Council adopts presidential text on Institution building – Human Rights Council 5th session – Human Rights Council press release

Human Rights Council
ROUNDUP

19 June 2007

The Human Rights Council concluded its fifth session at midnight on 18 June after adopting a Presidential text on the institution building of the Council.

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The Presidential text entitled "UN Human Rights Council: Institution-Building" lays out the basic structure for the Council's new institutional machinery, including the Universal Periodic Review Mechanism, the Special Procedures, the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee (which replaces the Sub-Commission for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights), and the Complaint Procedure (which replaces the confidential 1503 Procedure). It also sets out an agenda and framework for a programme of work, and lays down the Rules of Procedure for the Council. Ambassador de Alba told the Council there was also agreement on the other texts that would be taken up, and he proposed that the text be accepted as a compromise, on the understanding that it also included the Code of Conduct.

Statements on the Presidential text were made by speakers at the first meeting of an organizational session for the second cycle of the Council which opened this afternoon and elected the new Bureau for the second year of the Council (see press release HRC/07/47 of 19 June). The statements will continue to be heard at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, 20 June.

At the beginning of the session, which opened on 11 June, the Council heard the Special Procedures of the Council present their reports on the independence of judges and lawyers; racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance; the right to food; the adverse effects of the illicit movement and dumping of toxic and dangerous products and wastes on the enjoyment of human rights; adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living; and human rights and extreme poverty.

The Council also heard reports on the situation of human rights in Belarus, Cuba, Cambodia, Haiti, Somalia, and discussed follow-up to the urgent high-level fact-finding missions to the occupied Palestinian territories, including Beit Hanoun, and the updated report by the High Commissioner for Human Rights on follow-up to the report of the Commission of Inquiry on Lebanon. The report of the expert group on the situation of human rights in Darfur was also discussed, and reports on the right to truth and human rights and arbitrary deprivation of nationality were debated.

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Institution-Building of the Council

The Presidential text entitled "UN Human Rights Council: Institution-Building" lays out the basic structure for the Council's new institutional machinery, including the Universal Periodic Review Mechanism, the Special Procedures, the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee, and the Complaint Procedure. It also sets out an agenda and framework for a programme of work, and lays down the Rules of Procedure for the Council.

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The Agenda of the Council, among other things, contains standing items on human rights situations that require the Council's attention; the Universal Periodic Review; the human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories; and racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance, follow-up and implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action. The Framework for the Programme of Work basically incorporates the topics from the Agenda.

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For use of information media; not an official record