Implementation is just as important as the reporting and examination steps of the cycle. This is the step where we consider and implement recommendations and make substantive changes that impact the human rights of New Zealanders.
Implementation is the responsibility of subject-matter agencies, however lead agencies play an important role in coordinating and monitoring implementation and follow-up.
The Human Rights Monitor(external link), New Zealand’s national online monitoring tool, is a key instrument in supporting follow up processes.
To meet our obligations under the relevant treaty, and to continue to improve human rights protections for New Zealanders, Committee recommendations need to be genuinely assessed and considered.
The Committees consist of subject-matter experts on human rights matters. Implementing their recommendations therefore helps New Zealand achieve consistency with the relevant convention.
In 2023 the International Human Rights Governance Group agreed to a standard process for considering concluding observations. It recommends that reporting agencies draft a Cabinet paper for their Minister’s consideration seeking approval of the actions the Government will take in response to the concluding observations (recommendations). This makes the Government aware of recommendations and gives agencies the mandate to progress work and implement recommendations. Following Cabinet consideration, the concluding observations and actions can be added to New Zealand’s online tracking tool, the Human Rights Monitor.
A standard process for responding to concluding observations (recommendations) is outlined below. We acknowledge that, in some situations, amendments to the process may be needed.
The roles and responsibilities of lead agencies and subject-matter agencies are outlined below for each step of the process.
New Zealand’s national online monitoring tool, the Human Rights Monitor(external link), is a key instrument in follow up processes. The website helps increase transparency and accountability on New Zealand’s human rights commitments as well as improving agency coordination.
The Human Rights Monitor brings together recommendations New Zealand has received from UN human rights bodies and the actions the Government is taking to implement them. Process step indicators are then assigned to these actions, so that progress on them can be tracked over time.
The Human Rights Monitor can filter recommendations, actions and indicators by various category groups, including reporting cycles, recommending states, human rights issues, affected persons and government agencies responsible. Actions in the Monitor can also be filtered by progress status and by SMART2 criteria.
The Human Rights Monitor is integrated into each step of the follow up process.
Upon receiving recommendations, the lead agency will consider them, identify the agencies responsible for the implementation of recommendations (subject-matter agencies) and start engaging with them.
The lead agency will advise subject-matter agencies of the recommendations. Agencies should consider what actions are needed to meet the recommendations.
Subject-matter agencies can check the Human Rights Monitor for existing work or actions that may address these recommendations. The lead agency will then ask the subject-matter agencies where further information is needed. If there are pre-existing actions on the agency’s work programme, the subject-matter agency will provide the lead agency with information showing how it will develop this work over time to address the recommendation, including timeframes for actions where this is needed.
The lead agency and subject-matter agencies can then consider opportunities for new and future work, including seeking agreement from their Minister, if required. In this case, responsible agencies may decide to brief the relevant decision-maker, generally their Minister.
Recommendations should not be formally rejected as this is not required. For some recommendations there may not be any immediate action, but these can be revisited later in the reporting cycle. Where no action is proposed, it is useful for the subject-matter agency to explain why.
Human Rights Monitor Steps:
Upon receiving recommendations, the lead agency will check the Human Rights Monitor for pre-existing recommendations/actions/indicators from other treaty bodies that may align with the recommendation, then reach out to subject-matter agencies for further information on what action the government should take in response to the recommendation.
It is good practice to engage with civil society on the recommendations received.
Engagement will generally be coordinated and organised by the lead agency, who can invite subject-matter agencies to participate. Lead agencies are encouraged to share public feedback received with relevant agencies.
Agencies may also need to proactively engage with other stakeholders who may not be aware that recommendations relate to them, for example local government or the courts.
Existing monitoring groups, such as the Independent Monitoring Mechanism under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities or the Children’s Monitoring Group under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, should be engaged with at this time.
Lead agencies should compile the responses they receive and prepare a Cabinet paper seeking approval of the actions to be taken for their Minister’s consideration. Cabinet consideration ensures that the recommendations are genuinely assessed and considered. It gives decision-makers visibility of the recommendations and supports accountability of Government. It also provides an opportunity to make positive changes to human rights protections. A timely decision helps keep the momentum going after an examination.
The Cabinet paper would generally seek agreement on which recommendations should be prioritised, and the actions that should be taken in response to them. Some actions will be taken from work already underway, while others could be new.
Recommendations do not need to be accepted or rejected, instead the focus is on what actions can be taken to implement the recommendations. Even where New Zealand doesn’t agree with the exact wording of a recommendation, agencies should consider actions that contribute the purpose of the recommendation.
The lead agency will lead the drafting of a Cabinet paper, but subject-matter agencies are required to support this process.
The Governance Group recommends that agencies work towards Cabinet consideration within a year of receiving the concluding observations. This allows for a genuine consideration, while ensuring that substantive progress can be made within the time available until the next report. However, for those recommendations requiring a one-year update, work to implement them must start immediately to allow for progress within those urgent timeframes. See Responding to requests for one-year updates for more details on this process.
Human Rights Monitor Steps
Subject-matter agencies will suggest the appropriate action in response to each recommendation (or amend the suggestions of the lead agency)
Where it is suggested that no action be taken against a recommendation, subject-matter agencies should provide an explanation of why it cannot be progressed.
The lead agency will review all content and compile it for Ministerial and Cabinet consideration.
Once the response to recommendations has been approved by Cabinet, indicators should be developed for the actions being taken.
Human rights indicators are defined by the OHCHR as “specific information on the state or condition of an object, event, activity or outcome that can be related to human rights norms and standards; that addresses and reflects human rights principles and concerns; and that can be used to assess and monitor the promotion and implementation of human rights.”
For the purposes of the Human Rights Monitor, these indicators take the form of progress indicators, process steps or key deliverables for each action.
Progress indicators allow for more tangible deliverables against actions, breaking these down into specific, measurable, assignable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) steps. Having these published in the Human Rights Monitor promotes transparency of government actions, as well as ongoing monitoring.
As part of this process, subject-matter agencies will suggest appropriate timeframes by which specific steps will be taken. The tool will later prompt progress reports to be provided at these dates. If it is not possible to provide specific dates, progress reports on actions can be required at annual intervals. Progress reports are discussed in further detail in the following sections.
The SMART criteria for quality progress indicators for the Monitor are:
Once subject-matter agencies have provided indicators, the Lead agency will assess these against the SMART criteria.
Human Rights Monitor Steps:
Once the lead agency has received indicators from subject-matter agencies, they will assess these against the SMART criteria to determine what letters will be tagged to the indicators in the Human Rights Monitor.
Once the response to recommendations has been approved by Cabinet, Cabinet material should be proactively released, subject to appropriate redactions, in line with Cabinet guidance(external link). This transparency and accountability, as well as wide dissemination of the UN recommendations, is expected by the UN.
Following Cabinet approval and development of indicators, recommendations, actions and indicators will be published in the Human Rights Monitor.(external link)
Lead agencies will work with the Ministry of Justice to upload their response to the Human Rights Monitor. Recommendations, actions and indicators need to be uploaded to the tool using a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file format. The Ministry of Justice will provide these file templates and work with agencies to support this process.
Lead agencies will be assigned a login to the Monitor to upload and publish their content.
Human Rights Monitor Steps:
Once Cabinet has approved the actions and agencies have developed indicators, lead agencies will work with the Ministry of Justice to upload and publish recommendations, actions and indicators in the Human Rights Monitor.
Lead agencies will be assigned a login to the Human Rights Monitor to upload files in CSV format using the templates provided by the Ministry of Justice.
Lead agencies are responsible for the ongoing monitoring of implementation of actions as well as following up periodically on recommendations where no action has been identified to check if this position has changed.
The Human Rights Monitor(external link) will automatically prompt subject-matter agencies to provide ‘progress reports’ on actions at the set timeframes that are logged in the tool. We consider such monitoring should happen once a year if no timeframe is provided.
Progress reports help provide up to date information for civil society on actions being taken against recommendations. They also provide agencies with the opportunity to brief Ministers or revisit recommendations and actions, including to reconsider decisions to ‘park’ certain recommendations due to prioritisation.
These reports will naturally vary in length and detail. While some may be just a few sentences, others will require more information.
Lead agencies will approve the publication of these progress reports once they are uploaded. The progress status in the Human Rights Monitor can also be updated at this stage.
Subject-matter agencies, not the lead agencies, are ultimately responsible for the completion of actions. They should add relevant actions to the agency’s work programme, seek further Cabinet decisions and amend legislation where necessary.
Human Rights Monitor Steps:
The Human Rights Monitor will automatically prompt subject-matter agencies to provide ‘progress reports’ on actions at the set timeframes that are logged in the tool (provided by subject-matter agencies at the indicator stage if no set timeframe is determined in the action).
Lead agencies will approve the publication of these progress reports once they are uploaded. The progress status in the Human Rights Monitor can also be updated at this stage.
The UPR formal follow up process is different to the follow up process for the treaties.
For the UPR, the country under review must formally respond to the recommendations and either support, support in part, or note them. While there is an opportunity to respond immediately in Geneva, generally, the substantive response will happen in the following months. There will be a deadline based on Human Rights Council session times as the Council will need to formally adopt the response (as part of adopting the full ‘outcome report’ which is a summary of the full review proceedings).
Work on the response will need to get underway immediately as there is a hard deadline, many recommendations, and the response requires a Cabinet decision. The Ministry of Justice usually leads and coordinates this work, but other agencies will provide input.
Specifically, the subject-matter agencies will:
It is not unusual to note some recommendations, particularly when they are phrased in a way that would not allow us to choose between different options to address an issue. However, we should not note recommendations without good reason.
There is a strict word limit for the formal response to the UPR recommendations which limits the information that can be included beyond the decision on support/support in part/note. This response will be sent to the Human Rights Council and be made public on a UN website(external link) once officially adopted at its session.
Usually, Committees will request information on the implementation of a small number of recommendations (a maximum of 4) within 12 months or sometimes 18 months after the issuing of the concluding observations. This requires the reporting agency to draft a short report outlining the developments and actions taken. These one-year update reports are usually less than 10 pages long.
The process to draft an update report is simpler than for full reports. The lead agency will contact responsible subject-matter agencies and those will provide draft responses. The draft report needs to be run past all relevant agencies before being submitted to ministers. While this is not a requirement, agencies should consider whether public consultation, or narrow targeted engagement could be helpful.
Update reports can generally be approved by the Minister responsible for the reporting in consultation with a small number of relevant subject matter colleagues. The Minister may still decide that a Cabinet decision is required. It is important to clarify the process with other agencies and ministers early on to avoid delays.
In general, the Committee will not respond to this report except in the next List of Issues Prior to Reporting, which is received before the preparation of the next report. However, it is possible for the Committee to find that the response is insufficient and request further reporting. This highlights the need to take these short reports seriously.
If New Zealand does not propose progressing a recommendation or does not consider any (further) action necessary, the report will explain why. In such a case the report should outline other measures taken to protect the relevant human right, while trying to avoid repetition of what has been said in the previous report.
For the Universal Periodic Review, the Human Rights Council expects States to submit a ‘mid-term’ report discussing key developments since the recommendations were received. While this is not compulsory, it is a good means to track the implementation of recommendations and will enhance New Zealand’s reputation. A Cabinet decision is generally not required, especially if Cabinet previously noted the mid-term process.