The New Zealand Human Rights Commission is developing a new 'community engagement' policy and asked people if they would like to be involved. I said yes and attended their consultation meeting along with about 15-20 others. The main thing a raised in the meeting was that the Commission needs to be accountable to the community. This is because I have complained to the Commission about it's treatment of men's human rights issue before and their response was essentially, "We are not going to change what we are doing".

The Commission's engagement policy is based on a 'human rights based approach', which is a frame work for implementing human rights principles. I've previously made a video about how this relates to men's rights.

I also followed up with a written response to the meeting. Here is the full thing as a PDF

The main points I make are: that if the commission is going to focus on marginalised groups, it needs to be transparent and accountable in how it determines those groups.

Second, if the commission wants to reduce the barriers to engagement then the commission needs to address the barriers for men and MRAs to engagement with the commission. For example, not having a Men's rights commissioner while having a women's rights commissioner, and to stop saying things that would turn men off.

Thirdly, if the commission wants to build and maintain relationships with the community, it needs to address the loss of trust with parts of the community, like MRAs (and TERFs).

Anyway, I'm not sure how much of this they will take on board, but I am going to keep reminding them of their obligations to men and boys anyhow.