HRC - March 12th AM - SK

Human Rights Council regular meeting

First session: from 10 am to 1 pm.


1. Opening of the session:

Speakers:

- Luis Alfonso de Alba President of the Council:
o Expressed his concern concerning the effectiveness of the council
o Considers deplorable the lack of cooperation from nations who refused access cooperation.

- Secretary General (on video): short speech concentrates on the challenge of building a better institution.

- High Commissioner for Human Rights: highlights the importance of special procedures and deplores the “region against region” mechanism.

2. High-level segment

Speakers: Switzerland, Gabon, Germany (in the name of the European Union), Luxembourg, Indonesia, Jordan, Tunisia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, The Netherlands, Sweden, The Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Community of Democracies and Cuba.

Every state and Organization recognized the importance of Human Rights and their commitment to the Human Rights Council. It would be too long to sum up all speeches, therefore, for the detailed statements of each country please refer to the extranet:

- http://portal.ohchr.org/portal/page/portal/OHCHRExtranet on “Oral statements”.

User name: Hrc extranet
Password : 1session

The minister of Foreign Affairs of Sweden H.E. Carl Bildt, mentioned Cuba and China, amongst others, while talking about HR violations. Both Nations replied quite harshly against such accusations.

Cuba asked for the right to reply and held a somewhat ruthless discourse against Sweden. They stated that with such hatred this council could not work, and that the Swedish “should have stayed home.”

China also reacted to the Swedish discourse by highlighting that there are no agreed consensus on what HR are substantively, and reminded that they were categorically against the idea of imposing a single view on others.

Moreover, it is unacceptable for them that other nations link the Olympic Games to HR issues. They state that no country should take this occasion to politicize The Olympic Games. China also reminded that death penalty is entirely compatible with civil and political rights since it is only used in extreme cases. However they assured that the death penalty will be reviewed this year in order to limit, to reduce and ultimately abolish its application.