COMMITTEE ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD OPENS SEVENTY-SECOND SESSION IN GENEVA
The Committee on the Rights of the Child opened its seventy-second session at the Palais Wilson this morning, hearing an address by Ibrahim Salama, Chief of the Human Rights Treaties Branch of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The Committee also adopted its agenda and programme of work for the session.
Mr. Salama commended the Committee for drastically reducing its backlog of reports, which was now down to some 50, including the 13 reports received this year, but noted that the work reviewing the first complaints the Committee had received under its communication procedure (the third Optional Protocol) would most likely increase. In his update on the implementation of General Assembly resolution 68/268 on the treaty bodies strengthening process, including on the process leading to its 2020 review and further action to enhance its functioning, Mr. Salama said that, following the call for an independent study to explore options for treaty bodies reform and for a worldwide academic process to reflect on the future of the treaty bodies system, the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights had invited a small group of independent researchers to brainstorm on different scenarios and to define the parameters for the Academic Platform Project on the 2020 review, which aimed to develop innovative proposals and solutions.
Mr. Salama welcomed the linking of the Committee’s concluding observations and the rights contained in the Convention with the Sustainable Development Goals, and the work on the creation of a specific working group with the United Nations Children’s Fund on follow-up and monitoring of the Sustainable Development Goals related to children’s rights. Turning to the work of the Human Rights Council, Mr. Salama said that during its March session, it had adopted a resolution on the subject of information and communication technology and child sexual exploitation online, which had requested the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to focus its next annual day of discussion on the protection of the rights of the child in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The Secretariat of the Committee informed that 13 reports had been received since the seventy-first session, bringing the number of reports pending consideration to 51. The total number of ratifications of the Convention on the Rights of the Child remained at 196. Since the previous session, Guinea had ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the involvement of children in armed conflict, bringing the total number of ratifications to 163, while Samoa and the United Arab Emirates had ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, which was now ratified by 173 States. Finally, since the previous session, Italy, Luxembourg and Samoa had ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on a communications procedure, bringing the number of ratifications to 27.
Benyam Dawit Mezmur, Committee Chairperson, noted in his introductory remarks that, in the light of the ongoing violations of the rights of the child, child poverty, exploitation and violence against children, the need to continue to integrate child-rights based policies into laws, policies, and procedures continued to be important. He reiterated the Committee’s grave and continuous concern about the migration crisis and its impact on the rights and wellbeing of children, and called upon States to stop detaining migrant children. The Chairperson also expressed concern about thousands of migrant children who went missing in Europe, after having been registered with authorities.
Turning to the Committee’s seventy-second session, Mr. Mezmur said the Committee would, inter alia, review reports of eight countries (Samoa, Nepal, United Kingdom, Slovakia, Pakistan, Gabon, Bulgaria and Luxembourg), and it would continue its discussion on methods of work, especially concerning the Optional Protocol on a communications procedure, and on the follow up to the treaty bodies strengthening process. In this regard, it would hold a retreat at the end of May to discuss ways to streamline concluding observations. The Committee would also continue preparing the next Day of General Discussion to be held in September 2016 on the theme of children’s rights and the environment, and would continue to work on four general comments related to public spending to realize children’s rights, adolescents, children in street situations and a joint general comment on children in the context of migration to be prepared with the Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.
The agenda was then adopted.
Comprehensive meeting coverage of all public meetings to be held this session, including the country reviews, can be found here. The country reviews can also be watched via live webcast at http://www.treatybodywebcast.org.
The Committee will next meet in public at 3 p.m. today, to consider the combined second to fourth periodic report of Samoa under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC/C/WSM/2-4).
For use of the information media; not an official record
CRC16/021E