Adopts Ten Resolutions and Four Decisions, Including on Follow-up to Missions to Darfur and Occupied Palestinian Territory
The Human Rights Council this afternoon concluded its fourth regular session, having considered a large number of reports from its Special Procedures, on the high-level missions mandated during earlier special sessions, and on a wide range of issues, including racism and racial discrimination, freedom of religion or belief, indigenous peoples, violence against women, human rights defenders, and follow-up to earlier resolutions on Darfur and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. It also adopted its report to the General Assembly.
In his closing statement to the Council, Luis Alfonso de Alba, President of the Council, said the Council should feel satisfaction at the high level of participation and interaction at the highest levels at the work being performed. The level of participation and commitment shown was very encouraging. It showed the priority that should be attached to the institution building process, convergence and follow-up, seeking consensus, the need to clearly identify outstanding issues and focus on these issues. The time had clearly come to begin negotiating, to reduce the distance between positions and take account of different concerns.
During the three-week session, the Council heard the Special Procedures of the Council present their reports on the situation of human rights in Burundi, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Reports were also presented on minority issues, effects of economic reform policies and foreign debt on human rights, racism and racial discrimination, extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, freedom of religion or belief, human rights of migrants, protection of human rights while countering terrorism, freedom of opinion and expression, physical and mental health, education, sale of children and child prostitution, indigenous people, torture, violence against women, human rights and transnational corporations, human rights defenders, internally displaced persons, people of African descent, arbitrary detention, and enforced or involuntary disappearances.
The Council's high-level missions to Darfur and the Occupied Palestinian Territory also presented their reports.
In the resolution adopted on Darfur, the Council took note with regret that the high-level mission could not visit Darfur. It expressed deep concern regarding the seriousness of the ongoing violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in Darfur and decided to convene a group to be presided over by the Special Rapporteur on Sudan to work with the Government of Sudan and the appropriate human rights mechanisms of the African Union to ensure the effective follow-up of the implementation of resolutions and recommendations on Darfur and to contribute to monitoring the human rights situation on the ground.
In the resolution adopted on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the Council noted with regret that Israel, the occupying power, had not implemented resolutions S-1/1 and S-3/1 and had hindered the dispatching of the urgent fact-finding missions. It called for the implementation of its resolutions and the dispatch of the two missions to the territory.
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In a resolution on the follow-up to the Human Rights Council resolutions S-1/1 and S-3/1, the Council called for the implementation of those resolutions, including the dispatching of the urgent fact-finding missions, and for the President of the Council and the High Commissioner for Human Rights to report to the Council at its fifth session on their efforts for the implementation of the resolutions and on the compliance of Israel.
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The Council also adopted a decision according to which it decided, without a vote, to take note of the deferral of draft proposals on: the use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and impeding the exercise of the right of peoples to self-determination; incitement to racial and religious hatred and the promotion of tolerance; World Programme for Human Rights Education; Israeli violations of religious and cultural rights in Occupied East Jerusalem; and human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. It also decided to defer to coming sessions of the Council texts on the rights of the child; Sri Lanka; and the rights of indigenous peoples. Deferred until further notice were texts on impunity and on freedom of opinion and expression.
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