[hre-asiapacific] UN Commission on Human Rights and HRE (1)

Dear all,

The following is the information to share with you particularly focusing
on human rights education at the current annual session of the UN
Commission on Human Rights.


WORLD PROGRAMME FOR HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION

The Programme was proclaimed by the General Assembly on 10 December 2004.
Now, we are still waiting for the adoption by the General Assembly of the
Plan of Action for the first phase of the World Programme.

The draft is already finalised and translated into several UN official
languages as the UN document A/50/525/Rev.1.

It reflects the comments of Member States given by the deadline which
makes this document as the finalised text.  Now, the document only needs
to be adopted by the General Assembly, the procedure of which obviously
should be simple enough.  But, it is not done yet.

In the previous years, at the General Assembly in New York, Australia has
been the sponsor of the draft resolution on the UN Decade for Human Rights
Education to have it adopted, after the process of the Commission on Human
Rights and then Economic and Social Council.  Australia did so with the
resolution on the follow up to the UN Decade, as well, last December.

Now, the draft Plan of Action.

The current situation is that the delegates of the Australian government
in charge of human rights in New York are all in Geneva for work at the
Commission on Human Rights, and in New York, the draft Plan of Action is
sort of suspended until action be taken (presumably simple adoption
procedure).

At the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, as usual, Costa Rica is
preparing a draft resolution on human rights education - this year,
probably to be entitled "on the World Programme for Human Rights" or
similar.

But without the official UN document, "the Plan of Action" for the first
phase of the World Programme ready to mention, the resolution will assume
certain ambiguity. At least the resolution would express that the
Commission welcomes the proclamation of the World Programme for Human
Rights Education..

This situation has been referred in the context of the World Programme at
the NGO meeting on "the right to education and human rights education"
held in parallel to the Commission today.

Certainly, the work of the Commission is such a hard and tough thing for
any Member State, based on which it is presumed that Australia may have a
difficult time with limited human resources to work in both in NY and
Geneva at the same time.

These are the facts now known to those who are concerned with human rights
education in Geneva, and probably in New York, too.

My personal view is that the Member State to sponsor such a draft
resolution on human rights education at the General Assembly in New York
does not necessarily have to be Australia this time - if the draft Plan of
Action to be adopted at the General Assembly in a timely manner, although
the ideal is that Australia pursues its reputed political stance towards
promotion of human rights education on this occasion as well.

At the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, there is still one week and a
few days (as from 31 March) until the deadline of submission of the draft
resolution that Costa Rica is preparing.

Let us see how it goes. NGOs in Geneva will do their best to make the
resolution meaningful in consultation with Costa Rica, and perhaps with
any other government delegate who might be concerned with this situation.


*****
Kazunari Fujii
SGI UN Liaison Office, Geneva




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