Asia
Progress through partnership with Asia
New Zealand works closely with our Asian partners to promote capacity-building of human rights mechanisms and institutions. For example:
- providing funding support to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission
- strengthening Timor-Leste’s human rights capacity in developing and implementing programmes by funding the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for a joint project with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and Timor-Leste’s national human rights institution, the Provedoria of Human Rights and Justice
- provide practical human rights and justice system information to members of remote communities for example, funding a Timorese Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), the Judicial System Monitoring Programme
- working with the Indonesian Agency for Human Rights Research and Development to develop and run a two-year human rights training programme for researchers from this agency, along with participants from local governments, universities, Non Government Organisations (NGOs), and the Indonesian National Police and Armed Forces
- funding a New Zealand Police scoping study on delivering community policing training in Indonesia’s West Papua and Papua Provinces
- funding the work of the Indonesian National Commission for Prevention of Violence Against Women, and human rights advocacy work by seven Indonesian NGOs
- supporting the work of the Commission on Human Rights for the Philippines in cooperation with the National Commission for Indigenous Peoples of the Philippines and the New Zealand Human Rights Commission to strengthen its ability to promote and protect the human rights of indigenous peoples.
Across the Asia-Pacific region, New Zealand’s Agency for International Development (NZAID) also provides funding to the:
- Asia-Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions which supports the development of national and NGO human rights institutions
- Diplomacy Training Programme, affiliated with University of New South Wales, which provides human rights advocacy training to approximately 100 civil society advocates and human rights defenders from developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region a year.
