The United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) first addressed the issue of national human rights institutions in 1946 and invited member states to consider “the desirability of establishing information groups or local human rights committees within their respective countries to collaborate with them in furthering the work of the Commission on Human Rights.”
In 1960, ECOSOC, in a resolution which recognized the unique role national institutions could play in the protection and promotion of human rights, “invited Governments to encourage the formation and continuation of such bodies as well as to communicate their ideas and information on the subject to the Secretary-General” (ECOSOC resolution 772 B (XXX), reported in OHCHR Fact Sheet No.19, National Institutions for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights).
In 1978, the Commission on Human Rights organized a seminar which resulted in draft guidelines for the structure and functioning of national human rights institutions. The Commission on Human Rights and then the General Assembly endorsed the guidelines. The General Assembly invited States to take appropriate steps to establish these institutions where they did not already exist, and requested the Secretary-General to submit a detailed report on NHRIs.
In 1991, the first International Workshop on National Institutions for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights took place in Paris. According to the OHCHR’s Professional Training Series No. 4 (Rev.1) “A comprehensive series of recommendations on the role, composition, status and functions of national human rights institutions, known today as the Paris Principles, were a key outcome of the workshop. These recommendations were endorsed by the Commission on Human Rights in March 1992.”
The Paris Principles were adopted without vote in a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly on 20 December 1993.