HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE CONSIDERS ITS METHODS OF WORK

20 October 1995

Press Release
HR/CT/435

HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE CONSIDERS ITS METHODS OF WORK

19951020 GENEVA, 18 October (UN Information Service) -- Restructuring of the procedure for considering initial and periodic reports of States parties to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights with a view to reducing the time spent in examining reports was one of the issues before the Human Rights Committee this afternoon.

It was proposed that more precise and comprehensive lists of issues should be prepared, so that very few oral questions would have to be added in the course of considering the report. Also, the practice of adopting lists of issues should be extended to initial reports. The Committee further stressed the need to deal with urgent situations of human rights violations and to request specific reports from the State party where human rights were jeopardized. Such reports, outside the normal reporting period, should be requested through special decisions of the Committee, members suggested.

With regard to long-overdue reports, they suggested that special decisions should be adopted to remind States parties which were in serious default of their obligations under the Covenant, particularly its article 40. According to that article, the States parties undertook to submit reports on the measures they had adopted to give effect to the rights recognized by the article.

Speakers stressed the role of country-rapporteurs, as bearers of specific responsibilities relating to the implementation of a decision taken by the Committee.

When the Committee meets again at 10 a.m. tomorrow, 19 October, it will take up the periodic report of the United Kingdom concerning Hong Kong.

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