IRCT   [to 1 March 2014]

IRCT in Geneva
IRCT urges swift adoption of resolution on UN human rights treaty body
28 February 2014
The budgetary Committee of the UN General Assembly must adopt draft resolution A.68.L.37 to strengthen the UN human rights treaty body system including the Committee Against Torture (CAT).

While the resolution does not address all necessary reform initiatives to improve the treaty bodies ability to promote national implementation of human rights treaties, it does take some important first steps in the right direction.

The draft resolution, which has taken more than four years to develop, has finally been agreed on by the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly dealing with human rights issues and is now before its budgetary Committee. The resolution is a package deal making it imperative that it is adopted without any further negotiation of individual elements.

While we regret the limited scope of the package and the lack of focus on national efforts to implement human rights obligations, the resolution does increase funding for bodies like CAT and the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) so that they can scrutinise more states each year and process more individual complaints (in the case of CAT).

This is an important step as it enhances CAT’s and SPT’s ability to monitor implementation and hold states to account with higher frequency including for the implementation of the right to rehabilitation.

The IRCT has joined a large civil society coalition in welcoming the resolution and we call on the all stakeholders to, once adopted, ensure immediate implementation and to continue to take all necessary measures towards the effective functioning of the UN treaty bodies…