The Secretariat of the Human Rights Council (HRC) released the Calendar for all HRC meetings to be held in 2012. UPR Working Group sessions 13 and 14 are scheduled respectively from 21 May to 4 June and from 22 October to 5 November.
The programme of work of the 19th session of the HRC was also published. The Working Group reports of the 12th UPR session will be adopted from 14 to 16 March 2012 and followed by a two-hour general debate. On Wednesday the 21st, the Annual thematic discussion on best-practices on technical cooperation will focus on the follow-up to UPR recommendations.
At UPR Info, we have launched, together with the organisation Mandat International, a survey on States procedure to draft statements at the UPR. Having received several requests from a number of NGOs, we send questions to the 173 missions present in Geneva on how they draft statements at the UPR and the best time, location and format to receive information from NGOs. We are expecting answers by December 23rd and will share the results on the website.
Recommendations from session 10 are now available in the database. A total of 2306 recommendations were made by 123 States. Out of those 2306 recommendations, 1771 were accepted (76.8%), 311 rejected (13.5%), 111 without clear position (4.8%) and 113 without any response (4.9%). The State under Review which received most recommendations was Myanmar with 197 recommendations and the most active recommending State was Spain with 95 recommendations.
Our Follow-up Programme is going well, not only in terms of quantity (increase in the number of participants) but also regarding its quality, interest and potential. We achieved a first step by completing sessions 2 and 3. Thanks to 52 stakeholders, we are happy to share the Mid-term Implementation Assessments for 20 countries. We are currently compiling session 4; at least 60 stakeholders have already sent their comments on the implementation of recommendations. The quality of those comments has improved greatly, mainly because the Follow-up Programme is now well-known. Inspired by the programme, NGOs in Mexico, Canada and New Zealand have joined forces to monitor the implementation in their countries, other NGOs have resumed their discussion with their Governments and new ones have started to engage for the first time with the mechanism, raising awareness and assessing the progress made. Thanks to the participation of all actors, the positive dynamic is well underway; but we continue to need your expertise to keep the momentum alive.
Finally, we will release in January three tutorials on the UPR process and the role of States under Review and NGOs. These tutorials will be available on our website and on DVDs.
We wish you all the best for 2012.