Ms. and Mr. Cofacilitators,

 

I am pleased to take the floor on behalf of the group of eleven Latin American like-minded countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, México, Peru, Uruguay and my own delegation Costa Rica. We would like to make some additional comments regarding the remaining issues from February discussions, and some reflections on the way forward.

 

Common core documents and updates

We already supported the use of common core documents and its updates, they allow for a unified framework for all the Committees, shorter treaty specific reports and costs savings.  They are an integral part of the reports mandated by the treaties and therefore the financial resources needed for them should be included in the costing of the reports. However, it is necessary that the OHCHR develops a consistent and objective methodology for the calculation and distribution of the costs among all the committees. Even when we acknowledge that 58 States have presented this Common Core Document so far, we believe that in the long term, this can be a very important piece in the harmonization and easing of the reporting process common to all Committees any State reports to.

 

Coordinated request for additional meeting time

The group considers necessary to adopt a mechanism that could estimate the financial requirements of each Committee to include them in the regular budget of the Organization, in order to avoid ad hoc requests for additional resources that would come from outside of the regular budget cycle. 

The General Assembly should make a political decision recognizing that the cost of the system is linked to the number of ratifications and authorize the OHCHR to include the necessary additional costs in the regular budget every 2 years.

Objective criteria should be developed by the OHCHR to calculate the resources needed. The requests of the Committees should be considered, together with other elements like new ratifications, reports expected to be presented, reports pending of consideration and individual communications pending of consideration. We consider the idea, presented by some colleagues, of developing parameters to establish a cost per unit (report) as a very interesting and helpful one.

We expect that costs will increase significantly in the first biennium, because of the new ratifications and the backlog. However, after the backlog is eliminated the numbers will tend to be more stable.

 

Page limitation

Page limitation is also one of the measures that we have been supporting since last year, we believe it is a feasible solution if implemented together with other measures such as limitation on the number of questions to be answered and more focused observations. In order to be effective, we would favor that, even when allowing specific exceptions on a non-open-ended basis, sticking to any page limitation should not be voluntary.

 

Reduction in annual reports of treaty bodies

As we already expressed, the group supports “Paper Smart” policies, in particular with regard to the printing of the annual Committee reports. We also consider that these reports should include reference to official documents produced during the year and not to reinsert their whole content again. The annual reports could be available upon request. The same “Paper Smart” policies could be applied for the Country Reports.

 

On the issue of a code of conduct

Regarding the proposal of a code of conduct, the group takes note of the fact that the issue was raised again. As already stated last year, however, the group will not favour measures that can limit the independence and impartiality of the experts of the treaty bodies.

We welcome the adoption of the Addis Abeba guidelines and have the strong view that an auto-regulatory framework is the appropriate way to deal with this issue.

 

Way forward

Ms. and Mr. Cofacilitators,

 

Already in one of our joint interventions last year, the group identified a list of measures in which we believe consensus can be found to implement them in the short term, if we frame them in a way that respects the competences of the different stakeholders.

Among those measures I would like to mention: the simplified reporting procedure; the use of common core documents; page limitations; focused treaty bodies concluding observations; aligned methodologies for the dialogue with States; reduction of number of languages in which the summary records are translated (as far as the language of the examined State is kept) and even its substitution by digital records; webcasting and video-conferencing and capacity building measures, including support for establishing national mechanisms,  when so requested by States.

After extensive discussions, we believe many other proposals could find consensus as well, such as: decreasing the number of recommendations and classification on short or longer term priorities; use of dual chambers (when possible); engagement with other UN partners; friendly settlements upon recognition by the State concerned; strengthening of the Conference of States Parties; the jurisprudence data base and measures against reprisals, for example.

We need also to implement extraordinary measures to address the backlog, as combined and summarize reports, and seriously consider how to prepare and approach a future implementation of a fix master calendar.

Since the treaty bodies’ strengthening is a permanent process, the final result of this discussion should be subject to an evaluation or revision in the medium term.

We firmly believe that it is very important to reach a comprehensive outcome in this GA session, based on the commitments we set ourselves in Resolution 66/295, but political will and serious commitments about resources are needed.  Our countries stand ready to support you in this endeavour, to follow your guidance in how to reach that result and to engage constructively with other delegations.