CHAIRMAN OF COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS NAMES THREE NEW EXPERTS

5 December 2001



The Chairman of the fifty-seventh session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Leandro Despouy, has appointed three experts to study, respectively, the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, structural adjustment policies and foreign debt and the question of torture. The appointments became effective on 28 November.

The experts - who will fill posts that became vacant following the last session of the Commission in the spring -- are Iulia-Antoanella Motoc of Romania, Bernards Andrew Nyamwaya Mudho of Kenya, and Theo van Boven of the Netherlands.

Ms. Motoc, new Special Rapporteur on the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a lawyer and academic who has been a member or alternate member of the Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights of the United Nations since 1996, serving as its Chairperson for the period 2000-2001.

The new Independent Expert on structural adjustment policies and foreign debt, Mr. Nyamwaya Mudho, is an international lawyer who has also worked in his country's Foreign Service. He has broad experience of UN and international affairs.

Mr. van Boven, the new Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, is a leading international human rights expert, having served as Director of the Division of Human Rights of the United Nations from 1977 to 1982, as well as having been a member of the Subcommission and of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, among other bodies. A professor of law, he has also worked with a number of non-governmental organizations active in the defense of human rights.




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