UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré
7 February 2020
In his latest report to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly (UNGA) on the status of the human rights treaty body system, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres refers to our work on the future of UN treaty bodies.
‘This work started back in 2015 with the Academic Platform on Treaty Body (TB) review, a major project that involved more than 300 academic partners and experts and developed key recommendations to improve the work of UN TBs underlines’ Felix Kirchmeier, Executive Director of the Geneva Human Rights Platform.
‘This project culminated in a report published in 2018, and we are very pleased to see that several states across all continents and regional groups, as well as NGOs, experts and members of UN TBs have endorsed a number of these recommendations’ he adds.
Today, the Geneva Human Rights Platform (GHRP) contributes to this review process by providing expert input via different avenues, by facilitating dialogue on the review among various stakeholders, as well as by accompanying the development of a follow-up resolution to 68/268 in New York and in Geneva.
‘Our ongoing contribution notably involves regular briefings in Geneva and New York, guidance to improve the handling of individual complaints, tools to implement recommendations and optimize the planning of TB’s sessions, and comparison with the UN Universal Periodic Review System to identify good practices’ explains Felix Kirchmeier.
The release of the Secretary-General Report, the third and last in the lead-up to the 2020 TB Review will trigger the move of the debate from Geneva to New York, where discussions on a follow-up resolution to 68/268 should be expected in April.
‘Those negotiations provide an opportunity for States to address the challenges and shortcomings in the TB system and to ensure the sustainability of the monitoring system they themselves have put in place. The options are on the table, now it’s time for States to act’ adds Felix Kirchmeier.
The Geneva Academy is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr Clotilde Pégorier as our new Head of Education.
Geneva Academy
The Training Hub will offer, as of this year, two new annual training courses on business and human rights and on the implementation of international human rights standards.
Geneva Cities Hub
This side event at the UN Habitat Assembly in Nairobi will discuss how local and regional governments localize the SDGs and fulfil human rights on the ground and their increased international visibility through the UPR.
UN Photo / Jean-Marc Ferré
This training course will explore the origin and evolution of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and its functioning in Geneva and will focus on the nature of implementation of the UPR recommendations at the national level.
CCPR centre
This training course will delve into the means and mechanisms through which national actors can best coordinate their human rights monitoring and implementation efforts, enabling them to strategically navigate the UN human rights system and use the various mechanisms available in their day-to-day work.
UNAMID
This project will develop guidance to inform security, human rights and environmental debates on the linkages between environmental rights and conflict, and how their better management can serve as a tool in conflict prevention, resilience and early warning.
Gorodenkoff/Adobe
This project facilitated a multistakeholder consultative process to identify knowledge gaps, generate new evidence and co-design evidence-based tools to support regulatory and policy responses to human rights challenges linked to digital technologies.
Geneva Academy