HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE CONCLUDES ITS ONE HUNDREDTH AND TENTH SESSION

The Human Rights Committee this afternoon concluded its one hundredth and tenth session after adopting its concluding observations and recommendations on the reports of Chad, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Nepal, Sierra Leone and the United States on how they are implementing the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The Committee’s concluding observations and recommendations on the six reports are available on its webpage for the session.

The session was opened by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay. In her address Ms. Pillay underlined the importance of the right to privacy, and demanded that work be done to adapt that right and its interpretation to new challenges resulting from the digital age. She recalled that this year was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and also asked the Committee to continue its efforts to promote the abolition of the death penalty.

As well as reviewing six country reports the Committee also, during the session held closed meetings with United Nations organizations, specialized agencies, non-governmental organizations and national human rights institutions on the situation in the countries that it was scheduled to review. The Committee discussed its methods of work and heard progress reports from its Rapporteurs on follow-up to views and on follow-up to concluding observations.

The Committee completed its first reading of its draft general comment on Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which deals with the right to liberty and security of person and states that no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or arbitrary detention. The draft will be posted on the Committee’s webpage on 1 April with a strict deadline for comments from all stakeholders by 1 June.

The Committee also adopted its lists of questions to be sent to the nine States Parties below, prior to consideration of their reports, scheduled for review at a future session: Argentina, Ecuador, Malta, Montenegro, Sri Lanka, Romania, New Zealand, Sweden, and Haiti. It adopted its annual report, as well as a paper on the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on New Communications and Interim Measures and the report of the Special Rapporteur for follow-up to concluding observations. It also considered 36 individual communications in closed meetings. The Committee adopted four inadmissibility decisions, 18 decisions on merits and declared 14 cases discontinued.

The Committee Chairperson, Sir Nigel Rodley, in his closing statement at the session this afternoon, said that in light of the recent report of the Commission of Inquiry into the human rights situation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the bureau had decided to send to that State party to the Covenant a reminder, given the fact that its third periodic report was overdue by ten years.

The Committee’s one hundredth and eleventh session will be held from 7 to 25 July 2014, during which it will consider the reports of Chile, Georgia, Ireland, Japan, Malawi and Sudan. Those reports and more information on the next session can be found here.


For use of the information media; not an official record

CT14/013E