Human Rights Committee adopts annual report to the General Assembly

28 July 2011

The Human Rights Committee this afternoon discussed and then adopted its annual report to the General Assembly.

Helen Keller, Committee member and Rapporteur for the annual report, introducing the report, said that she and the secretariat would add any updated information needed to the report before it was submitted to the General Assembly, including the fact that they did not consider the situation of civil and political rights in Dominica. This year’s report was quite long and it was Ms. Keller’s understanding that in the future this would not be the case as they were trying to stick to page limits for documents.

During the ensuing discussion Committee members said they had never received a copy of last year’s annual report either in hard copy or as a PDF. The minimum the secretariat could do was to deliver to Committee members a copy of the record of their work. Committee members understood the need for a greener world and the use of less paper, but no matter how many trees were involved each Committee Expert should receive a copy of the annual report. The offerings on the web were also deficient in English and absolutely horrible in other languages. Committee members could not even look up their own jurisprudence so what did this mean for people who were not on the Committee? If they wanted to make their decisions known and wanted their views to be more widely disseminated then they had to start at home with making them available online and to Committee members. These concerns should also be included in the annual report.

The Committee then proceeded to examine the draft annual report chapter by chapter. For chapter three, there was a question of whether to add the Chairperson’s letters within the body of the report or whether they should add the letters as an annex to the report. Ms. Keller said that she had thought of this, but she had learned from the secretariat that the use of the word annex was very specific so if they added the letters they would have to do so under a different name or perhaps under a different symbol number. If the letters were added as an annex they would have to be translated. The final decision was left to the Rapporteur and the secretariat. Another Committee member made the point that the recently adopted General Comment should be included in the annual report because currently it was not. They should also add something about webcasting to the section on publicity since this was the first session that had been shown live online. There was a question of whether Tunisia should be included in the annual report as having recently become a State party to the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political rights since the treaty had not actually entered into force in the country. It was decided that this information would be included, but as a foot note.

After a thorough discussion of the document, the annual report was adopted as amended.

Next the Committee turned to a preliminary discussion on what its next general comment should be. After two years, the Committee had completed work on General Comment No. 34 on freedom of expression, and it was suggested that their next General Comment focus on articles 2 and 26. Someone else suggested that rather than adopting a new General Comment, the Committee could also revisit some previous General Comments that were in need of updating due to the many changes that had happened over the years. Article 9 pertaining to arbitrary arrest and detention, for example, would be ripe for an updated General Comment considering the changes in counter-terrorism activity the world had seen in the last decade or so and the same applied to other General Comments adopted around the same time such as the one on article 6. Another Expert asked whether it might be wise to not begin work immediately on another draft General Comment. Another Committee member said that it might also be wise to give members time to think this over and when the Committee reconvenes in October for its next session they could discuss it further when all the Committee members were present. One of the difficulties they faced in deciding which topic to cover in the next General Comment was not only choosing the issue, but selecting the criteria for choosing the issue. Should they cover something that had not been the subject of a General Comment before? Should they cover something that was timely? Should they update something that had been done in the past? Should it depend on having a Rapporteur who was enthused about the particular matter? Members also affirmed the legal basis for the Committee’s General Comments and the high regard in which they were held.

The Committee briefly discussed how the Secretary-General’s new policies on paper reduction in the United Nations would affect their work. One result was that the annual report was not systematically printed and printed copies had to be specifically requested. Treaty bodies were also using less paper by posting documents on the extranet or giving Committee members a USB key or a compact disc and providing laptops to all Committee members.

The next public meeting of the Committee will be Friday, 29 July at 3 p.m. at which time the Committee will publish its concluding observations on the countries it reviewed during the session, announce bureau decisions, discuss working methods and officially close the one-hundredth second session.
__________

For use of the information media; not an official record