COMMITTEE ON ELIMINATION OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION OPENS SEVENTY-FIFTH SESSION, ADOPTS AGENDA AND PROGRAMME OF WORK

Committee on the Elimination
of Racial Discrimination

3 August 2009

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination this morning opened its seventy-fifth session, holding a dialogue with Ibrahim Salama, Chief Human Rights Treaties Branch Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), on the implementation of the Durban outcome document and the harmonization of human rights treaty bodies. It then adopted its agenda and programme of work.

Mr. Salama said that there were three main challenges that all the committees were facing: the implementation of the Durban outcome document; the ninth Inter-Committee-Meeting, which had just been held in Geneva; and the strengthening of the treaty body system. Regarding the Durban outcome document, the Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination had had influence during various stages of the elaboration of the document. In the near future, a series of expert seminars would be organized regarding the incitement to hatred and the Committee would be invited to those discussions. The work on the on the implementation of the Durban outcome document had just begun and the Committee should start thinking about how it could contribute to the process.

As to the results of the Inter-Committee-Meeting, the discrimination Committee would be discussing the issue during the current session. Regarding the establishment of a coordinating body of all treaty bodies, the earlier approach had been called a failure by some. Now, multiple consultations were being held between national institutions, Member States and non-governmental organizations in order to explore new options for harmonization of the work of treaty bodies. In the context of the global review of the Human Rights Council in 2011, Mr. Salama underlined that the treaty body system had its own legal foundations.

Experts stressed that the Inter-Committee Meeting was not a totally separate body as it was made up of Members of the Committees. They regretted that there was reluctance to give the Inter-Committee-Meeting decision-making powers over the Committees. Experts noted that there were two contradictory trends in the United Nations system: one was to create more treaty bodies, and the other to continue discussion on the fusion of bodies. But all discussion on that issue should be based on the views of States and the Experts should first find out whether States really needed that kind of discussion. In principle, they agreed that working with a bottom-up approach in harmonization of treaty bodies was intrinsically better, but wondered what the practical implications of this approach were. Experts also asked for more information on the newly established Ad Hoc Committee on the Elaboration of International Complementary Standards (called for in the Durban Programme of Action to prepare complementary international standards to strengthen and update international instruments against racism).

Responding to questions and comments, Mr. Salama said that currently standards were being elaborated by Members of the Committee. Unfortunately, during the debate on the establishment of the Ad Hoc Committee on International Complementary Standards, the views of the Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination had not been taken into account. However, it would now be valuable to contribute to it nevertheless. He emphasized that the role of the Committee had to be enhanced and said that the Durban outcome document recognized the strategic role of this Committee in the implementation of the outcome document.

The next meeting of the Committee will be at 3 p.m. this afternoon, when it is scheduled to take up the combined fourteenth to seventeenth report of Peru (CERD/C/PER/14-17).

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