Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination opens eighty-seventh session

3 August 2015

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination opened its eighty-seventh session this morning and adopted its agenda. The Committee was addressed by Carla Edelenbos, Chief of Petitions and Inquiries Section at the Human Rights Treaties Division of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

In an opening statement, Ms. Edelenbos spoke about the issue of reprisals. She referred to the ‘San José Guidelines’ on preventing intimidation or reprisals against individuals or groups that engaged with the treaty bodies which were adopted at the annual meeting of the Chairpersons of the United Nations human rights treaty bodies in San José, Costa Rica, in June 2015. Together with the Addis Ababa Guidelines, it was another key instrument to reinforce the treaty body system and fully protect all potential parties that cooperated with it. She also noted that the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Costa Rica had called on academic institutions worldwide to consider innovative options that may further strengthen the human rights treaty system.

Ms. Edelenbos briefed on the new Treaty Body Capacity Building Programme to support States parties in building their capacity to implement treaty obligations, which was the first properly resourced one-Office support function on engagement with the treaty bodies. Under the programme the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights would organize two regional “train the trainers” events every year, establish a roster of trainers, and provide national level training courses and advisory services upon request. Its goal was to increase qualitative and quantitative reporting to treaty bodies and increase the implementation of their recommendations.

Ms. Edelenbos recalled that the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Mutuma Ruteere, in his latest report, had called for States to collect data on law-enforcement, including statistics disaggregated by ethnicity and race, as an essential part of showing the existence and extent of racial profiling. The Special Rapporteur had also highlighted international, regional and national measures to combat and prohibit racial profiling. Ms. Edelenbos also briefed on a comprehensive study on anti-Gypsyism published by the Special Rapporteur on minority issues, Rita Izsak. The study showed the persistence of negative stereotypes of Roma who suffered from particularly high levels of poverty. She called for crimes against Roma to be promptly examined and the root causes of anti-Gypsism to be tackled.

Finally, Ms. Edelenbos noted that five women had been elected as Committee Members as of 2016, substantially improving the gender balance in the Committee.

Jose Francisco Cali Tzay, Chairperson of the Committee, expressed satisfaction that two Special Rapporteurs had seriously used the Committee’s work and referred to it in their reports to the Human Rights Council. A Committee Member emphasized the importance of translating words into practice and intensifying the fight against racial discrimination. He referred to the plight of migrants and refugees, who were suffering in both their countries of origin and destination. He said the political conditions – as well as the legal framework – had to be considered because racism and racial discrimination were becoming ever more present. Another member suggested that a declaration by the Committee would be timely, given the increasing climate of xenophobia and construction of walls and fences.

The Committee will next meet in public at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, 4 August 2015, in Room VII of the Palais des Nations when it will hold a public informal meeting with non-governmental organizations on the upcoming reviews of Costa Rica and Colombia. The reports of those States parties, as well as the background release and programme of work, can be accessed here.

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For use of the information media; not an official record