By: Nyima Sillah
Chairman of National Human Right Commission, Emmanuel Daniel Joof has emphasized that NHRC is not a court system.
He made this revelation on Thursday at a press briefing held at the National Human Right Commission’s office in Kotu.
Mr Joof explained that sometimes National Human Right Commission is seen as a legal aid body but made it clear that NHRC is not a legal aid body and they are also not a court system.
“When a matter is in court, we do not deal with it. When the matter is substituted we can monitor it, if the matter is subject to appeal we advise them to go and appeal”, he said.
According to him, the NHRC received 77 individual complaints, 16 were admissible, 45 were inadmissible and another 16 pending to conclude in 2021.
Meanwhile he said: “unfortunately a lot of the complaints were inadmissible because some of the cases were purely commercial but people feel that NHRC body can deal with all these complaints. We have a large number of complaints which we refer to as inadmissible because they do not fall under the ambit of human violations”, he added.
“We have jurisdiction exclusion. People that complained that their rights were violated in the 1990’s don’t fall under the jurisdiction of the NHRC so we listen and enter the report,” he disclosed. Adding that most of big numbers of those complaints were referred to other specialized institutions to deal with them – like the office of the Ombudsman.”
“Our final report stands between the complaints received and the complaints held inadmissible and the report will be presented to the National Assembly”, he disclosed.
Also, he said the key mandate of the National Human Right Commission is to investigate human right violations, receive complaints, promote and protect human rights in the country.
