WUNRN
United Nations Human Rights
Committee
The
UN Human Rights Committee is the body of independent experts that monitors
implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
by its State parties.
United Nations Human
Rights Committee Guidelines Enable
Review of Countries
That Have Failed to Submit Reports
In 2000, the United Nations Human Rights Committee adopted new guidelines enabling it to review countries that have failed to submit reports to the Committee as required by the Covenant, which in the past resulted in the fact that these countries never participated in the review process of the Committee.
In many cases the reports of such countries are more than a decade overdue.
Equality Now - http://www.equalitynow.org is supporting the implementations of these new guidelines, and after several sessions of a dialogue with the Committee regarding their application, the Committee agreed to take up one such country per session.
In July 2001, Justice P.N. Bhagwati, the Chair of the Human Rights Committee, wrote to Equality Now that the Human Rights Committee had scheduled two non-reporting countries, The Gambia and Suriname, for sequential consideration during its forthcoming sessions. Equality Now submitted information on both The Gambia and Suriname to the Human Rights Committee, and subsequently Mali, another non-reporting country. The lists of questions presented by the Committee to the governments of these countries included reference to concerns raised by Equality Now in its submissions to the Committee.
Equality Now is also working to facilitate greater integration of the Human Rights Committee’s work with the activism of women’s rights organizations at the national level. This initiative is designed to ensure that information from these organizations goes directly to the Committee when it considers the countries in which they are based, and that the work of the Committee in turn is of greater use to the work of these organizations within their countries.
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