Human rights monitoring is difficult, dangerous and thankless - which is probably why it's so hard to find qualified people to carry it out. Working conditions are treacherous, objectives often unclear and, if things go wrong, field staff are usually first to be blamed.
In the caes of Rwanda, a young, largely inexperienced group of monitors was cited as one of the main reasons why the United Nations Human Rights Field Operation (HRFOR) proved to be ineffective.
But, while the mission has been a blow to human rights monitoring, not least because of the murder of five observers in February 1997, it has acted as a spur to improving selection and training of field staff.
Karen Kenny, co-director of the Dublin-based International Human Rights Trust, says that the Rwandan experience has caused many agencies to acknowledge the need for effective human rights training.
"There is an increasing degree of openness towards such training," she says. "But it's still being done very much in an ad hoc fashion. There is no central quality control.
"It's not adequate just to spend a few hours reading international declarations on human rights. These documents need to be translated into field situations. You must know what to do if you see a police officer beating someone up? With whom do you share information which you get in confidence?"
Knowing how to react competently is crucial to guaranteeing the safety of monitors, she says. "The slightest wrong word to the wrong person could get you or someone else killed."
A Human Rights Watch report on Rwanda underlined this point when it noted that "UN monitors were rushed to the country without proper training", adding that "an inexperienced monitor's report to prison authorities about prisoners' statements of torture apparently resulted in the punishment of some prisoners through beating by prison authorities."
However, Ms Kenny says, it is not just human rights observers who need to be conscious of such issues. "People delivering aid should be aware of violations such as structural discrimination against women so that they do not reinforce human rights violations unknowingly. In these days of professionalism, acting unknowingly is not good enough. Every agency and field worker must understand the implications of their work in human rights terms."
To this end, the International Human Rights Trust has been liaising with Irish aid agencies, promoting the concept of two-way learning so that all human rights work includes a development perspective and development work a human rights perspective.
"There is a varying degree of openness to human rights training among aid agencies in Ireland," says Ms Kenny, an Irish human rights lawyer. "It should be the norm but at the moment it is not the norm."
Both aid workers and human rights observers get the same training from the Irish overseas personnel agency, APSO. Its orientation course does not include a module on human rights. However, a spokeswoman said "it comes up informally in other modules. There has been a growing awareness among agencies of human rights issues but to date there has not been a demand for a human rights course."
If aid agencies are not pushing for improved training, however, aid workers themselves are.
Comhlamh, the agency for returned development workers, has organised a joint workshop, planned for next month, bringing together various agencies to examine a debriefing model designed by the International Human Rights Trust.
Ms Kenny says the establishment of a model which would standardise the way in which information is relayed back would be a welcome first step towards effective human rights training.
"It's essential above all," she says, "that agencies apply the lessons which they have learned and ensure their experience is not lost for the future."