Human Rights Committee adopts revised Guidelines for State Reports

Human Rights Committee
22 July 2010

Discusses Outcome of Inter-Committee Meeting and Meeting of Committee Chairpersons

The Human Rights Committee this afternoon adopted its revised guidelines for State reports under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights after having gone through a final reading of the draft. The Committee today also discussed the outcome of the eleventh Inter-Committee Meeting and the twenty-second Meeting of Chairpersons.

The revised Guidelines for State Reports under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights provide guidance to States for reporting under the Covenant. It says that information provided in the reports should focus on issues relating to the implementation of the Covenant and avoid duplication of information already included in the common core document. The guidelines further outline the kind of information and data that should be provided by State parties under each single article of the Covenant.

The revised Guidelines for State Reports under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights will be issued as an official United Nations document at a later date.

Yuji Iwasawa, Committee Chairperson, presenting the outcome of the eleventh Inter-Committee Meeting and the twenty-second Meeting of Chairpersons, said that both had been held at the end of June and beginning of July. One of the topics discussed at the Inter-Committee meeting included the list of issues prior to reporting. Two Treaty bodies, namely the Committee Against Torture and the Human Rights Committee, had adopted optional reporting procedures. The Inter-Committee Meeting noted with interest these optional procedures and encouraged all Treaty bodies to consider whether such procedures could be applicable to them. It further recommended to both Committees to report back at the twelfth Inter-Committee Meeting on their experiences in implementing these procedures.

The Meeting also emphasized the essential role played by National Human Rights Institutions and civil society, including non-governmental organizations, with regard to the preparation of the list of issues prior to reporting, and encouraged their active participation in the process, said Mr. Iwasawa. On the topic of the Committees’ concluding observations, the Inter-Committee Meeting recommended that each Treaty body explored ways of reducing the length of its concluding observations to achieve greater efficiency.

Further the Meeting decided that the twelfth Inter-Committee Meeting would discuss the following themes: structure of the dialogue with State parties and interaction with stakeholders, as well a continuation of the discussion on the structures and length of the concluding observations, said Mr. Iwasawa. Turning to the outcome of the twenty-second Meeting of Chairpersons, he said that it had been held in Brussels where they had been able to meet with European regional actors. The Meeting expressed the wish that cooperation with these actors be enhanced in the future and for future Meetings of Chairpersons to hold other similar regional meetings in other regions.

In the ensuing discussion, a Committee Expert noted that the only way to move forward on page limits would be to enforce them. Such limits applied to everyone in the United Nations system, including to the Secretary-General and the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Shorter documents would provide for more focused discussions and recommendations. Another Expert said that he did not believe that the Human Rights Committee’s concluding observations were among the longest ones. Also, it was already hard enough to get reports from countries; it would thus surely not be helpful to send back to Member States reports that were too long.

On the Inter-Committee Meeting’s proposed joint actions by Committees and Special Procedures to call for treaty ratification, one Expert noted that Committees were not mandated with that task.

Answering to some of the issues raised, Mr. Iwasawa said that concluding observations were the essence of the Committees’ work and that Committees needed space to express themselves. It was however true that other Committees’ concluding observations were much longer than those of the Human Rights Committee. On the future of the Chairpersons Meetings and whether the issue of decision making had been discussed, he noted that the High Commissioner for Human Rights had recently commented on the fact that Chairpersons Meetings had not such a power. Also, he would not use the words “decision making” but rather talk about efforts to harmonize procedures. He however shared the concerns expressed by his colleagues.

Ibrahim Salama, Director of the Human Rights Treaty Division of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that Treaty bodies had achieved one important thing which was to meet more often. It was in the interest of the whole system that Treaty bodies acted as one. He shared the global assessment made by Experts and the fact that there were some major issues. On the question of decision-making, there was a shared opinion that this was not appropriate; however there was a need for the different Committees to know where the others stood before deciding on something. He also noted that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights was looking into how regional offices could join efforts in collecting and providing information for the Committees.

During the discussion of the draft revised reporting guidelines, experts discussed whether to include provisions requiring State parties to report on issues linked to bioethics, such as discrimination based on genetics, cloning and genetic engineering. One Expert proposed to include a provision asking for State parties to report on any existing rules governing genetic databanks. Experts also discussed whether or not to include requests for information on the legal regulation of the presence of religious symbols in schools in the guidelines. Other Experts however thought the Committee should not engage too much into micromanaging the guidelines and that such topic could be raised orally during the consideration of reports. One Expert proposed that it would be useful, before adopting the new document, to have an exercise of simulation for the drafting of a hypothetical report of a hypothetical country, strictly following the new guidelines.

The next public meeting of the Committee will take place on Wednesday, 28 July at 11 a.m., when the Committee will consider the progress report of the Rapporteur for Follow-up to Concluding Observations and the progress report of the Rapporteur for Follow-up to Views.

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For use of the information media; not an official record