As the Human Rights Council convenes today, all attention is on Geneva in the hope that this new body will prove a true and effective advocate for those who face abuse of their human rights. As non-governmental organizations, we try to bring those voices to the Council, and to urge you not to disappoint those expectations. In implementing Resolution 60/251, this body must build on the successes of the Commission on Human Rights, and address its shortcomings. I cannot be timid, and it must be quick. The Commission’s problem was not that it dealt with too many situations of human rights violations, but too few, too late. By meeting more frequently, and with the ability to convene special sessions more easily, the Council has the tools to answer the cries of human rights victims more effectively.
The issues that require this body’s attention are numerous, and far exceed the time available in this session. We applaud the High Commissioner for Human Rights for her impressive and balanced report which signaled some of the situations which would require the attention of the Council in the coming months. That list includes Uzbekistan, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Iraq, Myanmar, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Sudan, Somalia, and the abuse of human rights in counter-terrorism, as well as countries with field offices, such as Colombia and Nepal. The situations in many other countries, such as Iran and Ethiopia, also need to be addressed. This body will need to use all the tools available to it given the diversity of the human rights situations it must address. Technical assistance and capacity building are essential components of that strategy, and cooperative dialogue is crucial. But we cannot deny that there are human rights situations which cannot be tackled only by cooperative means -this Council should not forget the Commission’s role in addressing violations in apartheid South Africa, for example. Two human rights situations identified by the Chair for discussion today -the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Sudan- also illustrate this.
This preliminary discussion is useful to highlight some of the situations that will require further attention by this body in short order. However, this discussion also illustrates where this Council needs to improve on the work of the Commission. We cannot seriously address five topics of such diversity and complexity in the limited time available today. And unfortunately, the list of topics for today is only a small piece of pressing work which faces this Council -a quick count by our organizations arrived at no less than two dozen pressing human rights situations which deserve this body’s prompt response. We call on the Human Rights Council to put those who face human rights abuses at the center of your agenda, and to ensure that the human rights situations noted for discussion today receive real attention and effective responses tomorrow.
International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Human Rights Watch (HRW), Commission internationale de juristes