MINNESOTA ADVOCATES FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
310 Fourth Avenue South, #1000, Minneapolis, MN 55415-1012 USA
Tel. 612/341-3302 Fax 612/341-2971, Email: hrights@mnadvocates.org
Main Website: www.mnadvocates.org
Minnesota Advocates’ Website of Sub-Commission 2004 developments: http://www.projecteleanor.com/2004
27 July 2004
Thank you Mr. Chairman.
Last year we spoke about the state of item 2. A good debate occurred. But nothing changed.
Last year we also noted that even the UN Press Office was removing mention of countries from the headlines of its daily press releases under this item. This year we would like to thank the UN Press office for changing this practice in 2003, by returning to the listing of countries named by NGOs. We hope this practice continues.
The number of NGO's attending has declined substantially-- 498 persons last year, compared with 674 the year before --more than a 25% drop in one year. Government participants also dropped by 17%. 2003 also marked the year when the fewest number of expert members spoke during the item 2 debate itself (only 10 of 25 possible members).
These numbers seem to indicate that, while the Sub-Commission continues to take up important topics, overall interest in these proceedings has declined considerably since 2000 when the Sub-Commission lost its right to vote on country resolutions.
Other evidence of the decline in item 2: There were no Item 2 resolutions (except one resolution which actually seemed misplaced, since it ended up renaming item 6(c) of the agenda). There were no documents, no working papers, no working groups, no studies. There were only five NGO documents filed under item 2 last year. Were there summary records of item 2? Yes, but as per the usual practice they alternated in French and English, were not available in the other UN languages, and had no summary or analytical component. The summary records were issued several months after the session and were not submitted or referred to in the annual report to the Commission.
Just because country resolutions can not be voted on, does not mean item 2 is dead. For example in past years, when there was still a right to vote on countries, the Sub-Commission annually adopted a resolution on human rights defenders. Some paragraphs of this resolution mentioned specific countries, but many paragraphs did not. The Sub-Commission usually commented that it was alarmed by the number of cases of violations against human rights defenders that had come to its attention. We would submit that this resolution is still important under item 2 even if specific countries are not named. We would hope you would continue to express concern for the violations against human rights defenders, which are many and ongoing, and which in many cases involve persons who are associated with NGOs in this room.
Perhaps means can be explored to improve the summary records under this item 2. We note the Commission’s request to “bring to the attention of the Commission any situation which it had reasonable cause to believe revealed a consistent pattern of violations…” This March 1967 Commission resolution is actually cited within the terminology of the Sub-Commission’s existing item 2.
What is a summary record for these purposes? There is no rule or mandated structure as far as we know for what a summary record must look like. Perhaps the Sub-Commission could decide even this year to ask its current Rapporteur to explore different techniques for focusing on the item 2 portion of the debate so that the format and style of the summary record can better highlight these issues.
We would strongly encourage the Sub-Commission to appoint this session an expert or group of experts (perhaps regionally represented) to prepare a joint working paper on improving item 2.
We do not think a series of thematic resolutions is really the answer. That just turns item 2 into something that looks like all of the other agenda items, with some risk of overlapping with those other items.
Please note that the Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, together with Geneva for Human Rights and hopefully other NGOs, will host an NGO forum this Thursday, at 2:00 p.m. in Room 22. Everyone is welcome – NGOs, experts, and governments -- to discuss the state of item 2 and possible methods of improvement. We will conduct a short series of straw votes on how to improve item 2. We also plan to compile an analytical summary of this Forum by the end of this session which could be submitted to whichever expert or experts are asked by the Sub-Commission to study this matter further.
There are some interesting phrases in the existing terminology of item 2 which we think warrant a new look. First, the phrase “including policies of racial discrimination and segregation”. That term, “segregation,” has taken on new meaning recently – here we’re thinking of physical segregation -- walls, fences, fences around refugee camps, exclusionary zones at airports, etc. This could be a very interesting and timely examination of an old phrase in a new context.
Another phrase in the text of item 2 says “in all countries, with particular reference to colonial and other dependent countries and territories”. What does “dependent countries and territories” mean in this context? Again, there would seem to be a new, emerging context to the idea of “dependent countries and territories” in current world events.
Another idea: Could one or more members of the Sub-Commission perhaps reserve some of their speaker’s time at the end of the item 2 debate to synthesize what they have heard and to read into the record their assessment of situations where there is “reasonable cause to believe [they] reveal a consistent pattern of violations of human rights”? This is the mandate the Commission has given the Sub-Commission since 1967. If the Sub-Commission can’t synthesize those consistent patterns of violations into country specific resolutions, why not in statements into the record itself?
To conclude Mr. Chairman, these are a few suggestions we have for improving item 2. We are sure there are many more ideas. We welcome participation in the NGO forum on this subject this Thursday at 2 p.m. in room 22 and we sincerely invite all interested participants to attend.
Thank you Mr. Chairman.