Human Rights Council - 60th Session
Item 6: General Debate
Thank you President,
Action Canada makes this statement on behalf of the Sexual Rights Initiative.
The SRI has engaged with the UPR since its inception, seeing the value for national accountability of a cooperative peer review mechanism for human rights acculturation that has embedded in its design, the participation of civil society actors.
The UPR is a useful check point for states to reflect on their human rights programming - their best practices, gaps and challenges. It is a continuous reminder that the realisation of human rights should be a regular facet of states’ work, and that we shouldn’t have to wait for crises, emergencies, and conflicts to centre human rights, or to make a voluntary commitment to do better.
However, this mechanism which has so much promise is continuously at risk of being instrumentalised to rubber-stamp state apathy and under performance. Across the cycles, we have seen states undercut the transformative potential of the mechanism - through failing to meaningfully engage and consult civil society ahead of national reporting or implementation, through enacting reprisals against civil society for UPR engagement and through states making and accepting recommendations that are inconsistent with human rights law, norms, and standards.
Presently - Nicaragua and the United States of America, are through non-cooperation dealing a blow to one of the core principles of the UPR, that of universal coverage. Their absences, if left unaddressed, threaten the foundations of the UN human rights system, namely the universality of rights and the fulfilment of states’ obligations to accountability in this regard.
The conditions that necessitated the creation of the UPR still persist, and states must work to retain it.
Thank you.