Welcome to our site

India is a Country of National & State Human Rights Institutions. There are currently about 71 (Accreditation Status A) and 25 (Accreditation Status B) National Human Rights Institutions (NHRI's) coming from all regions of the World. National Human Rights institutions are State bodies with a constitutional and/or Legislature mandate to protect and promote human rights. They are part of the State apparatus and are funded by the State. However, they operate and function independently from government. While their specific mandate may vary, the general role of NHRIs is to address discrimination in all its forms, as well as to promote the protection of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. Core functions of NHRIs include complaint handling, human rights, education and making recommendations on law reform. Effective NHRIs are an important link between government and civil society, in so far as they help bridge the 'protection' gap between the rights of individuals and the responsibilities of the State. In 1991, the U.N. Centre for Human Rights, today's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights convened a conference of National Human Rights Institutions to define common attributes that all new or existing NHRIs should possess. That meeting since being held in Paris, the resulting standards came to be known as the "Paris Principles". The Paris Principles have become part of the human rights lexicon: the Vienna Declaration, for example, qualified any mention of national institutions with the phrase "established in conformity with the Paris Principles" The principles were approved by a U.N. General Assembly resolution in 1993 and today are broadly accepted as the international standard or test of an institution's independence and effectiveness.