Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination opens seventy-eighth session

Committee on the Elimination
of Racial Discrimination

14 February 2011

Adopts Agenda and Programme of Work

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination this morning opened its seventy-eighth session, hearing an address by Ibrahim Salama, Director of the Human Rights Treaties Division of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The Committee also adopted its agenda and programme of work.

Mr. Salama, in opening remarks, said that at its sixty-fifth session, the General Assembly adopted various resolutions, including one on the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. In its resolution, the General Assembly expressed its appreciation for the efforts made by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to improve the efficiency of its working methods and encouraged the Committee to continue its activities in this regard. The General Assembly also commended the Committee for its contribution towards the effective implementation of the Convention, especially through the examination of States parties’ reports under article 19 of the Convention, action on communications under article 14 of the Convention and thematic discussions which contributed to the prevention and elimination of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

Mr. Ibrahim went on to say that in another General Assembly resolution, 2011 was proclaimed the International Year for People of African Descent with a view to strengthening national actions and regional and international cooperation for the benefit of people of African descent in relation to their full enjoyment of all human rights. In this connection, the Committee would hold a one day thematic discussion on racial discrimination against people of African descent during this session. This thematic debate aimed to enhance understanding of the causes and consequences of racial discrimination against people of African descent through an exchange of relevant information and an examination of the advances, challenges and lessons that had been learnt along the way.

The Committee Chairperson, Anwar Kemal, thanked Mr. Ibrahim for his remarks and opened the floor to comments from Committee members. One Committee member asked that they receive paper copies of the periodic reports in the mail prior to the start of the Committee’s sessions so that they had ample time to review them. Sometimes it was difficult to access the documents in electronic form so paper reports were still useful for many members. Several Committee members asked for clarification about a meeting that was to take place on 19 February. Another speaker said that it would be helpful to have some documents submitted by a non-governmental organization translated from Spanish to English so that all Committee members could benefit from the information.

Mr. Salama said that the meeting on 19 February was to brainstorm and think out of the box about ways to harmonize the work of the various treaty body Committees. There were Committees that had met together, but since the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination was the only Committee in session at this time, they were meeting alone. Their basic goal was to cut costs so that they could have a credible argument with Member States that they had taken measures to control costs and show that they needed more resources. Once they showed that they had done their part in cutting costs, they could make the argument that the Member States now had to do their part to provide more resources. In this vein, electronic documents were important as a cost saving measure so unless they really needed hard copies of documents they should work from the electronic documents. In terms of translating documents provided by non-governmental organizations, due to the limited resources they could only translate documents as mandated and unfortunately non-governmental organization inputs did not fall into the category of documents that were required to be translated.

The next public meeting of the Committee will be at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, 15 February, when it will hold an informal meeting with non-governmental organizations to discuss the country reports that the Committee will review this week.

STATEMENT

IBRAHIM SALAMA, Director of the Human Rights Treaties Division, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, in opening remarks said that he was pleased to inform the Committee that the High Commissioner was very much encouraged by the commitment expressed by all Committee Chairpersons to bring the treaty body strengthening process forward and was committed to, among others, strengthening the reporting procedure; enhancing the constructive dialogue and building a stronger treaty body system, including resource requirements.

Mr. Salama said that at its sixty-fifth session, the General Assembly adopted various resolutions, including one on the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. In its resolution, the General Assembly expressed its appreciation for the efforts made by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to improve the efficiency of its working methods and encouraged the Committee to continue its activities in this regard. The General Assembly also commended the Committee for its contribution towards the effective implementation of the Convention, especially through the examination of States parties’ reports under article 19 of the Convention, action on communications under article 14 of the Convention and thematic discussions which contributed to the prevention and elimination of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. At the same time, the General Assembly noted the persistent backlog of State reports awaiting consideration which prevented the Committee from considering the periodic reports in a timely manner and without undue delay. The General Assembly thus provided authorization for the Committee to meet for an additional one week per session in 2012 as a temporary measure to address the backlog of reports and individual complaints. Moreover, the General Assembly requested the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly concrete and tailored proposals for human rights treaty bodies to improve the effectiveness of the working methods and resource requirements in order to better manage their workloads, bearing in mind budgetary constraints and taking into account the varying burdens on each treaty body.

In another General Assembly resolution, 2011 was proclaimed the International Year for People of African Descent with a view to strengthening national actions and regional and international cooperation for the benefit of people of African descent in relation to their full enjoyment of all human rights. In this connection, the Committee would hold a one day thematic discussion on racial discrimination against people of African descent during this session. This thematic debate aimed to enhance understanding of the causes and consequences of racial discrimination against people of African descent through an exchange of relevant information and an examination of the advances, challenges and lessons that had been learnt along the way. Furthermore, the General Assembly adopted a resolution on the Programme of Activities of the International Year for People of African Descent, and it requested the Secretary-General to close the year with a high level thematic debate on the achievement of the goals and objectives of the year, with the participation of the Chair of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, the chair of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, a representative of people of African descent, civil society and relevant stakeholders.

On a positive note, Mr. Salama noted that since the Committee’s last session, Guinea Bissau had ratified the Convention, bringing the number of States parties to the Convention to 174. A sub-regional seminar on follow-up to the concluding observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination would be held in Namibia from 29 to 31 March 2011 and would bring together participants from governments, national human rights institutions as well as civil society.

Mr. Salama then touched on servicing levels for the Committees and concerns surrounding this issue. The demands on the conference servicing units in Geneva had grown tremendously in recent years, while resources had not. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the chairs of the treaty bodies had worked to sensitize the General Assembly about the need to ensure additional human resources were provided for additional meeting time or for new treaty based requirements. In this regard, they welcomed the call by the Inter-Committee Meeting to enforce page limitations set in the harmonized and treaty-specific guidelines. At the same time, this Committee should be commended for already establishing the practice of giving directions to State parties about the structure and length of their reports. This would enable States parties to prepare more focused reports and also ease the Committee’s consideration of these reports.

Mr. Salama concluded by saying that this session would be a busy one for the Committee, with the consideration of 12 States parties’ reports, continued work on follow-up procedures, a number of cases under the early warning and urgent action procedure, the thematic discussion and examination of communications. The Committee could count on the full support of the Division in the discharge of its duties.

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