I UNITED NATIONS
| DOI | 10.1177/092405190101900304 |
| Author | Ineke Boerefijn |
| Date | 01 September 2001 |
| Published date | 01 September 2001 |
| Subject Matter | Part B: Human Rights News |
295
Part
B:
Human
Rights News
I UNITED NATIONS
Ineke Boerefijn
A.
Human
Rights Committee'
The Human Rights Committee held its
71"t
session from 19 March - 6 April 2001 in New
York. At the time
of
writing, the case law had not yet been made available on the Internet.
The present contribution contains some cases from the 70th session (fall 2000) that have
recently become available.
During its 71st session the Human Rights Committee elected Prafullachandra N atwarlal
Bhagwati
of
India to serve as its Chairman. Unusually, it came to a vote;
Mr.
Bhagwati
received 10 votes, while Abdelfattah Amor
of
Tunisia received 7 votes. The Committee
considered reports from Croatia, Dominican Republic, Syrian Arab Republic, Uzbekistan and
Venezuela. It continued the consideration
of
the draft general comment on Article 4
(derogation
of
human rights during times
of
emergency). Also, on 26 March 2001, the
Committee commemorated the 25th anniversary
of
the entry into force
of
the Covenant.
Among the people addressing the Committee on this occasion was Daniel Pinto from
Trinidad and Tobago, a former prisoner on death row whose sentence to death had been
commuted after intervention by the Committee, and who was subsequently released.
The Committee amended its rules of'procedure.' Aselection
of
the amendments will be
addressed in this contribution.The Committee amended rule 2,to codify the existing practice
that it normally holds three regular sessions, and not two. A sentence was added to rule 33
(concerning public and private meetings), providing that the adoption
of
concluding
observations under Article 40 shall take place in closed meetings.
Rule 68, which deals with the examination
of
reports in the presence
ofthe
State party's
representatives, was significantly amended. Two paragraphs were added to it. New paragraph
2 deals with the situation in which a State party has submitted areport, but fails to send a
representative to the session for which examinationhas been scheduled. The Committeemay
then take one
of
two courses: (a) notify the State party through the Secretary General that at
aspecified session it intends to examine the report and thereafter adopt its concluding
observations; (b) proceed at the session originally specified to examine the report and
thereafter make and submit to the State party its provisional concluding observations and
determine the date on which the reportshall be examined or the date on which anew periodic
report shall be submitted. Paragraph 3 states that such provisional concluding observations
will not be included in the Committee'S annual report, although the fact that the report has
been examined will be stated in the annual report.
A new rule, rule 69A, deals with the procedure in which the State party fails to submit any
report. The Committee may then, at its discretion, notifythe State party through the Secretary
General that it intends, on a date or at a session specified in the notification, to examine in
a private session the measures taken by the State party to give effect to the rights recognised
in the Covenant, and toproceed by adopting provisional concludingobservations which will
be submitted to the State party. Paragraph 2
of
this new rule states that the Committee shall
Erratum to the previous contribution, see NQHR Vol. 19 (2), p. 176.The correctcommunication number
for Rodger Chongwe vs Zambia is 828/1998.
CCPR/C/3/Rev.6. Rules
of
procedure
of
the Human Rights Committee, adopted duringthe 1924 1hmeeting.
Netherlands Quarterly
of
Human Rights, Vol. /9/3, 295-332,
200/.
Il::i
Netherlands Institute
of
Human Rights (81M). Printed in the Netherlands.
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