FIDH
Oral statement in Working Group on Review of Mandates
18 April 2007
Thank you Mr. Facilitator,
The International Federation for Human Rights thanks the African Group for the presentation of its draft CoC.
We reiterate today that we have always felt that there is no need for a new CoC, as the conduct of mandate holders is already subject to the GA 2002 Regulations. Also any possible new Code of Conduct must adress lacunae and be two ways: the behaviour of States should also be addressed.
However we do approve the statement in the presentation of the Code today which specifies that the objective of the CoC is to set up ethical rules, and that its character must be general.
In the draft CoC as presented by the African Group, we identify numerous provisions which regulate the working methods of the mandate-holders which would weaken the protective capacities of the special procedures. In this regard, we would like to raise four brief points:
1. The notion of “urgency” is narrowed in the draft Code. While the current practice outlined in the June 2006 Manual of Procedures, defines as “urgent” a situation where a human rights violation is “imminent” or “ongoing”, the draft CoC narrows the definition to only “massive violations” of human rights.
The aim of the Special Procedures is to enable a prompt reaction from States in order to prevent human rights violations. With the draft CoC, the preventive mechanisms would only work for “massive” violations: what about a person on death row facing imminent execution? the Rapporteur would not be able to use the urgent procedures to alert the concerned State and prevent the execution. Moreover, specific procedures already exist for “massive” violations: the 1503 and 1235 procedures, both of which are currently maintained within the Council.
2. The draft Code limits the possibility for Special Procedures to communicate their findings to the public:
it calls upon mandate holders to avoid any declarations “that would harm the constructive dialogue” with the concerned States. How is the notion of “constructive dialogue” measurable?
The discretion of the use of public versus private diplomacy should not be dictated by States upon Special Procedures.
Furthermore, the draft Code asks mandate holders to communicate the conclusions to the State concerned AND the Council prior to disclosure. It is not obvious that adding an additional hurdle in waiting for the Council to have been informed would limit the preventive capacity of such public declarations?
3. The draft Code narrows the immediate alert to Governments
The current rule for the communication to the Government is that Special Procedures should send their allegations to the Permanent Mission of the concerned State in Geneva. Currently in cases of “urgent situations”, mandate holders can communicate “simultaneously” to the concerned authority and to the Permanent Mission. This reinforces the preventive and protection capacity in case of an imminent or ongoing violation. Yet the draft CoC eliminates this practice. Thus, closing hours of Permanent Missions in Geneva, or the overburden of small missions would be hampering the urgent communication of the allegation to the concerned authority. Furthermore, we do not believe that the wish for “respect of the diplomatic channel” to exclusively address the Permanent Mission, which the distinguished Ambassador of Algeria refers in response to the proposal of the Coordination Committee, should be sacrificed over urgent action to respect human rights.
4. Absent from the Code is the protection of witnesses and victims. Suffice it that I end with a most flagrant example on 10 March this year when a woman in the Philippines was shot dead after having submitted her testimony to the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings on the occasion of his visit there last month.
Thank you for your attention.