CONFÉRENCE DE PRESSE DU PRÉSIDENT DE LA SOUS-COMMISSION DES DROITS DE L'HOMME (en anglais)

During the Press Conference, which was held, subsequent to the end of the fifty-eighth and final session of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, the Chairperson of the session, Marc Bossuyt, said the Human Rights Council had decided that the Sub-Commission would have a session this summer, and had requested it to explain its vision and make recommendations on the future. That was the most important task the Sub-Commission had been given at this session, and it had made recommendations to this effect in a decision on Implementation of Human Rights Council Decision 2006/102 and Other Related Issues (A.HRC/Sub.1/58/CRP.13). It was the opinion of the Sub-Commission, expressed in the document and by consensus, that the Human Rights Council would need the assistance of an independent, collegial and standing expert body of elected Experts, nominated by Governments and voted on by the Human Rights Council.

The present activities of the Sub-Commission should continue, Mr. Bossuyt said. One of these activities was the work of the Working Groups, including on indigenous peoples, slavery, minorities, and the Social Forum. The Sub-Commission was also involved in the 1503 Procedure. The future expert body should be composed of at least 26 experts, and ideally of two more to have a better geographical distribution, but a smaller body would not reflect the variety of opinions. On one issue there had been no agreement during the session, and this was with regards to the universal periodic review, on which there was a variety of opinions as to how the expert input to that could be organised.

About 28 resolutions had been adopted by consensus, and what the future was, Mr. Bossuyt said, the Sub-Commission had no idea. The Human Rights Council had called this the “last” session. The Council was confronted with a lot of uncertainties, and the Sub-Commission tried to help by making substantial recommendations.

In response to a question in French on why Mr. Bossuyt thought that there was a continuing need for an expert body, Mr. Bossuyt referred the speakers to pages 23 to 26 of the above-mentioned document, which explained what were the concrete results of the work of the Sub-Commission. Almost all the work of the now-defunct Commission on Human Rights had originated from the Sub-Commission, and to believe that the Human Rights Council would not need Experts to continue to contribute to its work was somewhat presumptuous. It would be impossible for the Human Rights Council to undertake its work without the work of Experts, and it would realise this at some point. A political body needed to accomplish certain tasks, but others were confided to the expert body. The Experts of the Sub-Commission believed that the modifications brought to the 1503 resolution, and therefore its effects on the 1503 Procedure had been a failure. The concrete proposal of the Sub-Commission was to come back to the system that had been in existence before the reforms of 2000. To feed the inter-governmental body that was the Commission and was now the Council, there was a need for an independent, collegial, stable and elected body, Mr. Bossuyt repeated.

In response to a question on whether the Human Rights Council would examine the Sub-Commission’s recommendation at the next session, and whether any changes had been suggested with regards to the participation of NGOs and other observers, Mr. Bossuyt said the decision would be on the agenda of the Human Rights Council at its upcoming session in September. General Assembly resolution 60/251 stipulated that the reform process should be accomplished within one year, and this year had begun in June 2006. Either the Council would take a decision in the coming months, or other transitional measures would have to be taken, but Mr. Bossuyt could not pronounce on this. It was not because the United Nations was in a transitional period that there was no violation of human rights, and the situation required constant review. Uncertainty had been created by the replacement of the Commission by the Council, and nobody could be sure that this would end soon. However, the Sub-Commission hoped that due consideration would be given to its decision. No changes had been proposed with regards to the participation of NGOs, and any future expert body should share the same openness that had been a hallmark of the Sub-Commission in this regard.

On a question on what assessment Mr. Bossuyt had of the first session of the Human Rights Council, he said it was a difficult question to answer, and it was much too early to assess the situation. There had been a very positive two weeks session of the Council, during which it had decided the Sub-Commission would have a session later on in the year, and this was already a positive step. The Council had also adopted two new norms and principles, both of which had their origin in the Sub-Commission, which was to the credit of the latter body and its work.

Responding to a further question on what had happened to the Sub-Commission’s work on transnational corporations, and should the Human Rights Council take up the issue of sanctions, Mr. Bossuyt said he had written, in 2000, a working paper on the adverse effects of sanctions on the enjoyment of human rights, which had not been welcomed by the representative of the United States in the Sub-Commission. The view expressed in that document was that economic sanctions were very good if they had results in a short time. If by imposing economic sanctions in Iran, there could be the abolition of the nuclear programme, then they should be imposed, but sanctions should not run on for ten years as had been the case in Iraq, with greatly negative effects on the population. However, this was very unlikely, as the Government of Iran was not likely to change its policy. Economic sanctions rarely had the required effect, and were usually used to impress the media.

On transnational corporations, Antoanella-Iulia Motoc, Sub-Commission Expert, said that this was a long-standing Working Group in the Sub-Commission, and guidelines had been written but not adopted in 2003. The Sub-Commission considered that it had to continue the consideration of this matter, although Experts had differing positions on this. Responding to a follow-up on this question, she said there was a certain fragmentation of human rights law, and maybe the reform of human rights would ensure a certain communication between bodies and experts working in the same field but that had different visions on the same topic. Among the Working Group on Transnational Corporations, there were already different visions.