HUMAN RIGHTS: NGOs and UN Rapporteurs Condemned to Silence

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Apr 12 2002 (IPS) - Non-governmental organisations and United Nations special rapporteurs charge that the Commission on Human Rights has condemned them to silence by reducing their presentation time or cancelling them outright due to financial troubles.

The UN announced in February that its Commission on Human Rights would need to cut back the operating expenses of the 53-nation assembly that tracks UN members’ compliance with international pacts and treaties on human rights.

The Commission’s chairman, Krzysztof Jakubowski, waited a week after sessions began Mar 18 to make the monetary difficulties known. The top UN body on human rights matters has been forced to eliminate its evening sessions and to impose strict limits on speaking time in the debates.

One of the expense-reducing measures introduced was a 30-percent reduction in the presentation time allowed the participants in the six-week sessions.

This set off a wave of protests from representatives of the human rights-focused non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that arrive from all parts of the world in Geneva each year to report the violations and abuses that are committed within their jurisdictions.

Their complaints have been seconded by the special rapporteurs, independent experts who the Commission entrusts to follow specific issues or the status of human rights in specific countries.

Param Cumaraswamy, of Malaysia, special rapporteur on the independence of judges and attorneys, said he was given just five minutes to present four reports that represent an entire year of his work.

One was the annual report and the other three were assessments of the justice systems of the countries he inspected, said Cumaraswamy.

The Malaysian jurist told a press conference that his travels to Mexico and Guatemala, where he made on-site inspections, required long journeys from his home in Kuala Lumpur and extended stays in each country, but he had to condense his reports on the status of the two countries to presentations of one minute each.

The rapporteurs also complain that the governments they are under mandate to evaluate often undermine their autonomy and freedom to work.

“Without the rapporteurs, or with a reduced presence, the Commission turns into a dangerous monologue among states,” commented one of the experts.

The special rapporteur on issues related to torture, Theo Van Boven, of the Netherlands, pointed out that the mechanism of rapporteurs constitutes a public instrument for studying the responsibility of government in human rights matters.

With the restrictions imposed, said Van Boven, the rapporteurs become a mere instrument of the Commission, thus limiting their independence. He added that he believes the sharp reduction in presentation times was a deliberate effort to limit the rapporteurs’ power.

Similar reactions were heard from NGOs, with some denouncing what they say are attempts to marginalize their contributions to the Commission on Human Rights.

Renate Bloem, president of the Confederation of NGOs (CONGO), which holds consultative status with the UN, stated that these civil society groups serve to represent the victims of human rights violations before the Commission.

NGOs act “not only as voices of victims, but also to bring all the information necessary for the Commission” to function properly, said Bloem.

“Now we come to these measures, which have for economic reasons cut off quite extensive time from the Commission,” she said.

Peter Prove, representing the Geneva-based Lutheran World Federation, pointed to the frustration of the bigger NGOs, which often represent “very large grassroots communities, who are expressing and raising the voices of victims of human rights violations,” but forced to summarise it in just three minutes.

One move by the Commission that particularly upset the NGOs was the decision, announced unexpectedly on Apr 9, to exclude from the speakers’ list representatives of 35 independent organisations.

Many of those NGO representatives returned this week to their homes in Asia, Africa and Latin America without having made their cases before the Commission on Human Rights.

“They spent so much time, money and energy without being able to make any contribution,” complained the secretary-general of Pax Romana, Anselmo Lee.

The exclusion of the 35 NGOs came at the moment when they were to have participated in the discussion of the situations in several individual countries.

The country-specific session of the agenda “is perhaps the single most significant and important item for many NGOs. There were 74 NGOs on the speaker list. The (last 35 on the list) were terminated arbitrarily without prior consultation,” said activist Prove.

The last ones on the speaker list are generally from the countries of the developing South, who arrive in Geneva at the last minute – often to save hotel expenses – and sign up just prior to the deadline.

NGOs demand the creation of consultation mechanisms to handle these types of cases and to prevent NGOs’ contributions to the Commission on Human Rights from being marginalized, Prove said.