Briefing note, 3 February 1998

3 February 1998


Mr. John Mills, the media officer for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said Mrs. Mary Robinson was in New York for today and tomorrow and would be back on Thursday.

Mr. Mills said that the meeting of the Working Group to elaborate a draft protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child regarding children in armed conflicts had started yesterday. The main sticking point was the minimum age for children to participate in armed forces. In the Convention as it stood, it was 15 years of age, and there were efforts to raise it to the age of 16, 17 or 18. Mr. Mills said that there was some possibility of progress on this issue, and he would be in touch with the Chairperson of the Working Group, Ambassador Eliasson of Sweden, to see if there would be a readout available on Friday or maybe a briefing for the following week could be arranged if there was interest.

A correspondent said that the State of Texas was going to execute a woman who had been in jail for 15 years and asked if the High Commissioner had anything to say on this case since it dealt with a country that effectively was institutionalizing murder while it claimed to be the upholder of human rights values. Mr. Mills said that the High Commissioner had not spoken on this, but Mr. Bacre N'diaye, the Special Rapporteur for Summary, Arbitrary and Extrajudicial Executions, had been in the United States of America last September. He had looked at the application of safeguards in respect of implementing the death penalty. Mr. Mills noted that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, while it did not prohibit the use of the death penalty, urged that it be used in only the most serious cases. He had checked yesterday to see if Mr. N'diaye had attempted to intervene and was told that there was no strictly human rights basis for an intervention. However, Mr. N'diaye had sent an urgent appeal on humanitarian grounds , adding his voice to a number of others, asking for clemency in this case.

In response to another question, Mr Mills said he was not aware of Mrs Robinson's personal views on the death penalty. Mr Mills later recalled to correspondents last year's Commission on Human Rights resolution 1997/12 on the question of the death penalty