This manual is one component of a two-part package of materials for training on human rights monitoring for UN human rights officers and other human rights monitors. The human rights monitoring package also includes a loose-leaf trainer’s guide. The two components of the package are designed to complement each other and, taken together, provide the basis for the conduct of programmes for human rights officers in field operations and for other human rights monitors, under the approach developed by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
This Training Manual provides practical guidance principally for the conduct of human rights monitoring in United Nations field operations, but it may also be useful to other human rights monitors.
It provides an overview of the doctrine and methodology of human rights monitoring, primarily as developed through the work of, and to be applied by United Nations human rights field operations. It sets forth applicable international human rights and humanitarian law; approaches to identifying human rights violations, information-gathering, interviewing, visits to persons in detention, visits to displaced persons in camps, monitoring the return of refugees and internally displaced persons, trial observation, election observation, monitoring demonstrations, monitoring economic rights, preparation of reports, interventions with local authorities and other follow-up; history of United Nations monitoring standards; etc. In addition, the Manual provides suggestions for norms applicable to the work of HROs in field operations and how they can handle the challenges of stress and security they will encounter.
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