HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE DISCUSSES PROGRESS REPORT BY RAPPORTEUR ON FOLLOW-UP TO INDIVIDUAL COMMUNICATIONS

The Human Rights Committee this morning heard a progress report by Krister Thelin, the Rapporteur on follow-up to individual communications who elaborated the status of consideration of individual communications against Algeria, Iceland, the Philippines, Cameroon, Kyrgyzstan, Russian Federation, Canada, Nepal, Serbia, Australia, Azerbaijan and Greece. The Committee also heard a briefing on strengthening the treaty bodies.

Mr. Thelin said that they were trying a new concept for the progress report, which instead of just listing what had transpired since the last annual report, would now categorize follow-up on the individual communications under five categories ranging from case closed to no response from the State party concerned. In the past, it seemed that the report reflected an endless ongoing dialogue, which was not satisfactory for the author of the communication, the State party or the Committee.

In the discussion, a Committee Expert commended the Rapporteur for his initiative to make the follow-up more systematic, transparent and visible. However, he was worried about the categories that the Rapporteur had listed; if the conclusion to a case was unsatisfactory, it could not be called a closed case, maybe they could call it a frozen case. Another Expert said that even if a State party was not cooperating, the obligations of the State party remained, and the longer the wait for reparations, the graver the situation was. Therefore, he agreed that cases should not be called closed. They needed to find some way to highlight the non-cooperation of some States parties. Another Expert said maybe the categories needed some fine tuning, but supported the initiative of the Rapporteur to create the new categories.

Zonke Zanele Majodina, the Chairperson of the Committee, thanked the Rapporteur for this novel way of looking at follow-up, but in view of the comments made during the discussion, they obviously needed to refine this important initiative. She suggested that they find time in the next session to have a full discussion on the categories.

Mr. Thelin, in concluding remarks, said he was encouraged by the comments made; the only question was how to label the categories. If the “case closed” category sent out the wrong signal and encouraged non-complying States parties, they could maybe call it “suspension of the follow-up procedure”. He would be perfectly happy to edit this. The idea of categorization was to put pressure on the States parties to know that they had not been forgotten. This would be an important tool that they would start to implement in March, and would be fully implanted in the next annual report.

Mr. Thelin also informed the Committee about an informal meeting that some members of the Committee held last weekend with the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, the Committee against Torture and the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities concerning the communications or complaints procedure. Among other issues, they discussed their common engagement and the need to fortify the procedure. Mr. Thelin pointed out that the Human Rights Committee presently had around 300 pending communications, the Committee against Torture had around 100 individual complaints and other committees had only around 20 complaints. There were proposals to create a joint working group on communications, or even to have a common rapporteur for all communications, which some were not happy about. It was agreed that these matters needed to be pursued to see how they could be used to strengthen the treaty bodies. They agreed that they needed to highlight communications and that they also needed a more modern database.

The Committee also heard a briefing about strengthening the treaty bodies from Ibrahim Salama, Director of the Human Rights Treaties Division of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. He said the High Commissioner recently had three meetings with Member States in New York to discuss, among others, the issue of treaty bodies. A number of general trends had been noted, including that many Member States felt that their role in this process was limited, and there were suggestions for establishing a formal open-ended working group to discuss treaty body issues. More involvement from the Member States would be needed. Two more consultations would be held on this subject in Geneva at the end of January and in March or April in New York. These were two opportunities to involve the Member States more in the process, and while States parties still had critical thoughts, they were expressed more in a healthy and constructive way. He hoped that this came from their realization of the complexity of the issues and the effect of sharing more information with States. The unsustainability of the system was now on the agenda of Member States and they realized that additional recourses were needed.

Paulo David, Chief of the Capacity Building and Harmonization Section of the Human Rights Treaties Division of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that their meetings in New York had resulted in putting the treaty bodies higher up on the agenda of the Member States. They now understood that only one third of States parties reported to the treaty bodies on time, and even with that, the system was not well funded. What would happen if there was more compliance by States? Member States had not been aware of the lacunas and now they were with the raising of the profile of the treaty bodies. OHCHR hoped to retain the momentum. There had been acknowledgement of the lack of resources. However, they also found confirmation that the financial crisis was a serious one, and Member States were cutting jobs in their own administrations. This had been a good reality check. Of course they had received different views from different Member States, but OHCHR would continue to have meetings with regional groups to better inform them about the treaty bodies and their issues. They had also discussed the need for more meeting time for the new committees. The Dublin 2 meeting would be held at the end of next week with all the Chairs of the treaty bodies reporting.

Questions raised by Committee Experts concerned the list of issues prior to reports which had not been received as positively as it could have been by States, the lack of resources and the perceived belief that the Human Rights Council was given priority, for example in translating documents, while treaty bodies were not, and the need for more human and financial resources. Experts stressed that while the work of the Human Rights Council was important, the work of the treaty bodies was also very important.

The next public meeting of the Committee will be on Friday, 4 November, when it will issue its concluding observations and recommendations on the reports of Iran, Jamaica, Kuwait and Norway that it reviewed during the session before closing the session.


For use of the information media; not an official record

CT11/025E