First session of the Human Rights Council

Chair of the Coordinating Committee of Special Rapporteurs; Sub-Commission and Meeting of Chairpersons

Agenda item 3

Submission by International Women’s Rights Action Watch (Asia Pacific)

23 June 2006: Afternoon

Geneva, Switzerland

Thank you Mme/ Mr. Chairperson,

I speak on behalf of the International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific (IWRAW Asia Pacific), an international organisation based in Malaysia that works for the realisation of women’s human rights through the lens of the CEDAW Convention and other international human rights treaties.

We thank the Chair for this opportunity to present our views on critical debates currently before us. We welcome the establishment of the new Human Rights Council and view this as a critical juncture of opportunity and challenge. We wish to seize this opportunity to bring to the attention of the Council some important challenges before us. We believe that the Council would be most effective if the following principles were fundamental to its work:

As a key strategy, we urge the Council to integrate gender equality into its work. Ensuring the human rights of women is vital to respecting human rights universally. It has been widely recognized that women experience multiple forms of discrimination. Gender mainstreaming in all aspects of the UN Human Rights work has been talked about, but we feel that not enough has been done to truly internalize and therefore implement this policy. We urge you to use this opportunity of shaping the new Council to do this. We encourage the Council to adopt a human rights approach to gender equality using the principles of and standards set by the CEDAW Convention. CEDAW mandates the achievement of substantive equality, including an equality of results. It provides a definition of discrimination and obligates the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, direct or indirect, by both public and private actors. At this time of formulating the agenda and priorities of the Council, we respectfully submit that you create more entry points for advocacy on women's human rights.

We encourage the new Council to adopt a consistent and holistic approach to human rights promotion, protection and monitoring. This is yet another opportunity for the Council to streamline the working of the many mechanisms and procedures that exist for the protection of human rights. This would strengthen the impact of these mechanisms and avoid duplication. The outcomes of these mechanisms (for example, concluding comments of treaty bodies, reports of special procedures, the universal periodic review) should reinforce each other to have a combined impact.

Turning more specifically to the treaty bodies, we address two critical issues:

We thank the Office of the High Commissioner for its attention and efforts in developing the concept note on a unified standing treaty body. We, however, endorse the views expressed by the CEDAW Committee that a unified standing treaty body runs the risk of losing the specificity and expertise of individual Committees to the detriment of rights holders. Should a unified standing body come to exist at all, it is essential to have experts, in particular women’s human rights experts, on the committee.

We note that, over the past decades, treaty bodies have developed progressive standards and jurisprudence in several areas. The CEDAW Committee has done so in the area of women's human rights. We must ensure that these progressive standards and jurisprudence are incorporated into any reform from the outset – especially with regards to CEDAW’s definition of substantive equality, non-discrimination and state obligation.

Regarding the treaty reporting system, we commend the work of the Inter-Committee Technical Working Group and its revised harmonized guidelines. We especially commend the guidelines for stressing the importance for State parties to report on both de jure and de facto implementation of rights. We appreciate the draft guidelines for special attention paid to persons who suffer multiple forms of discrimination. We still caution however, that reporting on the rights of equality and non-discrimination in both the common core document and the treaty specific document deserves special emphasis. Guidelines need to be clearly articulated in order to avoid dilution of these rights and confusion for reporting parties. And, once adopted, we support the continued monitoring and adapting of these guidelines to respond to possible difficulties that may arise in practice.

In conclusion, we emphasize that these reforms should result in a holistic, integrated, progressive human rights paradigm that applies across the board not only to treaty bodies but to all other UN human rights mechanisms, in particular, the new Human Rights Council.

Thank you Mme/ Mr. Chairperson.

This page was last updated on August 3, 2006

“IWRAW Asia Pacific is an independent, non-profit, NGO in Special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.”
©IWRAW Asia Pacific
Contact Us | Site Map