WG on expert advice - Feb. 16th - AB

Following the discussions on expert advice of last Friday (Feb. 9th), the Facilitator summed up the points of convergence and asked the delegations to express their points of view regarding the elements of divergence.

1. Nature of the body

While Cuba proposed a 3 weeks annual meeting of the Human Rights Expert Advisory Body (HREAB), Germany emphasized the fact that it should not exceed 2 weeks. USA, Switzerland and Mexico went further, suggesting that it should only meet on request of the Council. On the opposite, Germany, Cuba, Algeria, Colombia, Argentina, and China said that the HREAB should be a permanent structure. The Lutheran World Federation raised the idea of a compromise: a reduced but permanent pool of experts completed by a roster of qualified experts available to carry out special tasks on request.

Argentine proposed that the mandate of the HREAB include not only human rights promotion but also protection. Switzerland, Algeria and the UK agreed.

2. Number of members

A few countries (Argentina, Japan, India and Germany) put forward that a body restricted to a maximum of 16 members would be more effective. Algeria, Cuba, Pakistan, China and Iran would rather maintain the number of members of the late Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, which is 26, in order to ensure representativeness and higher efficiency to deal with the large amount of work expected.

3. Selection process

There seemed to be a broad consensus on the idea that the experts are chosen on the basis of their qualification and independence (Germany, China, UK, Canada, Algeria, Cuba). France specified that the experts should not be working for their government.
Regarding the selection process of the experts, all the speaking delegations agreed that the selection takes place in two phases: first an internal nomination by the countries, then a final election by the HRC (Pakistan, Iran, Malaysia, China, Cuba, India) or the General Assembly (Argentina).

In the afternoon, the debate moved to the modalities of the 4th session of the HRC, the Facilitator having issued a new draft timetable. A relative consensus relative to the following issues was achieved:
• The High Level Segment (HLS) should only meet once a year.
• The session should be shortened by one week, which would be dedicated to a better preparation of the WG following it.
• The 5th session of the HRC must start on June 18th and not on the 30th (Cuba, and China and Palestine particularly insisted on this issue, arguing that they wanted an internal organization agreed on before the end of the mandate of the Mexican President of the Council, being suspicious that some country were deliberately delaying the process)
Uruguay, backed up by Ecuador and Argentina, also proposed that the Special event of March 19th, « violence against children », be allocated 2 hours of discussion instead of one.