26 July 2005
[presented by Penny Parker, Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights]
Several NGOs met this weekend to discuss Mrs. Hampsons paper and the organization of work of the Sub-Commission. We would like to offer these brief comments.
1. We support the new ideas put forward in Mrs. Hampsons paper, especially the summarizing of the debate after item 2 is complete, and the attaching of the summary records to the chairpersons statement to the next Commission.
2. We would like to strongly underscore the importance to NGOs of item 2 to the Sub-CommissionŐs agenda.
3. We also think item 2 adds value to the Sub-Commissions work in identifying new trends, patterns, and interrelationships between different themes in the other portions of the Sub-Commissions agenda. It can vitally support the think tank aspect of the Sub-Commissions mandate.
4. We support the idea of actions that can be taken on country situations which are urgent -- such as the chairpersons letter Mrs. Hampson proposes that could be sent to the Commission or Expanded Bureau. Another idea might be to invite the Expanded Bureau to return to the Sub-Commission at the end of the session, or the end of item 2, to be briefed in open meeting on these priorities.
5. To keep item 2 more relevant, we would urge that working papers be assigned and authored under item 2, within the mandate limits the Sub-Commission has. For example, perhaps a retrospective analysis could be done of urgent human rights violations in the past, evaluating what happened, whether the available UN machinery worked, and whether any gaps or overlaps can be identified from the experience. An examples of this type of retrospective paper might be Srebenica.