2014);[14][15]
  • The rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association in the context of natural resource exploitation (June 2015); [16][17]
  • A joint report on recommendations for the effective management of assemblies (March 2016), with fellow Special Rapporteur Christof Heyns.[18][19]

In October 2013, he presented his first report to the UN General Assembly, on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association in the context of elections.[20][21] He presented his second report to the General Assembly - exploring the effect that multilateral institutions have on promoting and protecting assembly and association rights - in October 2014.[22] His third report to the General Assembly (October 2015) was a comparative study of the "enabling environments" that states create for businesses and associations; it found that businesses generally get much more favorable treatment.[23] Kiai has also made seven official country visits, to Georgia (2012), the United Kingdom (Jan. 2013 & April 2016), Rwanda (Jan. 2014), Oman (Sept. 2014), Kazakhstan (Jan. 2015), Chile (Sept. 2015) and the Republic of Korea (Jan. 2016).[24][25]

As of June 2015, Kiai has issued more than 90 press statements via OHCHR [26] and sent over 720 communications to UN member states.[27]

Kiai also attends numerous conferences and meetings on the subject matter of his mandate and convenes consultations with various stakeholders on the subject.[28][29]

In 2014, Freedom House awarded Kiai its Freedom Award, an acknowledgment begun in 1943 "to extol recipients’ invaluable contribution to the cause of freedom and democracy."[30] Prior Freedom Award honorees include Chen Guangcheng, Aung San Suu Kyi, Vaclav Havel, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Medgar Evers, and Edward R. Murrow.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
  2. ↑ Maina Kiai, OHCHR bio
  3. ↑ Freeassembly.net
  4. ↑ International Center for Not-For-Profit Law
  5. ↑ Freeassembly.net, Country Communications 2012
  6. ↑ Freeassembly.net, Country Communications 2013
  7. ↑ OHCHR, Country Visits
  8. ↑ OHCHR, Annual Reports
  9. ↑ OHCHR, Press Statements
  10. ↑ Freeassembly.net, Report A/HRC/20/27
  11. ↑ Report via OHCHR
  12. ↑ Freeassembly.net, Report A/HRC/23/39"
  13. ↑ Report via OHCHR
  14. ↑ Freeassembly.net, Report A/HRC/26/29
  15. ↑ Report via OHCHR
  16. ↑ Freeassembly.net, Report A/HRC/29/25
  17. ↑ Report via OHCHR
  18. ↑ Freeassembly.net, Report A/HRC/29/25
  19. ↑ Report via OHCHR
  20. ↑ Freeassembly.net, Report A/68/299"
  21. ↑ Report via OHCHR
  22. ↑ Freeassembly.net, Report A/69/365
  23. ↑ Freeassembly.net, Report A/70/266
  24. ↑ Freeassembly.net, Country Reports
  25. ↑ OHCHR, Country Visits page
  26. ↑ OHCHR Press Statements
  27. ↑ OHCHR Reports
  28. ↑ "UN Special Rapporteur Maina Kiai to address high-level UN panel hosted by President Obama," via Freeassembly.net
  29. ↑ "Special Rapporteur Maina Kiai to speak in Montreal and Ottawa," via Freeassembly.net
  30. ↑ Freedom House

External links

See also

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