Strengthening collaboration with human rights partners is essential to building inclusive and enabling environments, United Nations (UN) Human Rights Pacific Office and Diplomacy Training Program say.
The Pacific Regional Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR ROP) and the Diplomacy Training Program (DTP) affiliated with the Faculty of Law & Justice, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that sets forth further collaboration.
The partnership between DTP and ROP has been cultivated over a number of years, in which the organisations have worked together to provide capacity building training to civil society organisations and human rights defenders on human rights issues such as sustainable development, business and human rights and the climate crisis in their joint mission to advance, protect and promote human rights in the Pacific region.
“The formalization of our collaboration has been a long time coming, and this MOU sets our vision for future work. DTP has been a strategic partner for the OHCHR Pacific Regional Office, helping to facilitate, organize and contribute to events such as the 1st Business and Human Rights Pacific Regional Forum, ROP’s first climate change and human rights conference and most recently capacity building and exchanges of good practices with environmental human rights defenders,” said Heike Alefsen, the Pacific Regional Representative for the UN Human Rights Office based in Suva, Fiji.
“The signing of the MOU marks a strengthening of our joint commitment to human rights in the Pacific region and builds upon the work our offices have accomplished together. Through collaborative training we have been able to advance human rights defenders’ skills in the Pacific region, providing them with more tools to engage with States and non-state actors,” said Patrick Earle, Executive Director of the Diplomacy Training Program.
The next collaborative engagement will be the online course “Building Back Better” Business, Human Rights, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the "Climate Emergency in the Pacific 2021" in August 2021 for which applications are currently being accepted. For further information and to apply please consult DTP.