First meeting of the National Coordination Mechanism on Human Rights
30 May 2014 News
The first meeting of the National Coordination Mechanism on Human Rights (NCMHR), chaired by the Minister of Foreign Affairs Kristian Vigenin, was held today at the MFA. The meeting was attended by representatives from various ministries, government agencies and departments, as well as NGOs.
In his opening statement, Minister Vigenin outlined the main functions and tasks of the newly established mechanism and emphasized the need to abide by the principles of a democratic state as regards respecting the rights and freedoms of man. He outlined the measures to be adopted in order to improve the domestic legislation and to intensify the foreign policy activities of the country in the field.
Minister Vigenin focused on the national priority topics that will be approved by the mechanism– protecting the rights of the child - continuing the process of deinstitutionalization of the system for protection of children; promoting gender equality - extending equality and women's empowerment; protecting the rights of migrants and refugees; protecting and caring for the rights of disabled and disadvantaged people; increasing the efficiency of Bulgarian legislation and the practices of national institutions in the field of human rights.
In the following discussion, the participants exchanged views on issues related to the different institutions, pointing out the need for revision of the EU Dublin Regulation concerning the acceptance and the rights of refugees.
The issue of the differences between the Bulgarian legislation and international instruments to which Bulgaria is a party, especially related to the right to strike of certain categories of workers, including employees in railways and army, was also discussed. In this regard, Minister Kristian Vigenin proposed the creation of an interdepartmental working group composed of representatives of the Ministries of Labour and Social Policy, Justice, Transport and Information Technology, Defence, and Foreign Affairs, which will propose a mechanism and concrete solutions to surmount these differences in the shortest period of time.
The NCMHR members approved the first national report on the implementation of the commitments of the Republic of Bulgaria to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The participants identified concrete activities of Bulgaria in preparing the comments on the Third Opinion of the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of the Council of Europe. They discussed the procedure for the nomination of Bulgarian candidates in electoral authorities on human rights within the UN system, the Council of Europe and the OSCE. It was decided to create an interdepartmental working group to prepare a legal mechanism for the payment of compensation for violations of rights by the state in cases of individual complaints upheld to the supervisory authorities on the universal multilateral treaties on human rights, from the UN system.
The next meeting of NCMHR will be held at the end of 2014.