COMMITTEE ON RIGHTS OF CHILD OPENS FIFTY-SECOND SESSION

The Committee on the Rights of the Child this morning opened it fifty-second session, adopting its agenda and programme of work and hearing an address from Ibrahim Salama, Chief of the Human Rights Treaties Branch of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Opening the meeting, Yanghee Lee, the Committee Chairperson, said that the world had witnessed one of the worst situations in the form of the financial crisis and that it was now witnessing another crisis in the form of the A/H1N1 flu. This was an alarming situation, especially as the first cases of resistance to the anti-viral had been reported. The Committee hoped that children living in all parts of the world would be provided with adequate treatment.

Mr. Salama, in opening remarks, said that during the eleventh session of the Human Rights Council two resolutions of particular importance and relevance to the Committee had been adopted. Council resolution 11/1 provided for the establishment of an Open-ended Working Group which would explore the possibility of elaborating an Optional Protocol to the Convention to provide a communications procedure complementary to the reporting procedure under the Convention. In Resolution 11/7 on the Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children, the Council welcomed the accomplishment of the Guidelines and their intention to enhance the implementation of the Convention and decided to submit the Guidelines to the General Assembly for consideration, with a view to their adoption on the twentieth anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Turning to the upcoming celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the Convention, Mr. Salama said that the event was scheduled to take place on 8 and 9 October 2009 in Geneva and had already attracted considerable interest among States parties, civil society organizations and others. The Committee had chosen “Dignity, Development and Dialogue” to be core themes for the event as these highlighted three main challenges to the implementation of the Convention. In relation to the harmonisation of working methods, Mr. Salama said that members of the different treaty bodies had met in Geneva for the ninth Inter-Committee Meeting this June. The issue of streamlining and strengthening the treaty bodies system was high on the agenda of the High-Commissioner, he added.

At the end of the meeting, Committee Secretary Maja Andrijasevic-Boko announced that the Committee had received 17 reports under the Convention and 4 under the Optional Protocols since its last session.

When the Committee next reconvenes in public at 3 p.m. this afternoon, it will consider the first periodic report of Turkey under the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict (CRC/C/OPAC/TUR/1).

Statements

YANGHEE LEE, Chairperson of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, said that the world had witnessed one of the worst situations in the form of the financial crisis and that it was now witnessing another crisis in the form of the A/H1N1 flu. This was an alarming situation, especially as the first cases of resistance to the anti-viral had been reported. The Committee hoped that children living in all parts of the world would be provided with adequate treatment.

IBRAHIM SALAMA, Chief of the Human Rights Treaties Branch of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, bringing to the Committee’s attention a number of important new developments that had taken place since its last session, said that during the eleventh session of the Human Rights Council two resolutions of particular importance and relevance to the Committee had been adopted. Council resolution 11/1 provided for the establishment of an Open-ended Working Group on an Optional Protocol to the Convention of the Rights of the Child to provide a communications procedure. The Working Group of States parties would explore the possibility of elaborating an Optional Protocol to the Convention to provide a communications procedure complementary to the reporting procedure under the Convention. Preliminary meetings of States parties supportive of this initiative had already taken place.

The Human Rights Council had also adopted resolution 11/7 on the Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children, welcoming the accomplishment of the Guidelines and their intention to enhance the implementation of the Convention. Mr. Salama noted that the resolution decided to submit the Guidelines to the General Assembly for consideration, with a view to their adoption on the twentieth anniversary of the Convention.

Turning to the upcoming celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the Convention, Mr. Salama said that the event was scheduled to take place on 8 and 9 October 2009 in Geneva and had already attracted considerable interest among States parties, civil society organizations and others. The Committee had chosen “Dignity, Development and Dialogue” to be core themes for the event as these highlights three main challenges to the implementation of the Convention. The event would provide an important opportunity to evaluate the status and progress achieved towards the realization of the rights in the Convention and assist in identifying priorities for the future, taking into consideration the two Optional Protocols of the Convention.

In relation to the harmonisation of working methods, Mr. Salama said that members of the different treaty bodies had met in Geneva for the ninth Inter-Committee Meeting this June. Participants had also met with representatives of States and had discussed ways and means to further enhance the effectiveness of treaty bodies. The tenth Inter-Committee Meeting would take place in November and would be devoted to a discussion on follow-up to concluding observations and views of treaty bodies in order to identify best practices in respect of follow-up and consider possible areas of harmonization in this respect. The issue of streamlining and strengthening the treaty bodies system was high on the agenda of the High-Commissioner, he added.

Mr. Salama noted that the Committee would meet for the first time with the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on children and armed conflict today. This would be a valuable opportunity to reflect on how both mandates could further complement and mutually reinforce each other. He also had no doubt that the Committee would also be looking forward to collaborating closely with the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on violence against children.

Turning to the work of this session of the Committee, Mr. Salama said that the Committee would have a heavy agenda during the next three weeks; it had before it the reports from eight States parties and would also have meetings with the United Nations system entities as well as non-governmental organizations. The Committee would also have to prepare for the coming year in which the Committee would be meeting in two chambers. While such a measure could be resorted to as a temporary measure, he encouraged the Committee to reflect on possible future modalities to handle reviews of the very high number of State party reports the Committee was facing.

MAJA ANDRIJASEVIC-BOKO, the Secretary of the Committee, provided an update to the Committee on the number of reports received since the last session. She said that the Committee had received 17 reports under the Convention and 4 under the Optional Protocols.


For use of information media; not an official record

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