HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE OPENS ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHTH SESSION

The Human Rights Committee this morning opened its one hundred and twenty-eighth session at the Palais Wilson in Geneva, hearing a statement from Ibrahim Salama, Chief of the Human Rights Treaties Branch at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The Committee adopted the agenda and programme of work for the session.

In his opening remarks, Mr. Salama said this was a very important year for treaty bodies, given the upcoming review of the General Assembly resolution 68/268 on treaty body strengthening. Hopefully, it would bring the necessary adjustments to the text and ensure that the treaty body system had the resources it needed to respond to the many challenges it faced. The outcome of the 2020 review would define the many parameters of the work of treaty bodies in the years to come.

The third report of the United Nations Secretary-General on the status of the treaty body system informed on the progress in implementing the resolution, Mr. Salama said. It identified emerging ideas and proposals on the review, including the Chairs’ vision and the proposals submitted by States, civil society and academia. The Secretary-General reiterated that the provision of sufficient regular budget funding for all the mandated activities of the treaty bodies, in particular the required meeting time and staff resources, remained a challenge. This was especially important given the significant increase of 80 per cent in the number of individual communications submitted to treaty bodies in the 2018-2019 period, but the resources to process them on time remained inadequate.

Underscoring that the treaty bodies were seeking innovative solutions to ensure the impact of their work, Mr. Salama said that the Committee had shown leadership in materializing the vision of the Chairs in adopting a forward-looking decision on a Predictable Review Cycle, with an eight-year review calendar that improved predictability in reporting. The decision to shift from an opt-in model of the simplified reporting procedure to an opt-out model, as well as to offer the procedure to States parties submitting their initial reports, facilitated the realization of the eight-year predictable review calendar.

Acknowledging the efforts to align its methods of work and the list of issues with other treaty bodies to avoid overlapping and duplication, Mr. Salama expressed hope that the 2020 Review would bring the much-needed resources, as outlined in the requirements presented for the 2021 budget. While the regular budget for 2020 recently adopted by the General Assembly provided some relief, the main budgetary challenges remained, he noted.

On the positive side, the General Assembly had placed the webcasting of treaty body session on a more solid foundation, with the allocation of regular budget resources to this purpose, and had supported the principle of multilingualism by re-allocating an additional working language for the work of the treaty bodies. However, it had not addressed the shortfall in resources to support the human rights mechanisms and resources for the travel of mandate holders and the staffing remained inadequate.

Despite the continuing financial difficulties, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights was planning to organize the same number of sessions this year as in 2019, hoping that cash-flow problems would not reappear and hamper those plans. For the first time, the Office would seek contributions from the Member States to pilot innovative ideas, including those outlined in the vision of treaty body Chairs, concluded Mr. Salama.

José Manuel Santos Pais, Committee Expert, presented the report of the Working Group on communications and said that at its last session from 24 to 28 February, it had adopted 42 draft communications that addressed over 20 topics and concerned 23 countries. The Working Group had noted violations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 22 communications, including in seven repetitive cases; it had declared 17 cases inadmissible and had referred three to the plenary for further discussion.

The Committee adopted the report of the Working Group on communications.

The Committee’s one hundred and twenty-eighth session will be held from 2 to 27 March 2020, during which it will consider the reports of Uzbekistan, Tunisia, Central African Republic, Portugal and Dominica. The review of the report of Togo, also scheduled for the session, had been postponed to the Committee’s one-hundred and twenty-ninth session.

The Committee will also continue the elaboration of the draft General Comment No. 37 on article 21 of the Covenant on the right of peaceful assembly.

All the documents relating to the Committee’s work, including reports submitted by States parties, can be found on the session’s webpage. Summaries of the Committee’s public meetings in English and French will be available at the United Nations Office at Geneva News and Media page, while the webcast can be viewed at UN Web TV.

The Committee will resume in public at 3 p.m. today, 2 March, to examine the fifth periodic report of Uzbekistan (CCPR/C/UZB/5).


For use of the information media; not an official record


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