Lessons Learned on Civil Society Involvement in the Universal Periodic Review Process

Transcription

1 Regional Governance Architecture FES Briefing Paper February 2006 Page 1 Lessons Learned on Civil Society Involvement in the Universal Periodic Review Process Parallel event to the 8 th session of the Human Rights Council Geneva, 13 June 2008 FELIX KIRCHMEIER

2 Lessons Learned on Civil Society Involvement in the UPR FES Conference Report June 2008 Page 2 Parallel to the 8th session of the UN Human Rights Council, the Geneva Office of the FRIEDRICH- EBERT-STIFTUNG (FES), together with the HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE OF THE CONFERENCE OF NGOS (CONGO) held on 13 June 2008 a public panel discussion on LESSONS LEARNED FROM CIVIL SOCIETY INVOLVEMENT IN THE UPR PROCESS. The active exchange of experiences among civil society actors benefitted greatly from the multifaceted input of the panellists: Theodor Rathgeber of the German Forum Human Rights, Judith Cohen of the South African Human Rights Commission and Michael Anthony of the Asian Legal Resource Centre. The discussion was chaired by Budi Tjahjono and Felix Kirchmeier. The first two sessions of the Working Group (WG) on the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) completed their activities and the UPR final outcomes have been adopted by the Human Rights Council (HRC) during the 2nd week of its 8th session. NGOs had the opportunity to provide written inputs constituting the initial basis of the review process, monitored the sessions of the UPR working group and had the opportunity to make general comments before the adoption of each UPR outcome. Looking back at the impact and performances of the NGO contributions into the UPR, this side event gave space to discuss lessons learned from this first series of reviews. A very large audience of civil society actors shared their experiences both at the national level and in the Genevabased steps of the process, identifying which strategies had worked and which had not. Panelists and participants elaborated how NGOs could be better involved and strengthen their engagement with the follow up to the UPR. The panelists of the meeting were (in order of appearance) Theodor Rathgeber of the German Forum on Human Rights, Judith Cohen of the South African Human Rights Commission and Michael Anthony of the Asian Legal Resource Centre. The meeting was co-chaired by Budi Tjahjono of the CONGO Committee on Human Rights and Felix Kirchmeier of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. The intervention of Theodor Rathgeber set the stage for the meeting, presenting a draft paper on the UPR as a mechanism and in its political meaning, which will in its final form be published by FES Geneva shortly. As an observer for the German Forum on Human Rights, Mr. Rathgeber had attended both sessions of the UPR Working Group as well as the relevant Council sessions and also assisted NGOs in the preparation of their inputs. Regarding the high expectations of civil society towards this mechanism, he recalled the fact that the UPR was still a state driven process and that the restrictions in the role of NGOs were not a unique feature to this mechanism within the UN system. He continued highlighting the strong points of the UPR as observed so far, its ambiguous aspects as well as it s weaknesses from an NGO point of view. On the positive side of the balance sheet, he noted the pooling of human rights information on a given country from various stakeholders in one single, easily accessible place. Through this collection, all listed documents became the official status of UN documents, reinforced if they were again referenced in the final outcome of the UPR. He also mentioned the positive experiences made in lobbying friendly states to raise certain questions or make a specific recommendation to the state under review during the WG session, where NGOs cannot do so themselves. Additionally, he argued that for the first time the UPR provided a forum in which powerful states that usually escaped scrutiny will have their human rights record reviewed by the competent UN body. Another positive aspect was the national process in many countries. Technically, all states are obliged to organize civil society consultations prior to the review. Not all of them did so, but by encouraging information (nationally or through the UN) civil society organizations were able to link up to other national and regional groups they might otherwise not have established contact with. Speaking on media attention, he noted that contrary to the rather negative press on the Geneva process, media attention and coverage at the national level had used the UPR in encouraging ways. Ambiguous was his assessment for the way how states went about the UPR sessions. Collective applauding and diplomatic words were in his view not appropriate on states like Tunisia, while they could have positive effects on states which were ready to take this encouragement as a starting point for real change in their countries. The same problem he identified in the fact that recommendations to which a state concerned does not agree will not

3 Lessons Learned on Civil Society Involvement in the UPR FES Conference Report June 2008 Page 3 feature in the recommendations section of the outcome. This would mean again that countries can ignore those recommendations. On the other hand this lower level of visibility allowed for including difficult issues like sexual orientation in the outcomes of state s UPR. Outright negative aspects were to be found in the UPR as well. As an example, Rathgeber quoted an Indonesian NGO which saw the UPR becoming an exercise of Universal Periodic Rhetoric. Indeed, he pointed out that the immediate improvements of the UPR might be marginal. A negative aspect was also the attitude with which some countries approached the process, showing the low importance they attached to it by not entering into any substantial debate. In dealing with each other, the states had shown another bad habit: difficult development situations or natural disasters were all too often used as an excuse to exempt a state from scrutiny, instead of using the UPR mechanism as a tool to help the state overcoming those problems. Also, while he mentioned the availability of multifaceted input as a positive feature of the UPR, he regretted that the states seemed to only take into account the official state and UN reports, without drawing their questions from the various NGO sources that were provided. This factor was again highlighted by the following speaker at the concrete example of her country. Overall, Rathgeber summed up in a rather optimistic tone, stressing the impacts that the mechanism might have in the mid- or long-term, identifying areas for NGOs to continue or focus their work on in the follow-up to the UPR. The last section of this report will get back to this point. Judith Cohen, the next panelist, presented the experiences the South African Human Rights Commission (SARC) had made with the UPR. Starting her presentation, she spoke about the extremely worrying xenophobic crisis that was unfolding in South Africa. Relating this to the topic of this event, she pointed out the eventual benefit, the UPR process could bring in fighting such problems in the long run, stressing the importance of encouragement through the international human rights system. Speaking on the UPR of South Africa, she mentioned that due to short deadlines and a low visibility of the process nationally, the SARC had been caught off guard and needed to respond to the situation rather quickly. Encouragement through APT, a Geneva based NGO, was also important in starting the process. Yet, when putting together the five pages for the UPR submission, they realized that this could be done with relatively small extra effort, given that the Commission already disposed of the necessary information, working nationally and with the UN treaty bodies. Consequently, the most important issues were named, followed by a call for a corresponding commitment by the government. A further difficulty was that SARC could not relate to any government communication regarding the UPR South Africa was so far the only country which did not submit a national written report in preparation of the UPR, neither did it hold any civil society consultations, as required by the corresponding Human Rights Council resolution. In turn, it was SARC encouraging the government to engage with the UPR process. Leading up to the April UPR session, SARC contacted national NGOs via -lists, sharing information about the process. A positive side effect was that this linked groups that worked on overlapping issues (including on the UPR) but did not have any contacts previously. It also widened the scope of NGOs interested in the UPR and Geneva based human rights processes. The highlight of the campaign, as Cohen put it, was taking place on the actual day of the review: linking up centers in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban via video conferencing, a national audience could first share information about the UPR and then follow the proceedings in Geneva live per webcast. For the first time, the diplomatic debates in Geneva could become truly alive for people who might otherwise never have been able to attend them. The proceedings could be commented and the positions and statements of the government representatives were debated directly by civil society. Yet, Ms. Cohen also mentioned the frustration of the Commission and civil society in general that the actual session in WG on UPR did not allow for any statements other than by states. It also seemed to the spectators, that the state representatives, asking questions to the South African government in the UPR process, would only relate to the state s presentation and the UN report, but had not considered the whole NGO input leading to the UN compilations - a shortfall, which resulted in limiting the potential richness of the discussion. For the way forward, she identified the following necessities: Firstly, the energies and interest in civil society, which had been generated in April,

4 Lessons Learned on Civil Society Involvement in the UPR FES Conference Report June 2008 Page 4 would have to be reignited. Resulting from the delay between the UPR session and the adoption of the report in the Council, some of the momentum had been lost. Internally, the first thing would be to examine the UPR outcome and the commitments of their government and reflect on possible percussions within the work of the SARC. She also considered it very important to deal with the UPR follow up not in an isolated manner, but to link it up to the recommendation of the UN treaty bodies and national action plans regarding human rights. This would also allow for the identification of gaps in the process (e.g. on certain vulnerable groups). The special role of the Commission she saw in raising awareness among all civil society actors as well as within parliament and in organizing seminars and roundtables, also to ensure that for the next UPR, there would be a civil society consultation process by government, which had been absent this time. A regional perspective was brought in by Michael Anthony, the third panelist of this session. The Asian Legal Resource Center (ALRC), for which he is working as a programme coordinator, had submitted reports to the UPR of India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea and Sri Lanka, plus a joint report on Japan. In its role of a regional organization, the ALRC had collected information from their grass root partners, allowing them to bring their information to the UN level while maintaining their sometimes crucial anonymity. Like the previous speaker he stressed the rush to get all the reporting done in the short time available. Yet, instead of lengthy consultation processes which are often (or should be) organized by governments or national human rights institutions, the ALRC had taken a more targeted approach, using the information which was already available through their various sources or encouraging certain partner organizations to submit specific information. While this process cannot replace the democratic legitimacy of broad civil society consultations, it nevertheless did yield to quick and substantive results, as needed in this time frame. Adding that preparations and input were important, Anthony pointed out that the adoption of the UPR outcome in the plenary of the HRC was only the start for the real work - the four year implementation cycle starting at this moment. Relating to the relatively small number of NGO representatives present in the adoption of the UPR outcomes, he also asked the question, whether the plenary session was really worth the travel expenses for non-geneva based NGOs. Within the one hour adoption process of the outcome document on a given state, there was a time slot for NGOs to make a general statement the only time when NGOs are allowed to speak during the whole process - but even the nature and scope of this two minute statement was heavily contested by some states who tried to prohibit NGOs from addressing the human rights situation in the country concerned. Acknowledging the unsatisfactory nature the UPR process had developed for NGOs in Geneva, he expressed his hope that it could have impact on national reforms and encourage the governments and civil society to work towards better human rights policies and their implementation domestically. In the following hour of Discussion and Conclusion, participants shared their own experiences with the UPR and their opinions on the shortcomings of the process. In a dialog with the panelists, possibilities were identified how to use the existing mechanism more effectively and how to adapt NGO strategies to a reality that could not be changed in the short or medium term. Generally, everybody stressed the need to look at upside of problems and to engage constructively, despite the criticism civil society has in regard to the process. Positive observations were made again on the documentation and webcast and the fact that the reporting in the end was not as time consuming as some had feared before. Also, the broad nature of UPR was seen from its positive side as to get issues raised and countries addressed that usually are not spoken about; for a more specific analysis, there were other, better equipped UN bodies to turn to. Mainstreaming the gender aspect of the UPR was identified as an issue that needed more work. The persistent lack of gender equality and economic development of women was still visible during the UPR sessions, but the process could also serve as opportunity to hold countries accountable to the gender specific programs they proclaim to conduct. Identifying the way forward, recommendations were made regarding media use. As the Geneva process is often too removed from the national interest, it is difficult to get the necessary media attention for it. Therefore, it should always be linked back to national issues: the UN work could also be referred to when reporting on national debates.

5 Lessons Learned on Civil Society Involvement in the UPR FES Conference Report June 2008 Page 5 Broad consultation and targeted demand for information from grass roots organizations were seen as complementary processes in the preparation of civil society input to the UPR. Also, it was stressed that within the four year cycle, following the review, continued NGO engagement was crucial. Yearly meetings with governments could be requested for further consultation and preliminary assessment of the implementation, and NGOs could keep reporting on state s (non-)implementation to the HRC for example under Item 4 or via Special Procedures and treaty bodies. As positive experience of the past two sessions of the WG on UPR, the lobbying of friendly states was named again and recommended to be continued and strengthened. Relating concrete questions and recommendations to them had proven effective in getting those issues into the intergovernmental debate and, in the end, into the outcome document. Suggestions like a competition or ranking of the best and worst behavior of delegations visà-vis NGOs might yield entertaining results, but, due to their political sensitivity, might not be further pursued. In any case, building on those experiences it can be expected that civil society input and its impact will grow in future UPR sessions and throughout the implementation of its results. On the author: Felix Kirchmeier is Program Officer for Human Rights at the Geneva Office of the Friedrich-Ebert- Foundation since He holds a master s degree in political science from the University of Freiburg / Germany. More information is available on The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily the ones of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung or of the organization for which the author works. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Hiroshimastrasse Berlin Germany Tel.: Fax: Roswitha.Kiewitt@fes.de Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Genf 6 bis, Chemin du Point-du-Jour 1202 Geneva Switzerland Tel Fax: fes.geneva@econophone.ch