United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)

The Office 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. The fund­ing helps to fur­ther pro­mote and pro­tect human rights in the region and assists the Office in pur­su­ing its role as a trust­ed part­ner on human rights issues with the African Union and its coun­ter­parts in the Horn of Africa and East Africa. In addi­tion to emerg­ing pri­or­i­ties linked to the rel­e­vant nation­al con­texts (tran­si­tion­al jus­tice in Ethiopia, the Uni­ver­sal Peri­od­ic Review in Dji­bouti and the con­sol­i­da­tion of civ­il rights in Tan­za­nia), the office is focus­ing in par­tic­u­lar on gen­der equal­i­ty and the pro­mo­tion of women’s rights.

In the Occu­pied Pales­tin­ian Ter­ri­to­ries (OPT), Lux­em­bourg pro­vid­ed EUR400,000 in sup­port to the UNHCR Office, whose man­date is to pro­mote and pro­tect all human rights and fun­da­men­tal free­doms in the OPT. That man­date includes mon­i­tor­ing and report­ing, tech­ni­cal assis­tance and capac­i­ty build­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly fol­low­ing Palestine’s rat­i­fi­ca­tion of sev­en of the core UN human rights treaties in 2014.

At the end of 2023, Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion allo­cat­ed an addi­tion­al con­tri­bu­tion of EUR1 mil­lion to the Unit­ed Nations Vol­un­tary Fund for Tech­ni­cal Coop­er­a­tion in the Field of Human Rights. The Fund, financed through vol­un­tary con­tri­bu­tions, pro­vides tech­ni­cal assis­tance in the field of human rights, at the request of devel­op­ing coun­tries, and sup­ports nation­al efforts to put in place human rights pro­tec­tion frame­works, by sup­port­ing the cre­ation of strong legal frame­works, nation­al human rights insti­tu­tions, the strength­en­ing of inde­pen­dent judi­cial sys­tems, and vibrant civ­il soci­ety organisations.

Final­ly, in 2023 Lux­em­bourg con­tin­ued to sup­port OHCHR activ­i­ties to mon­i­tor, pro­mote and pro­tect human rights in Myan­mar and Rwanda.