CHR to hold 61st session – Press release (excerpts)

COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS HOLDS SIXTY-FIRST SESSION AT PALAIS DES NATIONS FROM 14 MARCH TO 22 APRIL 2005

The principal human rights organ of  the United Nations, the Commission on Human Rights, will conduct its annual six-week session for 2005 from 14 March to 22 April.

The Commission, which was created in 1946 and is made up of 53 Member States, will begin its session at the Palais des Nations with a three-and-a-half-day "high-level segment" featuring speeches by Government officials of elevated rank and by heads of various United Nations agencies and intergovernmental organizations.

It will then work its way through an agenda covering such topics as the right of peoples to self-determination; racism and all forms of discrimination; the question of the violation of human rights around the world; economic, social and cultural rights; civil and political rights; issues relating to women, children, migrants, minorities and indigenous peoples; and the promotion and protection of human rights.

Under various agenda items, the Commission will consider the situation of human rights in Colombia, Sudan including Darfur, Iraq, occupied Palestine, the occupied Syrian Golan, Cuba, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Belarus, Myanmar, Cyprus, Cambodia, Somalia, Burundi, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chad, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Haiti, Nepal and Timore-Leste.

Trends and themes in the field of human rights deemed pressing enough to warrant the appointment of Special Rapporteurs, Special Representatives, Independent Experts, or Working Groups also will be reviewed. Reports will be presented, among other things, on combating defamation of religions; the effective implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action; contemporary forms of racism; women's ownership of property and adequate housing; the effects of structural adjustment policies and foreign debt on the full enjoyment of human rights; the right to food; cultural rights; the effects of unilateral coercive measures, poverty, and globalization on human rights; arbitrary detention; torture; arbitrary executions; freedom of expression; the independence of the judiciary; trafficking in persons, especially women and children; and the rights of children, migrants, internally displaced persons and indigenous peoples.

In addition, as in previous years, the Commission will consider particular situations of alleged violations of human rights in specific countries in closed meetings under what is called the "1503 procedure".

The Commission on Human Rights in January elected Makarim Wibisono of Indonesia as Chairperson of the sixty-first session. Hernán Escudero Martínez (Ecuador), Mohamed Saleck Ould Mohamed Lemine (Mauritania) and Anatoliy Zlenko (Ukraine), were elected as Vice-Chairpersons and Deirdre Kent (Canada) was elected Rapporteur.

Questions to be Examined

Specific Country Situations Concerning Human Rights

Under its agenda item on the organization of work of the session, the Commission will remain actively seized with the grave situation in the occupied Palestinian territory. …

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Under its agenda item on the right of peoples to self-determination, the Commission will have before it the report of the Secretary-General on the situation in occupied Palestine (ECN.4/2005/13).

Under its agenda item on the question of the violation of human rights in the occupied Arab territories, including Palestine, the Commission will have before it the report of the Secretary-General on the situation of human rights in the occupied Syrian Golan (E/CN.4/2005/26). It will also have before it the report of John Dugard, the Special Rapporteur on the violation of human rights in the occupied Arab territories, including Palestine (E/CN.4/2005/29 and Add.1) and the report of the Secretary-General (E/CN.4/2005/28).

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Country-specific procedures

1503 procedure

For use of the information media; not an official record

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