WG on Complaint Procedure - April 25th (AM) - AB

The discussion was based on Facilitator Blaise Godet's non paper, which is supposed to be the penultimate draft before submission to tbe president of the HRC. However, some important points of divergence remained :

- Regarding the measures to be taken by the HRC in case of consistent patterns of reliably attested violations of HR and fundamental freedoms, the document lists 4 options (discontinue considering the situation, request the State concerned to provide further information, appoint an expert to monitor the situation, recomment the OHCHR to provide capacity building assistance to the country concerned). The question was whether this list was exhaustive (opinion of Egypt, Algeria, Iran) or just indicative (USA, China, Mexico...). The facilitator finally said that the mandate of this WG was to ameliorate in a victim-oriented direction the 1503 procedure, which is why it is obvious that the list is meant to be indicative.

- The main principle of the complaint procedure is to examine the situation by the HRC in a public session in case the State concernend is not willing to cooperate with the HRC. But who should decide to make it public ? The 2nd WG on situations or the HRC ? Most states (unless Germany on behalf of EU) refuse the former solution, as this WG will be constituted of 5 representatives of member, hence a probable politization. Even the NGO "International Service for Human Rights" agrees. However the timespan accorded to the State concerned to provide a reply (3 months) is judged too long by some (Belgium, Germany...)

- Another point regards the methods of decision of the 2nd WG. Consensus (Canada) or majority (Australia) ?

The Facilitator concludes by saying that he will take account all the diverging remarks made today to draft the final paper which he will only submit to the HRC president and not the the WG.