PRESS BRIEFING BY HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE CHAIR

 

With its decisions and recommendations now gaining acceptance outside purely academic circles, the Geneva-based Human Rights Committee, in a timely move, will request the Government of the Sudan to compile a special report on its compliance with key articles of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the panel monitors.

Christine Chanet, a prominent French attorney and one of the Committee’s 18 independent human rights experts, told reporters at United Nations Headquarters in New York that Khartoum will have until the end of the year to respond to a request for further information on the Sudan’s efforts to give effect to the Covenant’s tenets concerning torture, slavery, the right to life, right to liberty and security of persons, freedom of movement, and equal legal protection.

The Committee’s work -- especially in areas such as monitoring press freedoms, fair trial procedures, and sensitizing States parties to the issue of domestic violence -- was now being referenced by other global rights bodies like the European Court of Human Rights, said Ms. Chanet, as she summed up the panel’s initial 2005 session.  The Committee meets three times a year, once in New York and twice in Geneva (July and October).

Ms. Chanet said that the Committee’s request on the Sudan’s compliance had not been its first:  the panel had previously requested a special report from another State party, the United States, on its detention practices and on particular elements of the Patriot Act, which Washington approved in the wake of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks.  The Committee expected to have that report ahead of its July session.

While in New York, the Committee, which also monitors implementation of the Covenant’s two Optional Protocols -- the first allows individuals to submit complaints to the panel, and the second seeks to abolish the death penalty -- considered reports submitted by the Governments of Kenya, Iceland, Mauritius, Uzbekistan and Greece.  It also heard from representatives of non-governmental organizations and intergovernmental organizations on the situation in those countries.

Joining Ms. Chanet today was the Committee’s Rapporteur, Ivan Shearer, expert from Australia who said that roughly two thirds of the Covenant’s 154 States parties had agreed to the Optional Protocol on communications, which were, in affect, appeals, brought by individuals who had exhausted all legal remedies in their own countries.

This session, the subjects of those complaints had ranged from matters concerning the rights of traditional reindeer herders in Nordic countries, to inhumane treatment in prison, and determination of refugee status.  Mr. Shearer added that the Committee was not truly a final court of appeal, because it did not review facts and evidence unless the experts determined that the courts of a particular State had acted arbitrarily.

He emphasized that the Committee was not to be confused with the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which the Secretary-General two weeks ago had recommended be abolished when he released his groundbreaking report “In Larger Freedom”.  The Commission, Mr. Shearer said, was represented by governments.  The experts on the Human Rights Committee served in their individual capacities.

The Committee was one of the United Nations’ seven treaty-monitoring bodies, along with the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD); the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW); Committee on the Rights of the Child; Committee against Torture; and the Committee on Migrant Workers.  The bodies were committed to implementing the Secretary-General’s request to better harmonize and streamline their work, he added.

To questions on the situation in Uzbekistan, Ms. Chanet confirmed that death sentences in that country were carried out in secret and that there was a general lack of information on prisoners or criminal procedures.  The country did not publish the number of inmates on death row nor the number of persons executed.  The Committee was also concerned that not only were executions carried out in secret, the condemned were often not notified of time or date, and family members were rarely notified -- even about the subsequent burial place of the condemned.

Asked how the Committee gathered its information, Ms. Chanet said the experts met with non-governmental organizations and other human rights advocates and then went to the respective governments with their findings.  A particular focus in recent years had been raising the issue of domestic violence with those groups.

Mr. Shearer added that the Committee did not have any fact-finding arm of its own.  Sometimes, States, to their credit, would admit that there were problems in some areas.  But, of course, others would gloss over gaps in implementation.  And, while the Committee did not take every charge laid by non-governmental organizations at face value, it had learned to trust certain leading advocacy groups. The Committee also gathered information from the other United Nations treaty bodies.

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