There is now a wide consensus on some of the criteria that make a national human rights institution effective. There are a number of actors, including Human Rights Watch, who have done evaluations of commissions across the continent and across the globe. We also have the Paris principles of the UN, to which national human rights institutions in various countries ascribe. There is an accreditation mechanism for national human rights institutions by which they can apply to become accredited if they're in line with core principles. Prime among them is independence. This is considered to be essential for the effective functioning of any national human rights institution. When I say that in our judgment at Human Rights Watch the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission does not measure up to these principles, I am not referring to Human Rights Watch's own criteria; these are generally accepted criteria.
I should add that the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, as far as I know, has still not applied for accreditation as a national human rights institution, which may reflect the fact that it has yet to meet many of these standards.
Independence, as I said, is a core principle. The ability to interact with civil society is a core principle. There are issues around the kind of mandate it needs to have. There is financial independence, and a whole set of things.
Basically, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, when you look at its performance over the last few years, measures up to none of these standards. For example, when you look at these two repressive laws—the civil society law and the anti-terrorism law—any serious national human rights institution faced with these pieces of legislation would have spoken out and said something about the concerns that these pieces of legislation present: violations of freedom of expression and association and assembly. But the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission has been silent.