NARRATIVE REPORT 2009 - The ICHRP

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International Council on Human Rights Policy - Narrative Report 2009 During the year, the Secretariat had seven permanent staff, including two Research Directors (each responsible for half the project portfolio), an Accountant, an Outreach and Publications Co-ordinator, an IT and Communications Officer, and an Administrative Assistant (See Appendix IV). Finance The Council began 2009 in a weakened financial position. It carried only a small reserve into the new year, having had to cut two staff posts at the end of 2008 and reduce the 2009 budget by CHF150k to CHF2,050k. With the help of these reductions and careful control over expenditure, by December 2009 the Secretariat had re-stabilised the situation. Expenditure and income were broadly in balance, expenditure had been reduced by CHF400k without profound harm to the Research programme (which doubled spending on external fees), and the year was closed with the accounts in better order. Though the Council remains financially vulnerable, and it is vital to replenish the reserve, the Council is in a position from which it can rebuild its finances. The nominal deficit of CHF 25k on the 2009 accounts should nevertheless be put in context. Taking into account last year’s loss of CHF 577k, the Council is still very insecure because it has virtually no reserve. It is essential, not just to cover expenditure in 2010 but to start to restore a reserve, given the long project cycles that are associated with research. 2
International Council on Human Rights Policy - Narrative Report 2009 THE RESEARCH PROGRAMME A. Projects published or in follow-up at the start of 2010 Corruption and Human Rights – Making the Connection (131A) Published in February 2009 In 2007 the ICHRP put together a team of advisers and researchers, and convened a meeting of experts, to help it prepare two parallel reports on the subject of corruption and human rights. The Council published the first of these, Corruption and Human Rights – Making the Connection, in 2009. It examines the relationships between acts of corruption and violations of human rights, explaining when an act of corruption can be said to violate a human right directly or indirectly, and when it does not violate a right. It also examines the human rights mechanisms available for accountability and redress and suggests where collaboration between anti-corruption and human rights organisations is likely to be both natural and useful. The second report will be published in the first half of 2010. Corruption and Human Rights – Making the Connection was prepared on the basis of extensive consultation, which included a workshop with Amnesty International staff (May 2008), and a roundtable meeting convened by Transparency International in Berlin for Amnesty staff, Human Rights Watch Germany, Reporters without Borders, and members of national chapters of Transparency International. Other consultation meetings took place in Paris (OECD), Switzerland (Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation), the UN (international coordinating Committee of national Human Rights Institutions), Armenia, (Mobilizing Action Against Corruption (MAAC)), Argentina (Inter- American Women’s Forum against Corruption), Kenya (ESCR-NET General Assembly), Mexico (National Transparency Week)m, Chile (Human Rights Center of the University of Chile), and Uganda (diplomatic and donor representatives, Ugandan civil society, UN agencies including OHCHR). In 2008 Transparency International decided to give more attention to human rights, published a working paper titled Human Rights and Corruption, in which the Council was credited as an external peer reviewer, and created a website section on corruption and human rights. In October 2008 the Council co-organised a plenary workshop on human rights and corruption, with the UN Development programme (UNDP) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), during the 13 th International Anti-Corruption Convention in Athens. The workshop was very well attended and took forward discussion of the relationships between human rights and corruption, first raised at the 12 th International Conference in Guatemala. The report was published in English in February 2009. A Spanish translation was co-published later in the year by the Escuela de Graduados en Administración Pública y Política Pública (EGAP) of the Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico, which also distributed the report in Latin America in association with ICHRP. An Armenian translation was co-published with MAAC in July 2009, and launched at MAAC’s annual assembly by Armenia’s Human Rights Ombudsman. Transparency International copublished the report electronically in September 2009, with a new foreword, and distributed it to all national chapters. Towards the end of 2009, Magdalena Sepúlveda, the Council’s Research Director responsible for this project, was appointed to the steering group that is preparing the 14 th biennial Conference on Corruption in Bangkok, reflecting Transparency International’s desire to bring human rights even more explicitly into anti-corruption advocacy and policy discussion. 3
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NARRATIVE REPORT 2009 - The ICHRP

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