HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE STARTS ADOPTING ITS DRAFT ANNUAL REPORT WHICH WILL BE SUBMITTED TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY

24.07.02

The Human Rights Committee this afternoon started adopting its draft annual report on a chapter-by-chapter basis. Once adopted, the report will be submitted to the General Assembly for its consideration of the activities of the Committee.
The draft report covers the period of 1 August 2001 to 31 July 2002 and the seventy-third, seventy-fourth and seventy-fifth sessions of the Committee. It contains six chapters and ten annexes dealing with miscellaneous issues relating to the work of the Committee.
In the first chapter it adopted, the Committee affirmed that to date, there are 149 States parties to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and 102 States parties to the first Optional Protocol to the Covenant, which recognizes the competence of the Committee to receive and consider communications from individuals who claim that any of their rights under the Covenant have been violated by a State party, and who have exhausted all available domestic remedies.
New developments regarding the Committee's methods of work under article 40 of the Covenant were treated under chapter two of the report. Article 40 stipulates that States parties undertake to submit reports on the measures they have adopted with the view to giving the provisions effect and on the progress made in the enjoyment of the rights under the Covenant. For several years, the Committee has expressed concern about the number of overdue reports and non-compliance by States parties with their obligations under article 40 of the Covenant.
Chapter three also deals with the submission of reports by States parties, and says that the Committee is faced not only with a problem of overdue reports, but also with a backlog, although diminishing, of reports already received but not yet considered.
The sections in chapter four contain the concluding observations adopted by the Committee with respect to the States parties' reports considered at its seventy-third, seventy-fourth and seventy-fifth sessions. The Committee urges States parties to adopt corrective measures consistent with their obligations under the Covenant and to implement those recommendations.
The Committee also adopted chapter six of the report, which is follow-up activities of the Committee under the Optional Protocol.
It will continue to consider chapter five on communications at 10 a.m. on Thursday, 25 July. Since 1979, the Committee has adopted 394 Views on communications considered under the Optional Protocol; and it found violations in 306 of them.
The 18-member Committee is a United Nations treaty body that monitors the implementation of the International Covenant in the States parties.
When the Committee reconvenes at 10 a.m. on Thursday, 25 July, it will continue to adopt the text of its annual report. The Committee is scheduled to conclude its three-week session on Friday, 26 July.
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