Regional Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)

In 2022, the Luxembourg Development Cooperation continued to support the regional office (RO) of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) for East Africa. The OHCHR East Africa Regional Office (EARO) is particularly active in the field of human rights in Djibouti, Ethiopia and Tanzania, three countries where activities have been carried out thanks to funding from Luxembourg.

Luxembourg’s contributions have enabled the EARO to respond to requests for technical assistance from Ethiopia and Djibouti in the field of human rights and inclusive governance. This support has also translated Luxembourg’s commitments at the level of the Human Rights Council in Geneva into action on the ground.

In early November 2022, representatives of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and of the Ethiopian central government decreed a permanent ceasefire. In the post-conflict context, the EARO was formally invited by the Ethiopian authorities to provide technical support to the transitional justice process and to deploy observers in the north of the country to prevent the recurrence of human rights violations. Similarly, the Djiboutian authorities have asked the EARO to provide technical support in advance of the country’s next Universal Periodic Review (UPR).

In Myanmar, the OHCHR continued to monitor the human rights situation. In 2022, many people continued to flee the country to escape military violence, avoid arrest and seek fresh personal and professional opportunities. According to the OHCHR, an additional 1.2 million people have been internally displaced and more than 70 000 have left the country, joining over a million others, including most of the country’s Rohingya Muslim population.

One year after the coup, the OHCHR has continued to guide and support human rights defenders, legal aid providers, journalists and other victims of human rights abuses and violations, including through resettlement and emergency grants.

In 2022, the OHCHR’s technical cooperation fund (VFTC) supported technical cooperation work for country offices in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania, Mexico and Palestine.

In order to support its monitoring and reporting activities on human rights, the OHCHR has finalised a comprehensive map of the parties to the conflict in Burkina Faso to facilitate identification of those responsible for human rights violations and abuses, while facilitating the Office’s engagement with national actors, and in particular the security forces.

Following the coup d’état in September 2022, the OHCHR established a cooperation framework with the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights to monitor, report and follow up on allegations of human rights violations by the security forces and their civilian auxiliaries.