Today marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dag Hammarjskold, an early Secretary General of the UN, from Sweden, famous for his efforts at peace making and peace building. There's a public display on the ground floor of the Sub-Commission building captioned "Peace in Mind" commemorating Hammarskjold's life and contribution to UN peacekeeping. The two photos on this page show parts of the display.
The Sub-Commission today continued to deliberate under Item 3 of its agenda, on the subject of the administration of justice, rule of law and democracy.
Mr. Emmanuel Decaux (expert from France) presented his progress report on his study of universal implementation of human rights treaties. The study was well received, with many comments in the interactive debate after his presentation. Some experts (Rivkin from the US and Alfonso Martinez from Cuba) expressed concern about a reference in the study to states that had not ratified some of the core human rights treaties, emphasizing the sovereignty of a state to ratify or not ratify in its own discretion.
In the afternoon session both the Working Group on Administration of Justice and the Working Group on Transnational Corporations met for their second and final sessions. This meant that persons trying to attend both sessions were going back and forth between the two rooms, leading to a decrease in attendance for both groups. However, since there will be one less working day in this year's session (because of the Swiss national holiday on Monday), this scheduling of parallel working group sessions was deemed to be the best of available options for how to cover the Sub-Commission's busy agenda.
The Administration of Justice Working Group at its session discussed the problems and mechanisms relating to transitional justice, and decided to make this topic one of the main agenda items next year (together with the topic of an effective remedy under human rights law). Members and NGOs agreed to prepare several working papers in connection with these two major themes for next year's session.
The Working Group on Transnational Corporations, chaired this year by Mrs. Warzazi (expert from Morocco), also had a good debate, and several members agreed to prepare working papers for next year's session.
Monday is a holiday. The Sub-Commission will next meet Tuesday, when it will take up the topic of item 4 under its agenda, economic, social & cultural rights.