人权事务委员会召开第一百一十二届会议，通过其议程和工作方案（部分翻译）

人权事务委员会

2014年10月7日

人权事务委员会今天上午召开第一百一十二届会议，会上听取了人权高专办人权条约司司长易卜拉欣·萨拉马（ Ibrahim Salama）的发言，并通过了其议程和工作方案。

萨拉马先生在开场致辞中向委员会介绍了最近可能对其工作产生影响的事件，包括条约机构加强过程、报复问题和发布一份期待已久的有关监控和拦截通讯对人权影响的联合国大会报告。《公约》有关废除死刑问题的第二项任择议定书通过二十五周年之际的趋势也是萨拉马先生提到的另一项重要问题，他指出，目前已有160个国家在法律或事实上废除或停止使用死刑，或者已暂停处决，这是在实现全面废除死刑过程中的可喜势头。

委员会主席奈杰尔·罗德利（Nigel Rodley）表示，委员会不是在真空中运作，因而不可能不提及叙利亚和伊拉克局势以及一个正在奉行践踏普世价值和人权标准的政策的组织。该组织自称为国家，但却美化杀戮和酷刑，在国际社会的眼皮下虐杀无辜平民、慈善家和记者。这是对国际社会的公然挑衅，罗德利先生表示，虽然这发生在公约管辖范围之外，他想不到比目前更适合调用保护职责的情况。

委员会还听取了委员会来文问题报告员亚德·本·阿克霍尔（Yadh Ben Achour）有关来文问题工作组审议的案件的简短更新信息，并通过了其报告。

委员会将于今天下午3点再次召开公开会议，届时将开始审议斯里兰卡的第五次定期报告（CCPR/C/LKA/5）。在为期四周的届会中，委员会还将审议布隆迪、海地、马耳他、黑山和以色列的报告。工作方案可在背景新闻稿中查看。
 
Opening Statement

IBRAHIM SALAMA, Director of the Human Rights Treaties Division at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, conveyed the greetings of the new High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein, who succeeded Navi Pillay on 1 September 2014, and said Mr. Zeid indicated that he would give the utmost importance to recommendations and decisions of the treaty bodies and take the necessary action to ensure that greater priority was given to their implementation.  He also expressed gratitude to the six Committee members, many long-serving, whose terms would end this session.  Mr. Salama briefed the Committee on positive and recent events that would impact on its work, including on the treaty-body strengthening process and the General Assembly decision to provide additional ad hoc resources to the Committee, which had brought positive results.  He welcomed the Committee’s appointment of a Rapporteur on Reprisals, noting the words of the Deputy High Commissioner that “Reprisals undermine the functioning of the United Nations as a whole, including that of its human rights mechanisms”. 
 
The publication of a long awaited report mandated by a General Assembly resolution on the impact of surveillance and interception of communications on human rights was another positive event, said Mr. Salama, adding that the Committee’s work was well represented in the report, notably the thorny issue of the extra-territorial responsibility of States.  The report could be an excellent resource for the Committee’s key work on the issue, as the right to privacy was clearly protected by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Committee was in an enviable position to engage with States and make recommendations for change on issues such as the use of mass surveillance. 
 
The momentum surrounding the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Second Optional Protocol to the Covenant on the abolition of the death penalty was another important issue.  Several reports on the death penalty were and would be presented to the Council and the General Assembly this year said Mr. Salama, noting that 160 States had now abolished or introduced a moratorium on the death penalty either in law or practice, or had suspended executions.  That was a welcome trend towards universal abolition.  Mr. Salama recalled the High Commissioner’s speech at a recent high-level meeting on the death penalty in New York in which he stressed that “No judiciary, anywhere in the world, is so robust that it can guarantee that innocent life will not be taken, and there is an alarming body of evidence to indicate that even well-functioning legal systems have sentenced to death men and women who were subsequently proven innocent.  This is intolerable”. 
 
Statement by the Chairperson of the Committee
 
NIGEL RODLEY, Chairperson of the Committee, said the Committee did not operate in a vacuum and it was impossible not to mention what was happening in Syria and Iraq, with respect to a group that was pursuing policies that were simply the antithesis of universal values and human rights standards.  That group claimed statehood, but it glorified murder and torture, and murder by torture, of innocents, philanthropists, and journalists, in the eyes of the international community.  It carried out those acts in the name of a great religion and in doing so it desecrated that religion.  It was a brazen challenge to the international community said Mr. Rodley, saying he could not think of a clearer case that invoked the responsibility to protect, even if that was outside the boundaries of the Covenant. 
 
Meanwhile, long-running conflicts and associated human rights violations persisted, including within Syria itself as well as in Israel and Palestine, said Mr. Rodley, noting that some dimensions of the latter conflict would be considered by the Committee this session.  The continuing conflict in the Great Lakes Region of Africa received less attention; and astonishingly there was now a conflict in Eastern Europe where settled borders were being challenged by force and a planeload of people had been blown out of the air to their deaths.  The Chairperson urged Committee members to bear the context of the broader global situation in mind as they dealt with the situations on the agenda this session on their merits and the facts. 
 
The Committee then adopted the agenda and programme of work for the session.
 
Report by the Working Group on Communications
 
YADH BEN ACHOUR, Rapporteur on Communications, said the Working Group on Communications met from 29 September to 3 October during which time it considered 45 cases.  It considered six to be inadmissible and one to be admissible and considered 38 cases on their merits.  The Rapporteur expressed regret that several draft cases had not been translated into the working languages of the Committee, and highlighted that some members had been forced to work in languages that were not their own in order to consider the drafts in a timely fashion. 
 
The report of the Working Group was then adopted.

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