The Foundation delivers Human Rights Reporting to Charter-based Bodies Workshop in Colombo in cooperation with the Attorney General’s Department of Sri Lanka
From 3 to 4 December 2022, the Max Planck Foundation conducted a workshop on Human Rights Reporting in Colombo, Sri Lanka in partnership with the Attorney General’s Department of Sri Lanka. The workshop was attended by seven of the Department’s lawyers from across Sri Lanka who will provide future training for their colleagues.
The workshop focused on State engagement with UN Charter-based Bodies with a focus on reporting to Universal Periodic Review mechanism, as well as the other areas of State party engagement with the Human Rights Council, Special Procedures and Independent Investigations. This workshop was conducted in continuation to the UN treaty body reporting workshop held in October 2022. The Max Planck Foundation’s staff introduced the UN Human Rights Council, its functions and areas of State cooperation. The lawyers participated in exercises to replicate resolution drafting and deliberations. Subsequently, the process and best practices in State party reporting to the Universal Periodic Review mechanism was discussed. The lawyers participated in complex exercises to simulate a Universal Periodic Review and had to identify the relevant information and draft a national report on the implementation of human rights. Following the national reporting process, they also engaged in a simulation interactive dialogue. Their active participation in the simulations demonstrated how such exercises may be used to advance the skills of future trainees of the Attorney General’s Department.
Further to the Universal Periodic Review mechanism, the trainer-of-trainers workshop addressed how State parties may engage with other functions of Human Rights Council, namely Special Procedures and Independent Investigations. The lawyers took part in a simulation exercise to advise States on how to provide answers to communications under Special Procedures as well. Throughout the workshop, the participants considered how to further advance the implementation of the core human rights treaties in Sri Lanka with both legal and non-legal measures.
Finally, the Foundation donated rich resources of international law to the library of the Attorney General’s Department, particularly books on international human rights law. The participants appreciated the importance of such resources in their future work and to train the future trainees of the Department.
This was the second and final of two Trainer-of-trainers workshops to be held in partnership with the Attorney General’s Office of Sri Lanka as part of the German Federal Foreign Office-funded project, ‘Advancing Institutional Capacity in the Sri Lankan Justice System’.