NHRC India's Downgrade in Geneva Will be a Humiliation for World's Largest Democracy

It is a measure of the institution's irrelevance when no single parliamentarian has been concerned to ask why NHRC’s status is about to be downgraded in Geneva. The Global Association of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI), a membership body of 118 human rights institutions from across the globe, periodically reviews whether each meets the gold standard for autonomy, pluralism and effectiveness enumerated in the Paris Principles. India does not. 

It does not because of police officers being involved in NHRCI’s investigations, lack of diversity, opaque selection and appointment of its members, restricted appointment of the secretary general, lack of cooperation with other human rights bodies and ineffectiveness in addressing human rights issues. Between 2011 and 2025, at every session to review its compliance with the Paris Principles, the accreditation sub-committee has looked askance at the Commission’s composition and working and pressed it to reform and repair itself, but to no avail. 

Twice – once in 2023 and then in 2024 – the sub-committee of accreditation has deferred NHRC’s status before ultimately recommending its downgrading from its A status to B.

The deferral is a grace and favour mechanism, as well as a shot across the bows of an errant member. It indicates that there is much that does not reach the minimum standard in the Paris Principles as well as provides breathing space for repair. Finally, two years after seeing no changes, the sub-committee has recommended India’s NHRC be downgraded. 

The process of downgrading began during the chairpersonship of Justice Arun Mishra, was deferred twice in 2023 and 2024, through the tenure of Justice Mishra and has culminated in a final recommendation to downgrade 10 months into the tenure of its present chairperson, Justice V. Ramasubramaniam. 

Before finalisation, the sub-committee’s recommendation for downgrading allows for an appeal/ review at the GANHRI bureau. This is set to come up in Geneva in November 2025. The bureau will be expected to honestly assess what, if anything, has improved at the NHRC in the 10 months of the current chairperson’s tenure. 

Presently, the board is made up of 15 countries – Morocco, Northern Ireland, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Bolivia, Guatemala, Paraguay, Jordan, Pakistan, Australia, India, Denmark, Georgia and Germany. It is for India – which is an influential member of the GANHRI bureau and has many levers available to it/bargaining chips to hand – to show evidence that it has gone a significant way to repairing the persistent shortfalls of past years. 

On October 16, 2025 a day before NHRC’s 32nd foundation day, the NHRC has updated its website and details regards to the accreditation has been modified stating:

“Ever since its establishment in the year 1993, NHRC was consistently accorded 'A' status in the process of accreditation by GANHRI. Though the accreditation was deferred in the year 2016, NHRC retained its 'A' status in 2017.

"But again, the accreditation was deferred in 2023 and 2024 and a review was undertaken in the 45th Session of the Sub-Committee held in Geneva during March 13-21, 2025. After review, the Sub-Committee has recommended the down-gradation of NHRC's status to 'B,' on grounds, which in the opinion of NHRC, are wholly unjustifiable, unreasonable, unsustainable and arbitrary.

"Therefore, NHRC has challenged the said recommendation in terms of Article 12.1 of the GANHRI Statute. As a result, the recommendation to downgrade, will not take effect for a period of one year till March 2026 and hence in terms of Article 18.1 of the GANHRI Statute, NHRC retains its 'A' status till the 47th Session to be held in March 2026. In the meantime, the GANHRI Bureau will examine the challenge made by NHRC to see if there is continued conformity with the Paris Principles.”

Whatever may be the outcome of the assessment, human rights defenders across the country continue to be skeptical of the NHRC’s capacity and commitment to upholding its mandate without equivocation.

Also read: How the NHRC Failed to Protect G.N. Saibaba

The NHRC, like all the other human rights institutions across the country, continues to be under-resourced in terms of staff. Worse, it remains incompletely constituted out of studied neglect. The post of two commissioners – a retired judge of the Supreme Court and a civil society representative have lain vacant for the past 1,483 days and 607 days, respectively. 

Furthermore, over the years, there has been widespread concern over the curbing of dissent, including the arrest of protestors and long-term incarceration of those perceived as opponents to the powerful. The NHRC has largely remained uninvolved, allowing its silence to appear as complicity. It has not voiced its opinion on persistent patterns of abuse of authority, institutional bias, or police excesses and violence, nor has it been visibly engaged in efforts to curb such practices. 

Despite having the mandate to intervene in cases of arbitrary detention and advocate for the protection of human rights, the commission has failed to take effective action or conduct visits to detention facilities. It has also not pursued the enactment of anti-torture legislation, once a cause it strongly supported, nor has it acted upon the Universal Periodic Review recommendations related to India.

A case in point

2025 is the 10th anniversary of the killing of 20 Tamils in the Seshachalam forest near Chittoor of Andhra Pradesh. The allegation is that the Red Sanders Special Task Force kidnapped and tortured their victims at their Chittoor headquarters and then took them to the Seshachalam forest in the middle of the night and shot them dead. 

In April 2015, the commission under Justice K.G. Balakrishnan took on the case suo moto and even passed final orders on May 28, 2015. However, because the commission had asked the chief secretary and the director general of police of Andhra Pradesh to appear before it on June 9, 2015, the Andhra Pradesh government had hastily moved the high court and obtained a stay of the NHRC’s recommendations on June 5, 2015.

Thereafter, Justice V. Ramasubramanian joined the Andhra high court in 2016. Since then, it has been 10 long years, but the commission has chosen not to press for the vacation of the stay of its order till date and been pressed by the All India Network of NGOs and Individuals Working with National and State Human Rights Institutions (AiNNI) to take up the matter.

If the November downgrade is confirmed, India will keep company with such other human rights institutions as those in Algeria, Azerbaijan, Congo, Bangladesh, Libya, Oman, Venezuela, Türkiye and others. For a country of India’s size, international influence, and particularly its status as the world’s largest democracy, this is a humiliation and a slap in the face. 

Worse, it is a recognition that the governance of the country neither prioritises the observation of its own fundamental rights obligations nor can the NHRC present itself as a model for the 170 similar monitoring institutions that dot the country for ‘better protection of human rights’. 

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