Authors: Roxani Fragkou

Title: National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs). Independence and Accountability: two sides of the same coin.

Abstract

The present scientific study, part of a post-doctoral research, aspires, by presenting the National Human Rights Institutions’ (NHRIs) role and their double mission to promote and protect human rights, to shed light on one of the most controversial issues with regard to their operation: their independence, mainly from government, through ensuring their accountability to the competent public authorities. The main idea of the proposed study focuses of the two sides of the same coin: independence and accountability of NHRIs, insofar as independence without accountability cannot be effective. Therefore, the present paper attempts to analyse the unique and inherently contradictory position of NHRIs, which, although founded and financed by the State, ought to remain independent from it by being accountable not only to the State but also to Civil society.

The added value of the proposed paper, in addition to contributing to shaping the conceptual framework of the operation and the role played by NHRIs in implementing human rights, consists in the development of Greek theory and bibliography in a field which has been unexplored by Greek scholars of Human Rights Law.