Examination of seven countries and adoption of List of Issues

The Committee reviewed the reports of seven States on the implementation of the ICCPR: Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominican Republic, Australia, Jordan, Mauritius, Cameroon and Romania.

The Committee also adopted the Lists of Issues in relation to the reports of Algeria, Bahrain and Lao People’s Democratic Republic, as well as the List of Issues Prior to Reporting in relation to Japan and the List of Issues in absence of State report of Gambia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The List of Issues will be available in the coming weeks.

Modifications in the follow-up procedure

The Committee modified the methodology of the follow-up procedure to the Concluding Observations and Views.

Follow-up to Concluding Observations

• The periodicity of follow-up report to Concluding Observations was extended to two years, while it used to be one year.
• The follow-up rounds have been reduced from three to one. A second follow-up report may be requested by the Committee only in appropriate cases.

Both decisions regarding the follow-up procedure have already been applied in this session. This means that: a) the date of submission of the follow-up reports of the countries that have been reviewed at the 121 session is 10 November 2019, and b) the follow-up procedure of those State parties who are at the second or third round of follow-up have been discontinued.

The Committee also adopted the report on Follow-up to Concluding Observations which assesses the recent information received on the implementation of the Committee’s recommendations in relation to 5 States: Ukraine, Malawi, France, Macedonia and Uzbekistan. The report is now public and available here. The Annex on the Status of follow-up to concluding observations has also been updated accordingly and is available here. 

Follow-up to Views

• Grading will no longer be applied concerning the publication of the Views by the State party.
• Grading regarding guarantees of non-repetition will be applied only if these measures were specified in the Views

The Committee adopted its report on the Follow-up to the Views, which analyses the progress on the implementation of recommendations based on the information received in relation to individual communications. The follow-up report will soon be made public.

53 Views adopted under the individual communication procedure

53 individual communications were examined at this session, out of which 18 were examined on the merits. Of those, 9 were found to be violating the Covenant, and 9 were decided as non-violations. 3 were found to be inadmissible and 32 were discontinued.

Usually the examination of views is a written procedure. During this session, the Committee had an oral hearing with the author and the state for the first time.

Second reading of the draft General Comment on right to life

During this session, the Human Rights Committee started the second reading of its draft General Comment on Article 6 (right to life) taking into consideration the comments from more than 170 stakeholders. So far, the Committee reviewed the first 9 paragraphs of the draft. It will continue the second reading during the next session.