12 States under Review from 2nd cycle negotiated wording of UPR recommendations

12 States from session 13 and 14 of the UPR Working Group have engaged in negotiations to change the wording of recommendations received during their review. While some changes are related to the syntax of the recommendations, most are aimed at watering down their strength.

Changes must be reflected by footnotes in Working Group reports to show the recommendations as made orally during the review before the State under Review (SuR) and the recommending States agreed to modify them to facilitate their acceptance by the SuR. This practice started during session five (May 2009) with the report on Afghanistan and has been used largely ever since by many delegations.

For session 13 and 14, the States which negotiated recommendations are: Bahrain, Brazil, Ecuador, Finland, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Morocco, Peru, Philippines, Poland, and Sri Lanka.

The trend of negotiating recommendations is of concern to UPR Info. In a joint statement made on 21 September during the Human Rights Council 21st session with Conectas Direitos Humanos and the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, UPR Info denounced the practice of States negotiating the wording of recommendations and called on all states to stop this practice. This practice is in contradiction with the principle of transparency as contained in Human Rights Council resolution A/HRC/RES/5/1.