Thursday, 21 June 2007
THE UN HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL: ONE YEAR ON

After a challenging inaugural year, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a package of working methods and procedures on 18 June 2007 , its one-year anniversary. Agreement on the text was reached, without a vote, just minutes before the midnight deadline set by the General Assembly in resolution 60/251, which established the Council. The package sets out how the Council will conduct the Universal Periodic Review, the new mechanism envisaged as a means of scrutinising the human rights records of member states, and how its complaints mechanism and its system of independent human rights experts will work. Click here to read the document in full.

In a statement on 20 June, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the text's foundations for a "strong and meaningful Universal Periodic Review", which he said sends a clear message that "no country, big or small, will be immune from scrutiny". But he also stated that he was "disappointed" at the Council's decision to single out one specific region – the Occupied Palestinian Territories – for regular consideration.

Human Rights Council President Luis Alfonso de Alba described the text as a "compromise". During the negotiations countries had clashed in particular over the controversial proposal to establish a ‘code of conduct’ for the Special Procedures, the system of independent human rights experts widely regarded as one of the Council’s greatest strengths. It is expected that the Special Procedures will be seriously constrained by the code of conduct, which Amnesty International has criticised for containing "hastily drafted and imprecise provisions".

Lord Hannay, Chair of UNA-UK and a former ambassador to the UN, has written an article taking stock of the first year of the Human Rights Council. Lord Hannay notes the criticisms levelled at the Council’s election procedures, which – though tighter than those of the body the Council was set up to replace – still do not prevent countries with poor human rights records from becoming members. But he also argues that “an obsession with these membership issues is obscuring the need for perseverance on issues of substance”.

Lord Hannay concludes that, while the new Council has flaws, it constitutes an improvement over its predecessor, the Commission on Human Rights. As for the Council’s record to date, Lord Hannay writes, “The honest answer is Zhou Enlai’s comment on the French Revolution: ‘It is too early to say.’”

Click here to read Lord Hannay's article in full.