The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs has developed a manual to help strengthen the National Human Rights Protection System (NHRPS) of countries were EU embassies are located. The conviction of the developers is that strengthening the NHRPS leads to further protection of human rights as well as to development. The guide is developed for embassies, but is a useful source of information for anyone interested in national human rights protection and/or human rights interventions of EU embassies.

The manual focuses on embassies’ step-by-step efforts, often beyond the public’s view, to strengthen the national infrastructure that is required to prevent human rights violations. This infrastructure (NHRPS) is the sum of laws, policies and institutions that enable international human rights obligations to be effectively implemented and guaranteed on the long term.

The manual contains three sections. First, it guides embassies on how and when to use the manual in their daily work. Secondly, it explains the concept of NHRPS, it addresses the question of how to set priorities and it briefly describes the most relevant actor for embassies to work with. The last section contains eight practical chapters related to different elements of the NHRPS.