국가인권위원회 10년, 인권정책분야를 평가한다

초록

Ten years has passed since the National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) was established. After the period of time has passed, it is timely and necessary to analyze the past activities of the NHRCK so that it finds its place of human rights defender. This research is conducted to evaluate the function of human rights policy recommendation, which is one of the two major functions of the NHRCK along with the remedy to human rights violations. The NHRCK has made about 270 human rights policy recommendations for the last ten years, so it is essential to adopt diachronic methodology in evaluating the recommendations. For the utmost, the effectiveness of the recommendations is one element to analyze. This relates with the acceptance rate of the recommendations by the relevant authorities, which notably depends on the ruling power of the government. Specifically, the acceptance rate reached over 70% during the presidencies of Kim Dae- Jung and Roh Mu-Hyun, whereas it has dropped to below 30% under Lee Myung-Bak’s administration. The decline of the acceptance rate manifestly reveals the ignorance of the NHRCK by the government since Lee Myung- Bak assumed the office in 2008. The acceptance rate of the human rights policy recommendations is clearly related to the change in the regimes. One cannot deny, however, that the recommendations of the NHRCK have significant impacts upon other governmental authorities. Even though the NHRCK has staggered under the current administration, the NHRCK has undoubtedly influenced on the Ministry of Justice, the Prosecutors’ Office, and the police in protecting and promoting human rights for the past decade. It is the change in the contents of recommendations one can observe in the diachronic analysis of the human rights policy recommendations made by the NHRCK for the past ten years. In the early years, the policy recommendations in the civil and political rights are noticeable, whereas more emphasis begun to be placed on the economic, social and cultural rights since 2005 and structural approach was adopted for improvements in human rights as seen in the Recommendation for National Plan of Action for Human Rights. However, the human rights of the North Korea have recently risen as the priority of the NHRCK, leading to a fierce controversy, and it is disputed in terms of effectiveness. This paper also points out that the limited expertise and leadership weaken the effectiveness of policy recommendations, and explores the alternatives to these problems. The lack of expertise of the human rights commissioners and the secretariat adds up to the lack of expertise and leadership in the government of the NHRCK. To address the problem, the appointment procedure of the commissioners must be developed so as to the human rights sensitivity and expertise of the commissioners are taken into consideration, while the secretariat should establish a training institute and endeavor to educate the staff. In the meantime, the civil society plays a role of a reservoir to supplement the insufficient expertise of the NHRCK and to strengthen the will of the government to implement the recommendations by ensuring external support for recommendations by the NHRCK.

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