Moroccan PANDDH Steering Committee to Be Set Up

Seven months after the official launch of the National Action Plan in Democracy and Human Rights (PANDDH), the creation of the steering committee, scheduled for late November, comes to crown a dynamic dialogue at both national and regional levels and open a new phase in the process of developing the Plan.

Background

The project of developing and implementing the Plan in Morocco translates the will to entrench the human rights principles in government programs and actions, reflecting hence the need to consolidate the democratic gains of the country. It responds in particular to the provisions of the World Conference on Human Rights which recommends that “each State consider the desirability of drawing up a national action plan identifying steps whereby that State would improve the promotion and protection of human rights.”

The ultimate goal of this project is to develop global strategies for the promotion and protection of human rights, in such a way as to provide a coherent framework that could help coordinate all government actions and programs to improve knowledge about, promotion, preservation, respect and development of human rights in Morocco.

The process of drawing up the Plan benefits from a 29-month support program, which is the subject of a partnership agreement between the Advisory Council on Human Rights and the European Union. The program is managed by the Center for Documentation, Information and Training in Human Rights (CDIFDH) as a coordinator of the project management unit.

Core activities

The process of drawing up the PANDDH was officially launched at the Symposium held in Rabat on April 25-26, 2008 with the participation of about 300 guests from government departments, trade unions, civil society, international organizations, academic researchers and experts. These days were an opportunity to highlight the importance of dialogue and cooperation for the success of this process. They were devoted to the search for appropriate approaches to setting up the institutional and operational framework for developing in time a strategy and a National Action Plan ensuring its effective implementation.

Following the official launch activity, and in order to decentralize and generalize debate and dialogue around the Plan, four regional meetings were organized in Marrakesh, Tangier, Agadir and Meknes in June and July 2008. They saw the participation of about 120 individuals for each. They dealt with the same lines of work discussed at the Symposium, namely the role and organization of stakeholders, modalities and tools of appropriation and participation of stakeholders, identifying the needs for capacity building of actors.

All of the material produced at the symposium and regional meetings, mainly reports of workshops, are being entrusted to an expert to draw up a report for November 2008. This work will be made available to all stakeholders.

Along with these activities and in order to establish the Steering Committee, plural and representative organ, composed of different stakeholders in charge of drafting the National Strategy and Plan, a series of meetings with various stakeholders (national institutions, government, unions, professional bodies, media ... etc) has begun in June 2008. During these meetings, all stakeholders declared their interest in and adherence to the project and expressed their readiness to participate in it actively.

As regards the representation of NGOs in the Steering Committee and to ensure transparency and equality of all in participating in the Steering Committee, a call for proposals was launched on October 6, 2008. The committee responsible for selecting applications will meet during the week of November 10, 2008.

Finally and in order to establish a groundwork documentation, the CDIFDH launched a series of studies, seen necessary to help the steering committee contextualize its task and anticipate its organs and internal operation mechanisms.

Hence, an operational guideline will be drafted to organize the institutional structure of the steering committee and issue-specific committees. In addition, studies on the historical, institutional and legislative background in which fall the Plan, Moroccan sectoral policies on human rights, the convention practice of Morocco, and the practice of the Moroccan NGOs alternative reports are underway.

The official ceremony for the establishment of the Steering Committee will be held on November 28-29, 2008 in Rabat.

On this occasion, the composition of the Steering Committee will be officially announced and its members will hold their first meeting, which will address a proposal for the operational guidelines related to the Committee’s functioning mechanisms, and other various aspects related to the process of developing the Plan, namely the methodology of work, specific themes and establishment of the issue-specific committees, which will be responsible for conducting a process of thinking about the themes chosen.