HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE OPENS ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVENTH SESSION
Adopts its Agenda and Programme of Work

The Human Rights Committee this morning opened its one hundred and eleventh session, hearing an address by Simon Walker, Chief of Section in the Human Rights Treaty Division at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and adopting its agenda and programme of work.

Mr. Walker congratulated Committee members whose terms had been extended and expressed gratitude to those whose terms were coming to an end. Regarding the right to privacy in the context of surveillance in the digital age, Mr. Walker said that the contents of the report which had now been finalized should help identify the gaps and possible courses of action to ensure that the rights held by people offline were also protected online. The Petitions Unit had begun producing a treaty body case law note, summarizing highlights of recent developments in the jurisprudence of all treaty bodies on individual cases.

Regarding the abolition of the death penalty, the Office of the High Commissioner had recently welcomed ratifications of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by El Salvador, Gabon and Poland, while other States had made positive steps towards ratification. Despite those successes, a worrying number of States continued to apply the death penalty on children in their legislation, and over the previous year, 14 States had executed child offenders.

Mr. Walker said that in line with General Assembly resolution 68/268, The Committee had been granted extra weeks of plenary time in 2015, which would be used to reduce its backlog, in particular with respect to communications. The resolution had been seen as the sign of the commitment of human rights treaty bodies to further develop their work as a system. All Committees should consider making the Simplified Reporting Procedure available after 1 January 2015. Progress achieved by the treaty bodies in achieving greater efficiency and effectiveness in their work should be reported back to the General Assembly every two years.

During the brief morning meeting, a new member of the Committee, Dheerujlall Seetulsingh (Mauritius), took a solemn oath.

A member of the Committee said that he hoped that other treaty bodies would also make simplified reporting procedures available. The approval of extra resources for treaty bodies was a welcome development, another member said. Such efforts ought to continue, and the assigned resources should indeed be used for the work of the treaty bodies and not diluted in other fora.
The Committee then adopted the agenda and programme of work for the session.
The Chairperson of the Working Group on communications informed the Committee that the Working Group, composed of nine members, had met the previous week. It had analyzed 33 cases, out of which one had been considered inadmissible, on three the Working Group recommended two different options to the Committee, and 29 were to be examined on merit. The report of the Working Group was then adopted.

When the Committee next meets in public at 3 p.m., it will start its consideration of the sixth periodic report of Chile (CCPR/C/CHL/6). During its three week session, the Committee will consider the reports of Chile, Sudan, Malawi, Georgia, Ireland and Japan.