Space for dialogue between the civil society and the national authorities

Efforts occurred at the national level with a comprehensive follow-up agenda to ensure that there was a full implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). This includes new tools for NGOs to elaborate plans of action for an effective monitoring of the HR Committee’s recommendations as well the specific indicators to monitor the progress made by the State Parties.

In addition, we have reinforced and streamlined spaces for dialogue between the authorities and civil society in Burkina Faso, Kazakhstan and Jamaica aiming at facilitating an ongoing exchange on the measures taken to implement the recommendation of the HR Committee.

Efforts were made at the United Nations level with new strategies to develop our advocacy work in a comprehensive manner to ensure that the concerns of the HR Committee are systematically addressed by the other UN human rights bodies, including the UPR process. This approach, which is unique, reinforces the impact of the advocacy work of the human rights defenders, showing very interesting results on Rwanda, Uzbekistan, Ghana and Burkina Faso where concerns of the HR Committee were addressed before the other UN Treaty Bodies and in the UPR.

It is with this global approach in mind that we have joined our force with other NGOs to create “TB-Net”, a platform devoted to improve the cooperation among NGOs engaging with the UN Treaty Bodies.

Finally, one should mention our longstanding efforts toward the universal ratification of ICCPR. In Myanmar, we have engaged significantly with the Government and Parliament and suggested concrete steps leading to the ICCPR ratification.