Senators raise concerns over unresolved human rights issues

Senators in the Social Affairs Committee have grilled members of the National Human Rights Commission on unresolved rights issues during the assessment of 2013/14 Human Rights Commission’s report. The report had earlier been criticised by the Lower House for failure to recommend permanent solutions on some human rights matters. According to Senator Gallican Niyongana, the chairperson of the senatorial Standing Committee on Social Affairs, Human Rights and Petitions, some issues of violence, drugs, homicide, compensation and expropriation, execution of judgements are yet to be resolved, hence the need for more specific measures. “What we need to establish is how we can resolve these issues once and for all, because they keep coming up in every annual report, we can’t afford to fail or fold our arms because we failed to find permanent solutions,” Niyongana said. “There is a need to mobilise every sector involved in finding ultimate answers to these persisting challenges, which is why the commission should be able to give us guidance.” Supporting his arguments a co-member of the committee, Narcisse Musabeyezu, cited an example of compensations and expropriations that always seem to crop up. “We need to look at the root cause of delayed compensations, now that we even have new laws on expropriation, the commission can find a way of engaging all institutions involved to clear backlogs of these cases,” he said. “The same applies to delays in executing judgments where the commission needs to coordinate seriously with local leaders to conclude the cases, otherwise justice delayed is justice denied.”

News

Senators raise concerns over unresolved human rights issues