Human Rights Group of Friends

Facilitators for an Optional Protocol to the International Convenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. January 18th.

The meeting was held by Mr. Queiroz, the ambassador of the Permanente mission of Portugal in Geneva. The aim was to hear the point of view of Mrs. Catarina Albuquerque on the revised draft of the optional protocol and discuss about the main out standing issues. Mrs. C. Albuquerque is the chair-person of the working group on that optional protocol and she is coming from the foreign affaires ministry of Portugal.

According to Mrs. Albuquerque, the main issues are the following:
- the scope of the optional protocol: article 2.1
- article 8.4: the question of reservation that implies demands from all the delegations, deep reflection
- article 14: the trust funds. Egypt had clearly said in July that it wont go back on this issue.

The delegations were asked to give their opinion on any comments made by any other delegation.

Portugal delegate stated that the aim of Portugal was to brig economic social and cultural rights at the same level as politic and civil rights, adding that all of them were interrelated.

Belgium, Spain and Italy said not to see the add value of paragraphs 8.3 and 4 proposed by Egypt on behalf of the African group and ask how do Portugal was going to implement it? The fact that a country has the appreciation is an error, going against the UN Conventions
About article 14, the trust funds, Belgium delegate doesn’t think that the delegation would agree on the wording. One should add: “…countries don’t have any obligation…”

Mexico and Austria said not to be in favor of an “a la carte” approach. The delegate also asked about the mythology of the next meetings.

Mrs. Catarina Albuquerque answer for § 8.3, that one have to bare in mind the concerns of all the regional groups. It must be possible for any given country to go the regional organization and ask for reports matters that had already been dealt. She admits that perhaps “consult” is not a good word but the idea has to remain the same. If a country doesn’t has special rapporteur on an issue at stake, it must seek information from the regional organization.

On 8.4, she answered that the concept of unreasonableness would reduce the number of cases to only the outrageous one. Therefore this concept is unknown to the African group.

The role of the group of friends is to stimulate participation. The methodology for February is the following: go thought the text paragraph by §, from OP1 to PP26, isolate the hard topics for April then clean the text. April will depend on February. And one should do informal work between the two with delegations that are very concerned by the isolated topics.

Final comments:
- The minor issues in February and the major ones in April. Mrs. Albuquerque asked the delegation to be ready and to come with clear points of view.
- Professor Riddle will come again to Geneva and she will try to organize at least two meetings with him to discuss, to give delegations a chance to interchange ideas

FayeIsmaila Pedro