OHCHR in Guinea-Bissau

Profile

The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has been present in Guinea-Bissau since 1999 when UNOGBIS was established. The Senior Human Rights Adviser was deployed in August 2021 following the exit of the UN mission in December 2020. The SHRA’s mandate focuses on strengthening the capacity of the United Nations Country Team in Guinea-Bissau to integrate human rights in their programs and policies and on assisting national actors to comply with human rights obligations under international law.

Achievements

• Advocacy and awareness-raising through public reporting, including the 2017 UNIOGBIS-OHCHR joint report on the right to health and the 2019 UNIOGBIS report on the right to political and public participation rights.
• A strategic partnership with the Commission of Human Rights of the Ministry of Justice, resulting in its commitment to elaborate a National Plan on Human Rights and some of the reports overdue to United Nations' human rights treaty bodies.
• A strong partnership with the Institute of Education Development of the Ministry of Education, resulting in the development of pedagogical tools for the use of children and educators to incorporate human rights in primary education in the context of the curricular reform.
• Systematic human rights monitoring and assessments to promote accountability and deter further human rights violations. Regular advocacy from January 2018 to December 2019 resulted in the release of 220 detainees in prolonged/arbitrary detention and the referral of further 78 case files of detainees in prolonged detention to the Office of the Prosecutor General to decide on pre-trial detention. 
• Effective technical assistance to national authorities, civil society and the United Nations Country Team in the elaboration of their submissions to the UPR cycles in 2010, 2015 and 2019. Coordination and integration of Human Rights in the work of the United Nations, through the UN Working Group on Human Rights. Terms of reference.
• A partnership with Electoral bodies to undertake capacity building initiatives on Human Rights in the context of elections, resulting in a country-wide human rights raising awareness campaign and the publication of a guide on Human Rights and Elections.
• Four-year of human rights training cycles for the armed forces and for judicial actors, community outreach campaigns and the publication of various sensitization tools, including to build support for the establishment of a National Human Rights Institution in compliance with the Paris Principles. See the publications.
• Building national capacities to mainstream human rights into strategic planning processes and to uphold the principle of "leaving no one behind", which underpins the Agenda 2030 and the SDGs  by prioritizing the elimination of discrimination and the reduction of inequalities, through training initiatives for civil servants and civil society on Human Rights Indicators and a Human Rights-Based Approach to Data. Additional information on Human Rights and the SDGs.