Reference Group on Human Rights and Humanitarian Action
In June 1998, the IASC Working Group decided to
establish the Reference Group on Humanitarian Action and Human Rights. The
Reference Group subsequently became a Task Force and its main objective
was "To strengthen the understanding and integration of human rights
in humanitarian action by all humanitarian agencies".
During the years, the among the achievements of the
Task Force have been the development of IASC Guidelines on Human Rights
for Humanitarian Coordinators, Frequently Asked Questions on International
Humanitarian, Human Rights and Refugee Law and Growing the Sheltering Tree
- Protecting Rights through Humanitarian Action.
The unfolding of the Humanitarian Reform process and
the focus on the Cluster Approach – with the subsequent establishment of
the Protection Cluster Working Group – warranted a re-discussion of the
role of this Task Force and – more importantly - of the place that the
human rights should occupy within the IASC.
With the recent advancements in the rolling out of
the Cluster Approach, the members of the suspended Task Force have been
able to re-focus the priority issues that IASC partners believe they will
need to work on in the pursuit of an enhanced integration of a broad human
rights dimension into humanitarian action.
Given the importance attached to ensuring a forum
for a Human Rights discourse within the IASC architecture, partners have
suggested to return to original identity of subsidiary body as a Reference
Group with a non time and task limited framework.
The proposal for the establishment of the Reference
Group is the result of the shared interested of the member agencies to
continue engaging in the mainstreaming of human rights as a cross-cutting
issue for all IASC cluster/sectors and subsidiary bodies.
The commitment of interested IASC agencies – each
contributing diverse institutional knowledge, experience and skills in
different fields of humanitarian action - to the activities envisaged in
the attached work-plan is a guarantee of a solid participatory approach at
the institutional level.
Activities foreseen in the work-plan when overlaying
with initiatives of the IASC Protection Cluster Working Group will be
undertaken in coordination with the latter - in the spirit of
complementarity and acknowledging the subsidiary role of the Human Rights
and Humanitarian Action body when issues have already been taken up or are
agreed to be taken up by the Protection Cluster.
Activities undertaken by the reference Group will
include: a) Support to the Humanitarian Reform process by facilitating
integration of a Human Rights Based Approach; b) Contribution the human
rights perspective to IASC advocacy initiatives; c) Development of
friendly user tools to facilitate the integration of a human rights based
approach in humanitarian action; and d) Increasing the level of awareness
and information sharing about human rights initiatives with relevance to
humanitarian action
