Some of our team have now arrived in Geneva. The rest will arrive next week. Today we obtained our credentials to the session from the small building across from the UN, called Les Feuillantines. We were also able to collect copies of some of the official UN documents distributed for the session and listen to the opening speeches.
The photo on the right is Room 18 where the Sub-Commission meets.
The UN building is on Lake Geneva, across the street from the International Red Cross Museum. The photo below is a sculpture at the Red Cross Museum, of Henri Dunant, founder of the International Red Cross. The Museum is well organized, with thoughtful exhibits -- well worth a visit if you ever get a chance.
Some early good news is that the Minnesota Advocates written submission on the Peru Truth & Reconciliation Commission is already available as an official UN document. It is document number E/CN.4/Sub.2/2003/NGO/18 and should be available shortly on the Internet. Our submitted copy (without UN logo and formatting) is now loaded on the speeches page of this site.
This afternoon the Working Group on the Administration of Justice held its first of two meetings. It will reconvene Wednesday afternoon. Item 7 of its agenda is a discussion of transitional justice through truth and reconciliation commissions. We will probably make a brief presentation of the Minnesota Advocates' Peru report on Wednesday during this Working Group meeting, but we will save the major presentation for next week when this subject will be discussed in the Sub-Commission plenary.
Also, most of the key UN reports are available already, both in paper copies and on the Internet, including:
As soon as there are direct links to each of the above, we will post those links on this site. Until then you can obtain advance edited versions of each of these documents at this UN location.
The Sub-Commission will now meet Tuesday morning (July 29) in private session, with the executive bureau of its parent body, the Commission on Human Rights. Tomorrow afternoon the official substantive proceedings begin, with a session from 3 to 6 p.m. devoted to item 2, country situations. After that, the rough timetable will look something like this:
Note: today we've also added some additional materials to the voting page, revised the working group information based on today's member appointments, and updated the documents listing.