Protecting the protectors: redefining immunity protections for National Human Rights Institutions

National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) established pursuant to the United Nations Paris Principles play a crucial role in protecting human rights at the domestic level, but they face significant risks of interference and obstruction when carrying out their sensitive functions. International standards recommend that NHRIs’ enabling legislation includes functional immunity provisions to protect them from these risks to their independence and effectiveness. However, presenting the results of the first comprehensive analysis of the functional immunity protections for NHRIs across 111 countries, this article finds that 40% of NHRI laws lacked any such protection provisions, while the remaining provisions were of questionable quality. To protect NHRIs from interference and obstruction, this article proposes a redefinition and strengthening of NHRI functional immunity provisions based on an analysis of existing protection provisions, international recommendations, and comparable immunity protections for judges and parliamentarians. It proposes a new framework for functional immunity that aims to grant NHRI leadership and staff the necessary level of protection against interference and obstruction, which also has wider relevance for other similar domestic bodies.