COMMITTEE ON ELIMINATION OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION DISCUSSES TREATY BODY REFORM

The Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination this afternoon held a discussion on treaty body reform.

Presenting the issue, Committee Expert Linos Alexandre Sicilianos said there were four main objectives of the proposed treaty body reform: to ensure the visibility of the single body; to strengthen the treaty system; to unify the methods of work; and to ensure a greater coherence of functioning of the system. The Committee had to weigh both the pros and the cons of this reform, and all possible consequences in the short and long term. He also presented the different options available in the context of reform. The implementation and entry into force of the reform could take several years, he said, and in the time before that the whole system could end up in a stand-by mode.

Committee Experts raised various issues, including that the transition period held the greatest risk for all the bodies, as it might significantly weaken the bodies, both individually and collectively; the speed of the process as a whole; how would the process go ahead, whether it would be on the basis of the opinions of the legal experts who regulated the work of the Committees; how would the new Human Rights body be constituted, and whether it would contain Experts - and how would these be selected, and how long would their mandate be; and whether it was possible, especially in the Committee’s capacity as a body of Experts, to have some effect on the vision and approach of the Secretary-General and the High Commissioner of the reform process.

In concluding remarks, Mr. Sicilianos said everyone agreed that the treaty body system needed to be strengthened. Regarding the criticism of the High Commissioner of the treaty bodies, the general feeling was that the response that should be given was that a single body would not be sufficient to cover all issues that were covered by the current bodies. If the Member States were ready to move towards a single body, the issue under discussion was whether an additional Protocol was required, one that would settle a number of the specific problems, and which would be relatively difficult to negotiate, and there was a risk of seeing the actual system crumble whilst all waited for the changes to take place.

The next public meeting of the Committee will be at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, 17 August when it will hold a debate on multiculturalism, followed by a discussion of its draft General Recommendation on the prevention of racial discrimination in the administration and functioning of the criminal justice system.

The discussion on treaty body reform will continue at 10 a.m. on Thursday, 18 August when Maria Francisca Ize-Charrin, Chief of the Treaties and Commission Branch of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, will join the Committee for further discussion on the subject. This will be the last meeting of the current session on this topic.

Discussion

Linos Alexandre Sicilianos, Committee Expert, in presenting a summary of what had happened so far in the context of the reform and what were the limits of the process, said he wished to draw the Committee’s attention to the proposal of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on the creation of a single body that would replace the different Committees. There were four main objectives of the reform: to ensure the visibility of the single body; to strengthen the treaty system; to unify the methods of work; and to ensure a greater coherence of functioning of the system. The Committee could see the advantages of this, but at the same time, it could see the difficulties and the arguments were against this possible approach.

A single body would probably result in single reports, which would mean that some instruments and bodies would be marginalized, including the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. An amending protocol would cover the institutional aspects of different treaties and conventions by regulating in a new way the whole edifice and this should be ratified in order to come into force by two thirds of the States parties of all the instruments in existence today. The implementation and entry into force of this new protocol could take several years, and in the time before that the whole system could end up in a stand-by mode, as some States parties might consider that the bodies that would eventually disappear did not need to receive reports, and would wait to submit the latter to the single body, he said.

The Committee had to weigh the pros against the cons, some of which could be far-fetched but still related to the change, and all possible consequences in the short and long term. There were a number of alternatives available, including: to continue along the established paths; the creation of different Chambers within the Committees that would deal with the backlog of the different reports; to strengthen individual communications or petitions in order to move ahead in the process of dealing with them; to envisage a creation of a single body to deal with individual communications that would bring together the four Committees that received such communications; to strengthen the procedure of follow-up to recommendations of the different Committees; and to clarify the relationship between the treaty bodies and the future Human Rights Council in order to keep duplication of work to a minimum and to ensure a complementarity between the two.

Committee Experts then raised numerous other issues and points of interest, including the weaknesses of the Committee, as some issues were not treated with as much attention as they should be, as Experts could not deal fully with all issues all the time, and instead this often fell to the Secretariat; that the transition period held the greatest risk for all the bodies, as it might significantly weaken the bodies, both individually and collectively; the speed of the process as a whole; how would the process go ahead, whether it would be on the basis of the opinions of the legal experts who regulated the work of the Committees; how would the new human rights body be constituted, and whether it would contain Experts - and how would these be selected, and how long would their mandate be; that the reform was a consequence of the financial crises that the United Nations went through in the 1980s, and that it was important to bear this in mind; was it possible, especially in the Committee’s capacity as a body of Experts, to have some effect on the vision and approach of the Secretary-General and the High Commissioner of the reform process; and that one of the major gaps and problems with the treaty bodies was the insufficient and profound lack of knowledge of the functioning of the concluding observations when these were implemented.

In concluding remarks on the discussion, Mr. Sicilianos said he could not sum up a discussion that had had such a wealth of details. Everyone agreed that the treaty body system needed to be strengthened. The problem of racial discrimination, which was one of the most important of these times, and which should not be watered down, made it necessary to hear the opinions of many of those involved, including non-governmental organizations. It was vital to hear from all of these when preparing for reform. Regarding the criticism of the High Commissioner of the treaty bodies, the general feeling was that the response that should be given was that a single body would not be sufficient to cover all issues that were covered by the current bodies. Nobody had questioned the need to continue to progress with the reform process. The Secretariat itself should be strengthened in order to better serve the Committees.

A single body should be set up to hear communications, and to follow-up recommendations, as this would increase effectiveness, which had been an issue of importance for many speakers. The link with the Human Rights Committee also needed to be strengthened. From a technical point of view, the question was relatively clear. If the Member States were ready to move towards a single body, the issue under discussion was whether an additional Protocol was required, one that would settle a number of the specific problems, and which would be relatively difficult to negotiate, and there was a risk of seeing the actual system crumble whilst all waited for the changes to take place.


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