The League of Arab States has established a special department for human rights, in view of the importance of protecting and promoting human rights of the Arab citizen in its comprehensive and integrated concept, in accordance with principles of the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the provisions of the International Covenants on Civil, Political, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Arab Charter on Human Rights and the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam.
The Department acts as the Technical Secretariat of the Permanent Arab Committee for Human Rights. It organizes its meetings and prepares their draft agenda, reports and recommendations to be submitted to the Council of the League of Arab States, and follows up on implementation of those recommendations. The Department also follows human rights issues on the Arab, regional and international levels. Within the framework of the League's openness onto civil society organizations, ammendments have been made to the rules, standards and procedures for granting observer status in the Arab Permanent Committee for Human Rights to include all Arab national and regional non-governmental organizations, national Human Rights institutions and intergovernmental Human Rights organizations.
