06/05/2010

Lists of speakers for the entire session already full

Lists of speakers during this 7th UPR session are already full, thus beating all precedents on this matter. For Koweit and Belarus, the list is full three days before its official opening.

The normal procedure requires States to register to the Secretariat of the Human Rights Council the day before the review at 8.45 am. However, delegates used to arrive earlier and earlier to make sure to be the first and thus started to write their own list to give to the Secretariat. It reached a new level for the review of Iran (session 6 - February 2010) when the list was started the day before registration at 8pm, thus forcing diplomats to stay up all night. In order not to reproduce this, the list for Egypt was started the afternoon before the opening.

During this seventh session, Nicaragua continued this practice by starting the list for Spain again the day before the opening. Following this, the tacit rules of restraints having disappeared, a rush began to write as quickly as possible all the lists.

The only question remaining now is the following: when will start the lists for the next session to be held in November?