“Articles 6 and 13 of Decree 2007-1137 state that members are appointed for a period of three years and their tenure is renewable, except for the case of the President and the two Deputies, whose terms can only be renewed once. These provisions leave open the possibility of unlimited tenure of members of the Commission. The CNCDH reported that the Independent Advisory Committee has issued an opinion that the renewal of mandates of Commission members should be limited to four terms, and that in practice, members hold the position for an average of two and half mandates (6-8 years).

The SCA is of the view that it would be preferable for the term of office to be limited to a specific reasonable number of re-appointment. As a proven practice, the SCA encourages a term of between 3- and 7-years renewable once.

The SCA recommends that the CNCDH advocates for amendments to its enabling legislation to provide for limits in the term of office and possibility of reappointments.

The SCA refers to Paris Principle B.3 and to its General Observation 2.2 on ‘Full-time members of an NHRI’.”