HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE OPENS NINETY-FIRST SESSION

The Human Rights Committee this morning opened its ninety-first session, hearing an address by the Representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, following which it adopted its agenda and programme of work.

Ibrahim Salama, Chief of the Treaties and Council Branch of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said that in September 2007 the UN General Assembly had adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This was a step forward in consolidating the international human rights system and an impetus for renewed international efforts to address the concerns of the world’s 370 million indigenous people.

Mr. Salama said a lot of progress had been made by the Human Rights Council in its institution-building process and in that context he welcomed the recommendations submitted by the Committee concerning institutionalization of the relationship between the Council and the Committee and the development of procedures and guidelines for enhanced cooperation with Special Procedure mandate holders, especially in developing effective approaches to the Universal Periodic Review mechanism.

The Human Rights Committee continued to develop dynamically, Mr. Salama added, adopting General Comment N. 32 on the right to equality before courts and tribunals and to a fair trial at its previous session, and the Committee’s creativity was evident in its work on follow-up activities on concluding observations and views under the Optional Protocol, on elaborating a media strategy and on improving visibility of its activities, and therefore access for rights holders. The Committee’s active role was crucially important in ongoing efforts to enhance and harmonize the entire treaty body system. Guidelines on harmonized reporting had been circulated to all treaty bodies and efforts were under way to develop core and treaty-specific documents and provide relevant technical assistance. OHCHR would continue to work towards enhancing awareness of the treaty body system and facilitating implementation of recommendations at the national level, through training programmes, regional workshops, improved technical cooperation employing tools in various formats (CD-Rom, DVD), collating good-practice evidence and improving web and information services.

Mr. Salama said the Committee had a heavy agenda for this session, with five country reports to work through, plus a large number of communications, and progress reports on follow-up to views on the Optional Protocol. In this, the Committee would have the full support of the OHCHR and its Secretariat.

In the general debate that followed, the Committee’s Experts expressed interest in OHCHR actions on gathering information on good practices, and wondered whether the Committee had a role to play in this. It was suggested that national/regional workshops should include law faculties in universities in order to improve awareness of human rights in the legal sphere. Experts were interested in exploring improved coordination of the working liaison between the Committee and the Human Rights Council. Concern was also expressed over the deteriorating issue of translation of documents for the Committee’s work.

The Committee also heard a report by Elisabeth Palm, the Chairperson Rapporteur on the Working Group on communications. She identified the issue of translation as a key concern for the Working Group. There had been problems obtaining translations of drafts in time for discussion and the issue was being dealt with through the Secretariat. The Working Group, during its October session, had adopted 20 decisions and recommendations, over half of this number being views under the Optional Protocol.

The Committee will resume its work in public at 3 p.m. this afternoon in order to start consideration of the third periodic report of Georgia (CCPR/C/GEO/3).