Overview of the 132nd Session
Published on 14 Jul 2021, 06:16 PM
28 jun 2021 - 23 jul 2021
122nd Session of the Human Rights Committee in March 2018
The 132nd Session of the Human Rights Committee was held remotely, being the fourth session online since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020.
Ms. Photini Pazartzis, the Chair of the Committee, opened the session by paying tribute to Christof Heyns and his remarkable contribution to the Committee’s work. She also stressed the challenges caused by remote sessions and the resulting delays in state reviews.
Review of Togo and adoption of LOI and LOIPR
The Human Rights Committee reviewed Togo’s fifth report on the implementation of ICCPR. It also adopted the List of Issues of Burundi and the List of Issues Prior to Reporting in relation to Albania, Canada, Ecuador, France, Mozambique, Timor Leste and Turkey.
47 decisions adopted on Individual Communications
The Committee adopted 47 decisions on individual communications. From these, 7 were declared inadmissible, 8 were discontinued and 32 were decided on the merits or views.
Regarding the cases which were declared admissible and decided on the merits, the Committee found the following:
- 27 violations
- 5 non-violations
Finally, the Committee had to postpone to next session the consideration of only 1 communication.
Evaluation on follow-up procedure
The state parties considered under the follow-up procedure to Concluding Observations were: Bangladesh, Liechtenstein, New Zealand and Switzerland.
Challenges of online sessions and importance of in-person ones
In line with Ms Pazartzis, Simon Walker, Chief of Section in the Human Rights Treaties Branch, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, stressed the challenges of online sessions in his opening statement. He congratulated the Committee for its excellent work despite the technical, language and time-based difficulties but stressed the need to move back to in-person meetings as being in all stakeholders’ best interests.
