The government of Kenya has established an intergovernmental committee on human rights that will be tasked to advise the government on measures necessary to comply with its international and regional human rights obligations and specifically to co-ordinate and prepare reports to and engage with international and regional human rights mechanisms (including treaty bodies, the universal periodic review and special procedures), and to co-ordinate and track national follow-up and implementation of the treaty obligations and the recommendations emanating from these mechanisms.

In a gazette notice dated 29 March 2019, the committee will be chaired by the Attorney General and its functions will be:

• To organize and facilitate the preparation of State periodic reports to various international and regional human rights mechanisms under the guidance of lead ministries in charge of reporting on various international and regional human rights treaties;
• To prepare responses to communications, visits from United Nations Special procedures and follow-up questions and recommendations/decisions received from international and regional human rights mechanisms;
• To co-ordinate data collection and information gathering from Government entities, Parliament and the Judiciary for reporting on and following up recommendations and decisions to facilitate implementation by line ministries;
• To organize and co-ordinate stakeholders’ consultative meetings to raise awareness on the importance of the state reporting under international human rights instruments to which it is a Party;
• To track, capture and cluster recommendations and decisions from international and regional human rights mechanisms, identify government agencies for implementation; develop follow-up plans, with time frames, and manage information regarding implementation;
• To co-ordinate the periodic review of the common core document on the general information on Kenya and submit the document to various treaty monitoring bodies;
• Prepare country position papers on human rights issues raised in international and regional forums;
• To consider and advise on ratification of regional and international human rights treaties, and protocals;
• To support and participate in treaty specific standards training in conformity with the relevant treaty body’s guidelines; and
• To prepare annual reports on the status of compliance on reporting on human rights treaties to the Cabinet Secretary for the time being responsible for matters relating to human rights and administration of justice.

To read more about the committee, download the gazette notice here: https://hrdcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Vol.CXXI-No_.37_.pdf