OACDH- Oficina Regional para África Oriental (2008-2009)

Human rights context

The East Africa Regional Office covers countries in the East and Horn of Africa, and focuses primarily on Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Kenya and Tanzania since there is no OHCHR presence in those countries.

In partnership with UN Country Teams in the region, the Office facilitates information-sharing, capacitybuilding initiatives and actions to promote, monitor and uphold human rights in the region. The Office emphasizes mainstreaming human rights in the work of regional and subregional intergovernmental organizations based in Addis Ababa, such as the African Union and the UN Economic Commission for Africa, and in UN Country Teams and UN offices in the region.

The regional dynamics, the worsening human rights situation in Somalia, and the chronic border deadlock between Ethiopia and Eritrea result in an array of inter-related human rights problems in the region, such as arbitrary detention, torture, extrajudicial killings, disappearances, trafficking, internal displacement, and migrant flows. 
 

Achievements

 
OHCHR participated in drafting and reviewing Chapter 6 of the African Governance Report published by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa on the state of human rights in Africa. UN Country Teams further integrated human rights into their programmes. In early 2006, the Government of Ethiopia and the UN Country Team signed The UN Development Assistance Framework II (UNDAF-II), which gives a prominent place to human rights reforms and programmes. OHCHR also facilitated national and regional training sessions on the human rights-based approach for UN staff from Ethiopia (20 trainees), Rwanda (20 trainees), Kenya (25 trainees) and Tunisia (25 trainees) and partners in East Africa and beyond. The Office offered advice on strategic planning and technical assistance to the African Union and responded to queries from AU Member States, civil society organizations and other partners. OHCHR also held an expert seminar on the new role of the African Commission as new African treaty bodies emerge, and on the creation of a specialized library for human rights, governance and democracy within the Secretariat of the African Union. Many of these activities were jointly implemented with NGOs, international organizations and governments.
 

Priorities

 
In addition to focusing on impunity, OHCHR in East Africa will prioritize issues relating to poverty and global inequities, armed conflict and violence, democratic deficits and weak institutions in the countries of the subregion.

The Office will also be involved in providing technical assistance and capacity-building activities to key stakeholders in Ethiopia, such as Parliamentarians, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and civil society.

The Office will also facilitate the mainstreaming of human rights into the programmes of the UN Country Teams in the region. OHCHR leads the development and implementation of the United Nations-African Union ten-year capacity-building programme on human rights. This project is a continuation of OHCHR’s previous biennial project (2006-2007) of comprehensive support to the African Union.