PRESS CONFERENCE ON WORK OF HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE

Press Briefing

PRESS CONFERENCE ON WORK OF HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE

Adoption by the Human Rights Committee of a general comment on Article 3 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights was a major achievement of this year's session that would help to mainstream the gender perspective into all international supervisory organs, the Chairperson of the Human Rights Committee, Cecilia Medina Quiroga of Chile, told correspondents at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon.

She said that Article 3 of the Covenant established the equal right of men and women to the enjoyment of all rights in the treaty. The achievement of the Committee was to read the rights in the Covenant from a gender perspective to see how human rights could be violated if the victim was a woman. As an example, she quoted the right to personal liberty (Article 9 of the Covenant), which was usually interpreted in terms of arbitrary detention. This year, the Committee read deprivation of the freedom of a woman to leave a certain place as a violation of that article. Therefore, if a woman was prevented from leaving her husband's house without his consent -- through customary or written laws -- it was interpreted as a violation of Article 9. The Committee applied such an approach to all the articles of the Covenant. General comments were meant to provide States with guidelines for reporting to the Committee in the future. That was a major contribution to the human rights cause.

She explained that the Human Rights Committee was a body of 18 independent experts elected by 145 States parties to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Among the functions of the Committee was the examination of States’ reports, as well as individual communications. Individuals could directly address the Committee when they believed that civil and political rights established by the Covenant had been violated and when they could not find redress in their own countries. The Committee held three sessions every year, and during this year's session, it had also considered State reports of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mongolia, Guyana and the United Kingdom's dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. The scheduled reports of Venezuela and Afghanistan could not be considered, because those countries had failed to appear. The Committee had also adopted a considerable number of decisions on individual petitions and considered its contribution to the Preparatory Committee for the World Conference against Racism.

Also addressing correspondents, the Vice-Chairperson of the Committee, Elizabeth Andreas Evatt of Australia, stressed that if the rights and dignity of a woman were denied, it was an affront to the rights and dignity of every human being. Everybody in the Committee had agreed on that.

Turning to the country reports, she said that all of them presented different sets of problems. For example, the Democratic Republic of the Congo was stricken by conflict. The country had many debts, and acts of violence against women were common. The country had serious challenges ahead in re- establishing peace and democracy. Impunity of offenders against human rights was among the issues.

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Guyana was struggling to build its democratic institutions and to overcome poverty, she continued. Certain tensions existed in the country, and the rights of the considerable indigenous population needed to be addressed. The Committee had considered poor conditions in prisons; long periods of pre-trial detention; and the failure of the country to establish an efficient justice system.

Regarding Mongolia, she said that after obtaining true independence, the country was trying to build its democratic and judicial institutions. Its progress towards democracy should be supported, as should its efforts to establish the true freedom of the individual.

The problems of human rights in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man -- under the British administration -- were different altogether, she said. There were some difficulties, including in the legal structure. The lack of possibility of enforcing rights in the courts was an issue. Legal provisions there were not in full compliance with all the provisions of the Covenant, and the Committee had raised quite a number of issues regarding those islands.

Asked how many communications had been considered during the session, Ms. Evatt said that the session would not end until tomorrow, so it was too early to say. On the whole, it would probably be a dozen.

Responding to a request to elaborate on “unenforceable rights”, Ms. Evatt said that the United Kingdom itself had recently adopted a human rights act under which courts would be able to make pronouncements on the compatibility of laws and programmes in the country with the European convention on human rights. Until then, it had not been possible throughout the whole of the United Kingdom to go to court to complain that one of the rights under an international convention to which the United Kingdom was a party had been violated. The United Kingdom human rights act would not apply to the Channel Islands, where many rights protected by international instruments could not be directly enforced by the courts. Perhaps they could be protected in other ways, but some remained without legal protection.

Asked to provide an example, she referred to the freedom of expression -- it might be necessary to go from the United Kingdom to a European system to uphold that right if it was unduly restricted. There was a range of cases in that respect, including those on homosexuality; on detention, particularly in connection with terrorism laws; and on corporal punishment.

Was rape mentioned in the Covenant as a violation of human rights? a correspondent asked. Ms. Medina said there was an international concept of human rights versus a national one. If somebody was assaulted in the street, it would not be called a violation of international law. A State was supposed to protect the personal integrity of a person. However, if a State failed to prosecute rape nationally, that would be a breach of its obligation to protect the personal integrity and the personal freedom of a woman. For that reason, rape did not need to be listed as a violation of human rights.

Ms. Evatt added that in cases where rape and domestic violence were a significant phenomenon, the State had an obligation under international law to

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take preventive and punitive measures. It also had a responsibility to provide support services to women. If it failed to do that, it was in breach of its obligations.

As rape was often used as a weapon of terror, shouldn't it be included in international instruments as a human rights violation? a correspondent asked. Ms. Medina answered that the Committee did not define crimes. Human rights were usually defined in general terms, so the concepts could evolve in time. The right to personal integrity was a human right. Assassination, for example, was not defined as a human rights violation, because it fell under the right to life.

Ms. Evatt said that torture and inhuman and degrading treatment were specifically and expressly mentioned in the Covenant. Many acts fell within those definitions.

Asked if rape should be specifically mentioned as a degrading crime, Ms.Evatt said that if the Covenant were drafted now, rape would be mentioned there. However, the Covenant had been drafted in the post-war era.

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