[hr-education] Re: Funding sought for a Subregional HRE & Democracy Project

Dear Melania Rukanda,

Greetings!

I write to you from the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI). The
CHRI is an independent, international, non-profit, NGO based in New Delhi
India whose mandate is to advocate for the practical realisation of Human
Rights within the Commonwealth.

This is in reply to your mail which I have just received and was very
impressed by. Our organisation unfortunately cannot fund your project but we
definitely have some inputs.

As a part of our advocacy strategy, the CHRI International Advisory
Commission produces a biennial report on issues of current human rights
concern. This report is produced in time for each Commonwealth Heads of
Government Meeting (CHOGM). The CHOGM is the Commonwealth's premier event 
and provides CHRI with a unique opportunity to get heads of state to
consider issues raised in the report and incorporate them in government
policy.

This year CHRI's latest report to CHOGM, is entitled "Human Rights and
Poverty Eradication: A Talisman for the Commonwealth".

The report targeted at policy makers and civil society, focuses on the
unacceptable levels of poverty in the Commonwealth. In our own times poverty
has increased and intensified under national and international economic
policies enshrined in the concept of globalisation. This worsening poverty
has resulted from the discriminatory and exclusionary policies that create
an inequitable distribution of resources and prevent people accessing the
benefits of development.

The report demands that Commonwealth states unequivocally recognise that the
persistence of poverty is a serious human rights violation and one that
requires a genuine rights-based approach as the only effective and immediate
solution. CHRI urges that policy decisions be motivated by the fulfilment of
human rights and eradication of poverty.

Key points of the report are mainstreaming Human Rights and successful
mainstreaming requires several undertakings:

*	Elaborating human rights guidelines and directives that serve as criteria
for internal accountability and provide a framework for dialogue with
governments and others outside the institution.
*	Setting human rights and poverty eradication goals and targets for all
programmes and developing the use of indicators and measures for monitoring
and evaluating outcomes.
*	Establishing participatory processes for policy formulation and programme
implementation.
*	Assuring accountability for using a human rights approach through
incentives, persuasion and positive professional reinforcement.
*	Developing internal human rights capacities for accomplishing the above
tasks; including periodic assessments of methodologies for making human
rights mainstreaming operational.

The PDF versions of the report as well its executive summary are available
on CHRI's website at www.humanrightsinitiative.org.

Should you wish to obtain a hard copy of this report I will be pleased to
send you one which I think will be very useful in your work.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Thank You.

Regards

Navaz Kotwal
CHOGM Team




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