Yesterday April the 7th we celebrated the second anniversary of the Universal Periodic Review. This new mechanism started exactly two years ago its first session with the review of Bahrain and Ecuador. 112 States and more than 9,000 recommendations later, the UPR is one country at a time, step by step, working to "promote and protect human rights in the darkest corners of the world".
From 17 to 19 March, the Human Rights Council (HRC) adopted Working Group Reports of States reviewed last December (session 6). Nine States had submitted their responses in writing but unfortunately not all in advance, as two addendums are still not available. Out of 1746 recommendations or cluster of recommendations made during session 6, 1169 were accepted (67%), 181 were rejected (10.3%) and 396 were left pending or with an unclear position (22.7%). These figures, which are not official nor definitive as we did not access all the addendums, are among the same lines as during sessions 1 to 5, respectively 65.8%, 13% and 19.2%.
During those adoptions, the HRC President started for the first time to ask States under Review (SuR) to identify recommendations that were accepted and those noted. Those requests for clarification were then also made by States such as Switzerland and Norway.
The three-day adoptions were followed by a general debate. Member-States, observers and NGOs took the floor to raise several issues pertaining to the process, among which were the speaker’s list, reporting under item 6, the responses to recommendations, the reasons for rejecting them and the second cycle. In addition, China, the United Kingdom, Canada, Colombia, the Czech Republic and the United Arab Emirates presented information on the implementation of recommendations in their country.
Finally, the Office of the High Commissioner just released the latest deadlines for the submission of information for NGOs concerning session 10, 11, and 12. They are respectively July 2010, November 2010 and March 2011.
On UPR-info.org, we have recently developed different pages and paragraphs to improve our information on the process. We have created a page on the HRC review which details the process and provides related documents. Another new page lists trainings and courses on the UPR held in Geneva and on the field to offer NGOs and other stakeholders the possibility to learn more about the process. Our page on the follow-up now contains concrete examples of best practices used by States. Finally, we have also enriched our paragraph on the lobbying for NGOs with detailed explanations on where, when and how to do it.
Following our launch on March 18, our database of UPR recommendations is now fully working and accessible on our website. We strongly encourage you to use it and give us your feedbacks in order to improve it and make it an essential tool for your work on the UPR.
From 17 to 19 March, the Human Rights Council (HRC) adopted Working Group Reports of States reviewed last December (session 6). Nine States had submitted their responses in writing but unfortunately not all in advance, as two addendums are still not available. Out of 1746 recommendations or cluster of recommendations made during session 6, 1169 were accepted (67%), 181 were rejected (10.3%) and 396 were left pending or with an unclear position (22.7%). These figures, which are not official nor definitive as we did not access all the addendums, are among the same lines as during sessions 1 to 5, respectively 65.8%, 13% and 19.2%.
During those adoptions, the HRC President started for the first time to ask States under Review (SuR) to identify recommendations that were accepted and those noted. Those requests for clarification were then also made by States such as Switzerland and Norway.
The three-day adoptions were followed by a general debate. Member-States, observers and NGOs took the floor to raise several issues pertaining to the process, among which were the speaker’s list, reporting under item 6, the responses to recommendations, the reasons for rejecting them and the second cycle. In addition, China, the United Kingdom, Canada, Colombia, the Czech Republic and the United Arab Emirates presented information on the implementation of recommendations in their country.
Finally, the Office of the High Commissioner just released the latest deadlines for the submission of information for NGOs concerning session 10, 11, and 12. They are respectively July 2010, November 2010 and March 2011.
On UPR-info.org, we have recently developed different pages and paragraphs to improve our information on the process. We have created a page on the HRC review which details the process and provides related documents. Another new page lists trainings and courses on the UPR held in Geneva and on the field to offer NGOs and other stakeholders the possibility to learn more about the process. Our page on the follow-up now contains concrete examples of best practices used by States. Finally, we have also enriched our paragraph on the lobbying for NGOs with detailed explanations on where, when and how to do it.
Following our launch on March 18, our database of UPR recommendations is now fully working and accessible on our website. We strongly encourage you to use it and give us your feedbacks in order to improve it and make it an essential tool for your work on the UPR.