Human Rights Committee continues to discuss draft General Comment on the Right to Life

Human Rights Committee

14 July 2017

The Human Rights Committee this morning continued to discuss a draft General Comment on article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on the right to life.  Committee Experts examined the last four paragraphs of the fourth part of the General Comment concerning the application of the death penalty, and the first seven paragraphs of the fifth part concerning the relationship of article 6 with other articles of the Covenant.

Committee Vice-Chairperson and Rapporteur for the draft General Comment, Yuval Shany, presented the concerned paragraphs and led the discussion. 

The Committee adopted revised paragraph 50 on the application of the death penalty to minors and pregnant women, but decided to postpone the adoption of paragraph 51 on States parties refraining from applying the death penalty to certain categories of individuals, including individuals with serious mental disabilities or lactating mothers, until Mr. Shany presented a new revised draft paragraph reflecting the discussion.

Paragraphs 52 and 53 underlined the abolitionist spirit of the Covenant, and experts said they reflected the heart of the draft general comment.  It was decided that those two paragraphs would be revised by Mr. Shany to take into account remarks made, and would be re-examined by the Committee in a future meeting.

Moving on to the fifth part of the General Comment concerning the relationship of article 6 with other articles of the Covenant, the Committee adopted paragraph 54 on standards and guarantees of article 6 that both overlap and interact with other provisions of the Covenant.  Paragraphs 55 to 60 concerned reinforcing the obligations of States parties under the Covenant and the Optional Protocol to protect individuals against reprisals for having cooperated or communicated with the Committee; torture and ill-treatment, which may seriously affect the physical and mental health of the mistreated individual could also generate the risk of deprivation of life; returning individuals to countries where there are substantial grounds for believing that they faced a real risk to their lives may cause them severe mental suffering; the arbitrary deprivation of life of individuals may cause their relatives severe mental suffering; the right to life guaranteed by article 6 of the Covenant, including the right to protection of life under article 6, paragraph 1, may overlap with the right to security of person guaranteed by article 9, paragraph 1; and the particular connection existing between article 6 and article 20, which prohibited any propaganda to war and certain forms of advocacy constituting incitement to violence.  Committee Experts offered numerous comments on those paragraphs and it was agreed that Mr. Shany would revise them to reflect the comments for further discussion at a future meeting.

The Committee will next meet in public on Monday, 17 July to discuss a report by the Special Rapporteur on follow-up to concluding observations. 

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For use of the information media; not an official record

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