Colleagues,
As you know, the UN Human Rights
Council (successor to the Commission on Human Rights) is about to wrap up its
first year in session. Apart from its substantive agenda, the Council has been
focusing on setting up its own work-methods, procedures, agenda, and programme
of work.
The final decisions on these matters are likely to be made over
the next two weeks, i.e. before the end of April.
A number of
organizations have been involved with advocacy to ensure proper integration of
the human rights of women into the Council's work. In that connection, we have
put together a short MINIMALIST agenda for the Council, setting out the absolute
bottom line for what the Council must do, in terms of setting out procedures, to
work for women.
We plan to distribute this note, with institutional
signatures, to states next week.
For this, we need you help. Could you
please consider adding your INSTITUTIONAL signature to the statement included in
the text below.
I would need to hear from you by Sunday April 15 for your institution to be included.
Please send it to marianne.mollmann@hrw.org
For more
information on the Human Rights Council generally, see our webpage at http://www.hrw.
Thank
you so much--please circulate widely,
Marianne Mollmann
Advocacy
Director
Women's Rights Division
Human Rights Watch
Phone: 1 212 216
1285
Fax: 1 212 736 1300
Cell: 1 347 244 0090
e-mail: marianne.mollmann@
Web: http://www.hrw.
Statement:
Integrating
the Human Rights of Women into the Human Rights Council
The Human Rights
Council faces many challenges. One crucial challenge is to develop its work
methods in a manner true to the sentiment repeated annually by the Commission on
Human Rights: "acknowledging the need to integrate the gender perspective in a
more systemic way into all aspects of [its] work." The resolve for a
comprehensive gender integration process was further consolidated during the
debate at the Fourth Regular Session of the Human Rights Council on March 28,
2007, when 56 states called for gender integration of the Council's permanent
agenda and programme of work as an essential first step.
This paper sets
out the minimum threshold for gender integration into the Council's main
mechanisms and work methods. The following concrete steps would preserve what
the Commission on Human Rights began in terms of gender integration, while also
strengthening the methods and mechanisms for doing so.
These steps
constitute the absolute minimum for what the Council must do to be an effective
protector of the human rights of women.
Agenda and Programme of Work:
• Ensure at least
one full day of discussion every year on the human rights violations suffered
mainly or exclusively by women.
• Ensure adequate planning and
capacity-building for the Council to address the differential impact on women
and girls of all human rights situations under its consideration.
Review
of the Special Procedures:
• Mandate gender integration and the explicit
consideration of women's and girls' human rights under each relevant Special
Procedure, and ensure adequate capacity building to allow for such
integration.
• Continually identify protection gaps in areas of human rights
violations that mainly or exclusively affect women and girls, and create a means
to address these gaps.
Universal Periodic Review:
• Integration of the
respect for human rights of women into the criteria on which states will be
reviewed, whether qualitative or quantitative, with particular focus on
gender-specific human rights violations.
• Explicit evaluation of the
gender-specific criteria of the review in the UPR outcome mechanism for each
state, utilizing concluding comments from treaty bodies as
appropriate.
Signatories by April 13,
2007:
Amnesty International
ARC International
Action
Center for Women’s Global
Leadership
Human Rights Watch
International
International Women’s Rights Action Watch – Asia Pacific
(IWRAW-AP)
New Woman Foundation
Women’s Initiative for Gender
Justice
Women's UN Report Network
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