Out of those 16 States, 10 only submitted an addendum containing their written responses to recommendations. Overall, States under Review provided responses to most of the recommendations but for several, the responses were not clear enough to determine whether the recommendations were accepted or rejected.

The HRC concluded item 6 with a general debate. Numerous States raised again, as they did during the previous general debate in June, the issue of the translation of WG Reports as there was still some Reports that had not been translated. Another hot topic were recommendations. Some speakers were concerned about the lack of written and timed responses to them and others about the content of the recommendations, whether too critical, not enough or undermining human rights. The list of speakers was also discussed but only few statements mentioned the non-paper by the Secretariat. Most States wanted to see the 120 minutes available divided by the total number of States willing to speak. Following Egypt’s point of order during the adoption of Yemen’s report, some speakers also reiterated their support to the role of the civil society in the process and the importance to let them speak freely without any restriction.

During this 12th session, the HRC also held a panel on the integration of gender perspective in the Council’s work, with a specific focus on the UPR. It was said that the UPR has great potential and women’s organisation should be more involved in the National consultation before the review and in the follow-up of recommendations.

Finally, the HRC selected the troika for session 6, 7 and 8 of the UPR WG and chose the order of review for session 7, 8 and 9.

On UPR-info.org, there is now a Spanish version of the website ! We are very happy to add a third language to our website and thus enable Spanish speaking actors to use our website and strengthen their participation at the UPR.