HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE DISCUSSES WORKING METHODS

The Human Rights Committee this afternoon discussed its working methods in relation to State party reports, the length of time to be allocated to the oral presentation of such reports and the translations of the written replies to the list of issues. They also discussed how best to deal with non-reporting States and how to best follow-up on remedies for individual communications.

During the discussion Committee members said it was a good practice to encourage States parties to reply orally to provide more detailed information rather than just providing written replies that constituted a rough outline or table of contents. A Committee member agreed that it was important to exercise good time management, but time management should not become a source of discrimination or be used to limit the speaking time of Committee members or States parties. The written responses of States should also be translated into all the languages of the Committee to allow all members to be able to contribute and participate in the dialogue with the States presenting their reports.

The Chairperson said that they needed to resolve the issue of translations and perhaps they needed to go back to the previous procedure of asking States parties to reply in detail to the list of issues, but within limits. States parties often submitted their replies very close to the presentation of their report and translation services could not translate everything in time. So perhaps it was best for the States to provide the bulk of their information orally when they presented their report since everyone had access to interpretation services at that point. Many Committee members agreed with the idea of returning to the previous procedure, and one Committee member pointed out that often when documents were submitted in English there was not even an effort to translate them, whereas other languages were translated into English.

Someone else suggested that perhaps they could look at what was decided at the Inter-Committee Meeting in terms of limiting the presentation time of States parties in an effort to harmonize the work of the treaty bodies. During the last Inter-Committee Meeting it was recommended that treaty bodies limit opening statements of States parties to 30 minutes to maximize the time available for the dialogue with the Committee. Another person said they should consider States parties on a case-by-case basis and not have hard and fast rules concerning how long countries could speak. Some countries would require more time than others for their opening statements and the Chairperson should be free to limit or accommodate time as she saw fit.

Another speaker pointed out that this was an old problem and related to the fact that they did not have the resources they were entitled to in order to do their work. What seemed to be at issue was the question of which documents were mandated, and thus required to be translated, and which ones were not. In the meantime, would it be possible for the Secretariat to use “Google translate” to make unofficial translations of some documents when translation services were unable to translate them?

The Committee then turned to how best to deal with non-reporting States parties and whether to examine the situation of human rights in non-reporting States in open sessions. One Committee member said that the Committee should alert a State well in advance that it would be examined in the absence of a report in an open session; this might provide some incentive for non-reporting States to actually comply with their treaty obligations because few States would want to be reviewed in a public session without being present and engaging in a dialogue with the Committee. Non-reporting was a serious problem and the essence of international treaties was not only the obligation to respect human rights, but also being accountable to the international community for living up to these obligations and submitting to public scrutiny about their implementation of the provisions of treaties. Another Committee member said that holding these sessions in public might not lead to a dialogue with non-reporting States parties. There was no indication that this would coerce them to engage with the Committee.

Another Committee Expert said that perhaps they should continue to review non-reporting States in private sessions, but what they should change was the concluding observations portion of the process and how they made these results known to the States and the public. They should also look at the results of States that had been examined in private and this would give them a better idea of how effective this process was. Someone else suggested that it did a great disservice to the non-governmental organizations and other stakeholders who had a vested interest in the review of non-reporting States parties when they held these meetings in private.

Regarding the follow-up to views, the Committee discussed remedies for rights violations. One Committee member said that it was important to ensure that the remedies outlined for individual communications should be concrete and measurable so that the Committee could monitor their implementation. They also needed to be more consistent because in certain cases like torture and deportation the Committee had issued various remedies for the same types of rights violations. They also needed to decide how detailed they would be when suggesting remedies. The four different areas that needed to be addressed were consistency, precision, the extent to which they had a constitutional function and whether they should be changing society through their remedies, and the use of other sources as well such as other treaty bodies.

The next public meeting of the Committee will be on Wednesday, 27 July at 11 a.m. when the Committee will hear the progress reports of the Special Rapporteurs on follow-up to concluding observations and views.