지방자치단체 내 인권침해 조사·구제 기능에 관한 소고

Abstract

Since 2010, discussions on the institutionalization of human rights in local government have gained momentum, and there has been an increasing interest in the role of human rights protection organizations within local government. One function of human rights organizations is the role of human rights protection supervisors, responsible for investigating and taking actions on human rights violations. This role can be considered a main requirement of human rights protection organizations. When investigating the case of human rights violations and taking actions, human rights protection organizations should follow the constitutional principles like due process of law. Also, human rights protection organizations should be in harmony with administrative laws and regulations. In practice, it is difficult to say that regulations related to investigation and action procedures for human rights violations have been established. Additionally, there are limitations to the investigation process due to the application of the “Administrative Investigation Basic Act”. Moreover, there is an issue of ensuring the effectiveness of taking actions. Also, from the perspective of administrative operation, there are challenges in establishing the role of human rights protection organization within local government. For example, it is difficult to set the scope of investigation of human rights violations. Moreover, human rights protection organizations should be coordinated with other system such as ombudsman or internal audit and the investigation should be done at once not multiple times, so alternatives are required, such as joint investigation. In this situation, as a more fundamental solution, there is a need to establish the “Basic Act on Human Rights Policy”. It will be helpful to provide a sufficient legal basis for local governments to engage in human rights violation investigations and actions.