HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE ADOPTS STRATEGIC APPROACH TO PUBLIC RELATIONS

The Human Rights Committee this afternoon adopted a strategic approach to public relations, including relations with the media. The goal of the strategic approach is to make the Committee’s work more widely known.

The recommendations made in the strategic approach (CCPR7C/94/CRP.2) include that members of the Committee should be encouraged to make public comments on the work of the Committee, except in relation to confidential matters, in their individual capacity, making clear that they did not speak on behalf of the Committee as a whole. The Chairman was in charge of public information and could ask for the assistance of the other members. The traditional final press conference should be retained and the press and other media should have access to the Committee’s concluding observations in relation to the countries examined at that session at least 24 hours prior to the final press conference. Web casting, pod casting and streaming of proceedings should be permitted at open meetings of the Committee. The media should be encouraged to cover by radio or film the public proceedings of the Committee.

During the discussion on the strategic approach, which was presented by Committee Expert Ivan Shearer, the Secretariat explained that any public meeting of the treaty body committees was open to any media. Other treaty monitoring bodies such as the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination had also asked for webcast coverage by the Department of Public Information. At the moment, there were not enough resources neither human nor financial to provide either filming or webcasting.

Also during the discussion this afternoon, the Committee discussed whether the identity of the country rapporteur should be made public or not before the examination of the report. The Committee decided to keep confidential the identity of country rapporteurs until after the publication of the concluding observations. This issue could be reviewed further by the inter-committee meeting.

At its next public meeting on Friday, 23 October at 10 a. m., the Committee will review the draft General Comment regarding the obligations of States Parties under the Optional Protocol.


For use of the information media; not an official record


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