HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE DISCUSSES DRAFT GENERAL COMMENT ON THE RIGHT TO LIFE
The Human Rights Committee this morning held a half-day discussion on the draft General Comment on Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on the right to life. The General Comment will replace earlier General Comments No. 6 and 14 adopted by the Committee in 1982 and 1984 respectively.
During the discussion, Committee Experts said that there were three areas where the right to life should be reaffirmed: the death penalty, women’s rights, and the right to life in the context of armed conflicts. The abolitionist spirit of the Covenant should be followed, as well as optimism that today most States were at least open to establishing a moratorium on the death penalty.
Article 6 states that every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by the law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life. In countries which have not abolished the death penalty, sentence of death may be imposed only for the most serious crimes in accordance with the law in force at the time of the commission of the crime. This penalty can only be carried out pursuant to a final judgement rendered by a competent court.
The next public meeting of the Committee will take place at 3 p.m. this afternoon when it will consider the fifth periodic report of Iraq CCPR/C/IRQ/5.
Statements
FABIÁN OMAR SALVIOLI, Committee Chairperson, noted that the draft General Comment would present useful guidelines for not only the Committee but also for States in policy-making. A huge amount of consultations with civil society and States parties was involved in the process, and he thanked the Co-Rapporteurs.
YUVAL SHANY, Committee Rapporteur for the General Comment on Article 6, in his opening remarks, said that the methodology in preparing the draft involved comprehensive coverage of the output of the Committee, all the views in which Article 6 was mentioned and all the concluding observations. The Co-Rapporteurs tried to enrich the draft by looking at the work of other treaty bodies and Special Procedures, as well as the practice of other regional human rights bodies, such as the European, African and Inter-American regional systems. The Co-Rapporteurs had already received some comments from Committee Members and other Special Procedure mandate holders. Those comments had led them to introduce some terminology changes with a view to harmonize the language. The Co-Rapporteurs had uploaded the draft General Comment online in order to allow interested persons to follow the discussion. But, the Committee would not act on any communications received until the first reading of the draft text was adopted, Mr. Shany concluded.
NIGEL RODLEY, Committee Rapporteur for the General Comment on Article 6, in his opening remarks, said that unlike in the previous drafting of General Comments, the first draft of the document was now available to the public from the beginning. The Committee was not at the stage of taking on board any materials and comments from non-governmental organizations and various stakeholders. This was the most transparent process ever held by the Human Rights Committee. After the first reading, anyone would be able to submit material and comments to the Human Rights Committee.
Discussion
Committee Members endorsed the focus of the draft General Comment on the negative prohibition and the positive duty of States to protect the right to life. They noted that it was time to take stock of the jurisprudence of Article 6, bearing in mind that the first decade of the twenty-first century brought various kinds of challenges to human rights protection, such as global terrorism and the resulting security approach to human rights and unilateralism by States parties. Rather than combatting the sources of misery, the international community was dealing with its symptoms. The Human Rights Committee should thus reaffirm the primacy of the right to life as primordial, in line with the spirit of the Covenant. There were three areas where the right to life should be reaffirmed: the death penalty, women’s rights, and the right to life in the context of armed conflicts. The abolitionist spirit of the Covenant should be followed, as well as optimism that today most States were at least open to establishing a moratorium on the death penalty.
The right of women to freely dispose of their bodies and abortion was a major achievement and the Committee should not make compromises on that in order to ensure true equality between women and men. The criminalization of abortion led to hazardous conditions affecting women’s health. There were 22 million abortions practiced every year under risky conditions, leading to 47,000 deaths. Those deaths could have been avoided had States honoured their obligations under Article 6. Some Committee Members noted that paragraph 8 on the right to life of frozen embryos, sperm, stem cells or human clones was controversial. There was a need to recognize that there were many opinions on the right to life, stemming from different cultures.
As for the right to life in the context of armed conflicts, Committee Members reminded that the proliferation of nuclear weapons posed particular challenges. The production, possession and use of nuclear weapons had to be forbidden and qualified as crimes against humanity. Regarding the use of lethal force in military operations, paragraph 13 should be strengthened in order to stress that military operations should be consistent with international humanitarian law obligations of States. It was the duty of States to be as transparent as possible in ordering targeted killings by autonomous robotics.
Some Committee Members noted that in the analysis of the right to life, there was a need to move from a biased and narrow interpretation. It was necessary to ensure that people lived in dignity, rather than just to be able to breathe and walk. The link between the right to life and economic, social and cultural rights should be emphasized because economic, social and cultural rights constituted prerequisites for the right to life itself. The draft General Comment should rectify the 1986 gap between civil and political rights on the one hand, and economic, social and cultural rights on the other hand. At the same time, other Committee Members reminded that Article 6 called for a discussion on the right to life as such, rather than for a discussion on creating conditions for dignified life. There was no need to go any further than that. A dignified existence was connected with the right to life, but it was not the purpose of the General Comment.
Committee Members agreed that the imposition of the death penalty should be governed by the abolitionist spirit of the Covenant. The concept of the most serious crimes should be applied restrictively, and it was important to underline the conformity of the imposition of the death penalty with all provisions of the Covenant. As for enforced disappearances, Committee Members suggested a separate paragraph on enforced disappearances since the draft text referred to them throughout.
It was noted that the public would have a formal opportunity to make comments and contributions only after the first reading, even though the draft text was available to the public online. Civil society consultations would take place after the first reading of the draft General Comment. As for the language used in the draft, some translations were not entirely agreeable. It would be good to have detailed texts of the draft available in both English and French, Committee Members concluded.
During the paragraph-by-paragraph discussion, Committee Members noted that paragraph 3 should retain the reference to terrorism since many countries had re-introduced the death penalty on the basis of charges of terrorism. As for the reference of paragraph 3 to a “dignified existence”, some Committee Members wondered whether it was appropriate since it could go too much into the economic, social and cultural rights dimension. Other Committee Members strongly supported the inclusion of that reference because good health and freedom from abject poverty and hunger were prerequisites for the right to life.
Concluding Remarks
FABIÁN OMAR SALVIOLI, Chairperson of the Committee, noted that the discussion on the right to life should be guided by the framework and spirit of the Covenant, rather than by individual views of Committee Members.
YUVAL SHANY, Committee Rapporteur for the General Comment on Article 6, welcomed all the interventions by Committee Members, noting that the points raised already provided a preview for the future paragraph-by-paragraph discussion. He explained that the mission of the Co-Rapporteurs was to provide a text that captured the past work of the Committee and that could be adopted by consensus. He agreed that the Committee should not be stuck in the past, but that it should develop its own jurisprudence. The draft text had already tried to move beyond the existing jurisprudence, Mr. Shany concluded.
NIGEL RODNEY, Committee Rapporteur for the General Comment on Article 6, underlined that the basic role of the General Comment and of the first draft was to present the starting position of the Committee. The Committee should not start from a clean slate. However, that did not mean that everything done before was frozen in time and that the Committee could not evolve its views. The text did not reflect the individual views of the Co-Rapporteurs. It was about how the Committee as a whole perceived the meaning of the Covenant, which involved certain self-discipline. He warned against falling into the trap of recognizing that anything undermining human dignity automatically undermined the right to life.
For use of the information media; not an official record
CT15/035E