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Policy

Human Rights & Peace Building Programme

Fighting human rights violations in Africa is a major challenge. Just as important is the struggle to implement people's (human) rights that are vested in the national constitutions and international treaties. Access to justice is such a human right, that nevertheless the majority of inhabitants of southern Africa must do without.

NiZA supports organisations who monitor the observance of human rights. This is in line with NiZA's general mission to to strengthen civil society and democratic processes in southern Africa.

NiZA's Human Rights and Peace Building Programme focuses on two themes: access to justice, and peace building.

Access to justice
People will only benefit from democracy if they are aware of their legal rights and if they are able to claim and enforce them through legal and government institutions.
NiZA's programme will support activities directed at both the protection and the promotion of human rights.

Peace building
The issue of peace building, national reconciliation and conflict prevention is topical almost everywhere in southern Africa. In some countries the rule of law is usually non-existent. Lawlessness reigns. Very often this results in uncontrolled and gross human rights violations.

The programme will support activities directed at the strengthening of civil society initiatives in the field of peace building and conflict transformation at community level.

Partner-driven
Within all NiZA programmes, the role of the partner organisations is important. There is close collaboration between NiZA and its partners at strategical level. NiZA and these partners are co-owners of the Human Rights Programme.

Expertise and capacity building
Most human rights organisations in this region have difficult access to information and require foreign funding.

In collaboration with the Dutch donor agency PSO, NiZA is able to provide personnel assistance to projects of partner organisations. This aid is aimed at the strengthening of the organisation as a whole, instead of training of individual employees.

Examples of this assistance are capacity building, training, exchanges and 'linking and learning'.

The objectives and activities of the programme are formulated in a so-called Sectorplan. In this plan projects and other activities are valued on the basis of their effect to the broader field (sector) of human rights organisations. The spin-off preferably reaches further than the partner organisations alone.

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