AD HOC COMMITTEE ESTABLISHED TO STRENGTHEN CONVENTION ON SAFETY OF UN STAFF OPENS WEEK-LONG HEADQUARTERS SESSION

Ad Hoc Committee on Scope of                               

 Legal Protection under Convention                         

 on Safety of UN Personnel                                 

AD HOC COMMITTEE ESTABLISHED TO STRENGTHEN CONVENTION ON SAFETY

OF UN STAFF OPENS WEEK-LONG HEADQUARTERS SESSION

The Ad Hoc Committee, established by the General Assembly to strengthen the existing legal regime for security of international staff, opened its week-long Headquarters session this morning.

Concerned at the rising toll of casualties and increasing dangers faced by United Nations staff, the Assembly established the Ad Hoc Committee on the Scope of Legal Protection under the Convention on the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personnel by resolution 56/89 of December 2001.  It authorized it to consider the recommendations made by the Secretary-General in his report on measures to strengthen and enhance the protective legal regime for international staff (document A/55/637).  That document identified the limitations of the 1994 Convention and stressed the need to deal more effectively with the protection of personnel operating in hostile and volatile environments.

The Convention was adopted by the General Assembly in December 1994 and entered into force on 15 January 1999.  It prohibits any attack against United Nations and associated personnel, their equipment and premises, and imposes upon States parties the obligation to ensure the safety and security of such personnel.

Under its current terms, however, the Convention is not applicable to operations that have not been declared to be exceptionally risky by the General Assembly or the Security Council.  In practice, no declaration has ever been made to that effect.  The Convention is also not applicable to humanitarian non-governmental organizations which have not concluded “implementing/partnership agreements” with the United Nations or its specialized agencies, though in practice they are in no less a need for such protection.  The Convention is finally not applicable, and was never intended to apply, to humanitarian non-United Nations operations.  As an optimal solution, the Secretary-General proposed a Protocol, which would dispose of the need for a “declaration” and dispense with the need for establishment of a link between a humanitarian non-governmental organization and the United Nations as a condition for protection under the Convention.

With staff of United Nations offices, humanitarian agencies and non-governmental organizations still targeted in various areas of the world, despite the measures adopted by the United Nations, the Assembly reconvened the Ad Hoc Committee in 2002 and 2003.  This April, the Committee is meeting with a mandate to expand the scope of legal protection under the Convention, including by means of a legal instrument.  It also decided that the work would continue during the fifty-ninth session within the framework of a working group of the Sixth (Legal) Committee.

Among the issues under discussion is a proposal by New Zealand, included as an annex to the Committee’s report on its March 2003 session (document A/58/52), which endorses the Secretary-General’s recommendation regarding a protocol that would remove the declaration-of-risk trigger mechanism and apply the Convention automatically to all United Nations operations without distinction.  To that end, New Zealand’s draft would replace the current definition of “United Nations operations” and introduce a series of provisions governing the relationship between the Protocol and Convention.

At the opening of the session this morning, the Ad Hoc Committee adopted its provisional agenda for the session and elected Mahmoud Samy (Egypt) as its Rapporteur.  The elections of two Vice-Chairmen were postponed pending consultations within regional groups.

The next meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee will be announced.

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