National Council for Human Rights

Description

The National Council for Human Rights, or NCHR, is Egypt’s national human rights institution. It was established in 2003 to promote and maintain human rights in the country. It describes itself as an independent national body working to make human rights a national priority.

NCHR works to spread a culture of human rights and to raise awareness and education about them. It treats human rights as indivisible, linking peace, the economy, the environment, society and democracy as connected parts of the same goal. It develops its methods and programmes together with government bodies and with national, regional and international non-governmental organizations.

The council helps prepare the reports Egypt must periodically submit to international human rights bodies under the conventions it has ratified, and it answers these bodies’ inquiries. It coordinates with state institutions on human rights matters and issues its own reports on the state of human rights in Egypt, both governmental and non-governmental. It sets out a national action plan for protecting human rights and proposes ways to carry it out.

NCHR gives opinions, suggestions and recommendations to the authorities on protecting and developing human rights. It receives complaints, studies them, and refers them to the competent authorities or informs complainants of the legal steps available to them. It visits prisons and other places of detention to check on the treatment of those held there, and reports violations of personal freedom or privacy to the public prosecution.