منع وقوع أزمات في مجال حقوق الإنسان

18 June 2014

Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure for me to open this panel discussion on preventative tools of human rights mechanisms.

It is the first in a planned series of events that will focus on prevention, and the role of Geneva-based human rights mechanisms such as the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the treaty body system. I am glad to be here with two mandate-holders, as well as Jane Connors who leads OHCHR’s Special Procedures branch, for today’s discussion which will focus on the role of Special Procedures in prevention.

Today’s debate is particularly focused on preventing populations from gross human rights violation – genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, and their incitement.

As the High Commissioner stated earlier this year, genocide and other mass atrocities are never unleashed without warning. They are the culmination of a long period of human rights violations -- whether civil, cultural, economic, political or social – that have been ignored, giving rise to social divisions, institutional failure and clearly identifiable patterns of systematic discrimination.

Effective protection therefore requires us to pay more attention to early warning. This is where the 51 Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council can play such an important role. Through the around 200 country visits that they conduct every year, they get access to in-depth first –hand information and are often the first to capture the first vibrations on the ground. When they speak with victims, witnesses, human rights defenders, dissidents, national human rights institutions and others, they hear of precisely the kind of human rights violations that, if left festering, can spiral into conflict and mass atrocities. Through the over 500 communications they send every year, they engage with Member States and other stakeholders on both urgent and chronic human rights situations and cases.

The question that we are here to debate though is –how do we follow up on such information with preventative action? What can be done - and what tools are available - once a Special Procedure has become aware of risks in a given situation? Here is where we believe there is room for improvement. We must become better at making sure that such information is brought to the attention of those who can take preventive action – the States in question, the wider UN system, regional actors and the international community.

The first actor to be informed and engaged by Special Procedures is always the State on whose territory violations are occurring, who of course bears the primary responsibility for protecting its population. In a number of cases, neighboring and other third states also bear considerable responsibility (e.g. by providing arms that can be used for atrocity crimes or by financing atrocities through the illicit exploitation of natural resources). Special Procedures offer working methods flexible enough to also investigate such matters and engage with the states concerned. At the field level, an important partner is also the UN system on the ground. By bringing risks to the UN Country Team’s attention, the entire UN system can support preventive action by shaping or re-shaping their programmes around prevention priorities, and offering support to the State to do so as well.

A third key stakeholder to engage is regional organizations – who are increasingly active in seeking to prevent human rights violations in their respective regions. Some of these regional organizations have also established their own system of special rapporteurs with a human rights mandate. But do United Nations Special Procedures seize and engage regional stakeholders sufficiently? Or can more be done? It will be interesting to hear the panel’s take on this.

Fourth, the existing formal channel – the Human Rights Council – is of course key. The Human Rights Council has increasingly addressed situations where atrocity crimes are already occurring, including through convening special sessions and special intra-sessional meetings. However, the Council still does not perform a true early warning function, where relevant information gathered by Special Procedures, OHCHR and other mechanisms can be systematically reviewed to ensure early action and prevention of atrocities before they occur.

Fifth, other intergovernmental bodies could also benefit tremendously from early warning information gathered by Special Procedures, in particular the Security Council. Many country situations covered by special procedures are on the agenda of the Security Council, such as CAR, Cote d’Ivoire, DPRK, Eritrea, Haiti, Iraq, Iran, Mali, Middle East (Palestine and Syria), Myanmar, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan. There are also strong links between the work of the Security Council and issues studied by thematic special procedures, such as: how racism, racial discrimination and conflict interrelate; the safety and protection of journalists and media professionals in conflict zones and states of emergency; enforced disappearances in armed conflict, the civilian impact of using targeted killing; or internal displacement. The Security Council has a practice of cooperation with special procedures mandate holders. It has for instance invited Special Rapporteurs to brief the Council in the past, it has made reference to the work of others in its resolutions and it nowadays relatively frequently organizes so-called Arria formula meetings with several Special Rapporteurs.

But more can be done, to seek to ensure early action on human rights violations. Referrals to the Security Council made by the Secretary-General under Article 99 of the United Nations Charter is key, and could arguably be used more frequently where Special Procedure or other information shows a serious risk of atrocity crimes. An emerging good practice is the Human Rights Council referring such information onwards to UN entities, as it for instance did in follow-up to the reports of Commissions of Inquiry on Syria and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The prevention of gross human rights violations concern all UN entities, and the entire UN system should be seized to assist states and the international community in their respective responsibilities to protect populations from atrocity crimes and the human rights violations they are grounded in. The mandate of the High Commissioner for Human Rights enables her to use a variety of means for the purpose of early warning and prevention, including public advocacy, quiet diplomacy and good offices and capacity-building work, which OHCHR undertakes through our global programmes and our field presences in now 67 countries. However, prevention and early warning work is not limited to our Office; other actors with whom OHCHR closely works such as the Special Advisors on the Prevention of Genocide and the Responsibility to Protect also play key roles.

And the UN system’s collective engagement on prevention is improving: Last year, the Secretary-General’s Rights Up Front plan of action was created in response to the Internal Review Panel on UN Action in Sri Lanka’s Panel’s conclusion that there had been a systemic UN failure in protecting civilians during the last months of the civil war there. Among the key points of the plan is the fact that human rights violations are one of the best early warning signals, which should be used more strategically by the Security Council and other UN entities - and that the UN therefore should set up a more robust system for timely gathering and analysis of information on threats to populations. The UN is currently in the process of implementing this plan, which has the potential to greatly assist in preventing mass atrocity crimes. But instead of entering into further details on the plan here, let me here flag that in two weeks, on 3 July, Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson will be here in Geneva to brief States and other stakeholders on the Rights Up Front plan and how it is being implemented.

An important element to consider is how to ensure that information emanating from various, sometimes overlapping, sources is consolidated, corroborated and used to inform strategic decision making by relevant actors. For example, in countries such as the CAR and Cote d’Ivoire, UN peacekeeping operations with a human rights component, a specific Special Procedure mandate on the human rights situation in the country, as well as Commissions of Inquiry are all preoccupied with the human rights situation – alongside thematic mandates which also address specific human rights issues in these countries.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Once all relevant stakeholders have been seized and are aware of a critical situation, obstacles for protective action may of course still remain. As we are all painfully aware, the international community has not failed to prevent atrocities in places such as Cambodia, Rwanda, Srebrenica or Syria because of a lack of early warning thereon, but rather due to a lack of shared political will to take early, strong and united action. This is the elephant in the room, and a well-known problem facing the UN since its creation. Here, the tireless public advocacy of Special Procedures and other actors can be crucial for gathering political and popular support for preventive and protective action, at the national, regional and international levels – including on chronic human rights situations that are no longer at the top of the international community’s agenda.

Let me conclude. The scars of mass atrocity are deep and painful. Only accountability can help surmount that pain – and reshape society after such profound trauma, so that it can reinstate the principles of equality, dignity and human rights. It is also vital to assuring victims’ rights to effective remedy.

Special Procedures also play a role here – their gathering of information can be, and has often been, used to combat impunity and provide victims with truth, justice and reparations. And since 2012 we also have a mandate-holder focusing exclusively on this.

But our ultimate goal is to prevent gross human rights violations, so that a need for accountability will not arise in the first place. I am now looking forward to hearing our panelists’ views on how we together with the Special Procedures can become better at informing, assisting, engaging and convincing those who can take concrete action to prevent.

Thank you.